Essay Two: Rhetoric of Videos
With this essay, the task is to begin incorporating secondary sources into your writing while examining the value/worth of that source. As the text would put it, is this engaging in a discussion or short circuiting discussion and thought? This means you will have to make use of an issue you draw from reading the assigned text, the chapters 6-16 in Age of Propaganda in this case. Once you have found a topic in the reading, your task is to find a video on the internet (I'll provide some to get you started) and discuss the manner in which this source treats the topic by both creating a context for it's examination using a concept from the book and then engaging in analysis of the video by applying concepts from the book within the context of the Savvy Voter criteria as provided (link below). The goal is making it clear to your reader why this is an element of propaganda/persuasion to pay attention to. Whatever judgment you make is entirely up to you, so long as it allows for a reasoned analysis of the information. The essay should be about 1,200 words in length, making use of roughly four of the Savvy Voter criteria.
A Process for this Assignment
- Read and annotate the chapters 6-16 in Age of Propaganda. These will be checked in class.
- Post a list of the major details/annotations for one of the chapters in the blog by the date indicated in the schedule. Make the annotations reasonably readable.
- Be prepared to work with your peers in discussing and explaining your chosen chapter. You will be asked to explain the essence, as a group, of at least one chapter and to identify possible issues to write about.
- Once you have chosen your chapter(or before, or after, it doesn't matter that much really), find some passages from the assigned readings that express your view. At least one of these passages will be used in your introduction as a spring board into the broader discussion. You may use other passages throughout the essay to further illustrate and explain the points under discussion;
- Find a video (some have been provided) that will enable you to engage the ideas in the chapter;
- Use the guidelines provided in accompanying links (the PBS Savvy Voter Guide in particular) to gather effective material from video source you decide to use. Answer every question that is possible. The link to that material can be found below;
- Based on your issue and the material gathered from the video source, come up with a claim regarding your chosen persuasion/propaganda component and how it applies to the video, expressing it in a claim that will function as the essay's thesis;
- Begin drafting the essay, with an eye on using the best material to support your thesis;
- Upon completing the draft, begin revising the essay with an eye to making use of only the best material to illustrate the thesis and support your judgment of the topic under discussion. A draft for review by your classmates should be posted in the blog on the date indicated by the schedule.
- See the calendar for remaining dates.
Choose a video from the options provided or find one of your own. The readers of essay will be me, your teacher, of course, but also your classmates, other SFCC English faculty in the portfolio process and anyone you might invite by our blog, or who wanders by, this website. Your ultimate goal is to get these readers to see that you have done a good reading of the video, demonstrated its relationship to the assigned readings, and that you have made a clearly articulated point that highlights some "truth" about how the ad works, all backed up with evidence. We're looking for about 1200 words, which works out to about four pages, typed and double-spaced in a 12-point font.
You are to use the following material and guidelines on dissecting political ads, essential for doing a good job on this assignment:
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Essay 2 rough draft
Bridger Peres
English 101
Prof. Bleck
April 27, 2012
Essay 2
The ad about Jay Inslee running for Washington governor uses many different savvy voter criteria to try to persuade the audience to vote for him. In the video there is all sorts of music, background props and smiling happy pictures to try to get the audience to think that he is a good person. In Age of Propaganda by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson they say “quote” (citation) which goes along well with this video because this video is all about Jay Inslee trying to win the audience over so he can have the vote of the audience to become the next Washington state governor.
One specific way the ad tries to win the audience over is by using many clips of him shaking hands and laughing and talking with all sorts of people. This shows the traits of emotion-communicating faces. By this I mean that with every clip it shows of him shaking hands with someone or pictures of him and his family, they are always conveying a sense of happiness and comfort when around Jay Inslee. Also, it will always go from him making a good point in a speech to him shaking hands with someone while smiling and laughing, which helps to reinforce his strong point through a strong smiling emotion-communicating face. The power of an emotion on someone’s face should not be taken lightly in an ad.
Another trait this add portrays are props and backgrounds. In the ad, anything that isn’t the main focus such as Jay, are props. All of the people in the video are props which help to support him in looking like an upstanding citizen and a great candidate for governor. In one scene, there was even a Prius in the background that could be communicating that he really cares about the environment. Also, he is always set in a very nice place whether its inside of a nice building for his press conferences and speeches or whether it’s outside with very nice green grass and with trees and everything growing. This also plays into how we see him, it communicates feelings of him being a good man that is in good environments and doesn’t mess with the bad.
One could also draw candidate mythologies such as man of the people. He represents this quality because of how he acts in his video with all of the meeting of the people. He is always talking about how he “worked bulldozers in Bellingham” and had done all of these other working class things so he knows exactly how these people feel, when in all actuality he probably did very little at these working level occupations. But through these speeches and not wearing a tie and being friendly with all of the working class people, they trust him and feel good about him being in office. By becoming a man of the people he gains there trust through making the audience feel like they are the same people as him and have the same background. Being a man of the people can really help a candidate gain a lot of trust with the class of his choosing, usually the working class.
He also seems like a friend with the candidate mythology. He acts as though he is really friendly with everybody which is another ploy to help him to win people over to his side. He uses this friendliness to gain the trust and vote of the people that support him. By befriending you he makes you feel a sense of trust that you feel with your friends. You trust only your family before your friends so if he can become as close to you as he can, or make it seem like that, you will like and trust him more and more and this ad really helps to reinforce this idea.
In conclusion, Jay Inslee, who is running for Washington state governor, uses many different savvy voter criteria to help win people over onto his side. Through all of these different criteria, you can be persuaded quite easily to think that his is a great guy and a perfect fit for the job through both central and peripheral views. This ad is made out for him to look perfect. From background, props and emotion-communicating faces to candidate mythologies, he has many ways to try and convince you that he is the man for the job.