Thank You for Smoking

This was my first time watching this movie and I have to admit, I wasn't that fond of it. It just didn't appeal to me in any way.  I did find a few appeals to pathos and other visual rhetoric examples in the movie, though.

When the "opposed to cigarette" guys were talking on the TV show at the beginning of the movie, the character representing their company definitely went the appeal to pathos route by using a teenaged victim of cigarette usage.  He was a younger guy who already had cancer, and was obviously being treated for the cancer by the lack of hair on his body.  The representative for the company finished his argument by saying, "He no longer thinks cigarettes are cool."  By saying this, people who are watching the guy on TV and then hear this can visually relate what cigarettes are capable of and will hopefully end up disliking them.

"If your parents told you chocolate was dangerous, would you not try it? Then maybe you should try cigarettes for yourself too." - Nick Nader.  This question made me chuckle a little to myself because in some ways he's right; kids do the opposite of what their parents try to make them do. If my mom told me that I wasn't allowed to have chocolate, I'd probably still eat it. The fact is, though, the kids just need to be smart enough not to try cigarettes without being told. Education. That's all that is needed. 

The whole thing about arguments made me think for a while also.  "If you argue correctly then you're never wrong." "It wasn't a negotiation; it was an argument."  I have always thought that arguments were just heated negotiations, but I've never really thought about it before.  If you're going to argue a topic, I guess you'd need to know what you're talking about, making the first  quote true; you wouldn't be wrong, at least in your own opinion. That leads into the second quote proving that he wasn't negotiating with his mom about going to California; Joey was arguing, pretty much just telling her that he was going with Nick on the business trip.

All-in-all it was a good, informative example of visual rhetoric but not a film that I would choose to watch at home.

Visual Rhetoric Image

This image that I have chosen definitely is trying to persuade the audience of something.  The author of this particular image is trying to persuade smokers to quit while they still have time.  The author of this image uses a great appeal of pathos with the shocking yet humorous view of the guy's mouth on the fume pipe.  It's a shocking wakening that the mouth of a smoker is as disgusting and unhealthy as the fume pipe on a bus.  The author is someone obviously that deals with health related topics, especially focusing on diseases caused by smoking.  The audience is obviously focused at being the people in the society who are smokers and even more, heavy smokers.  To me, this image is rather effective because it gives a visual image as to what smoking really does to those who do it.  It doesn't give off a visual as being something healthy and good for a person to do, so I believe that this ad would help reduce the number of smokers in society.

Advertisements on the net

We see advertisements of all sorts on the internet with each page that we access.  I've been watching them throughout the week and the majority that I come across are Apple/ Mac related. When I checked out the Envision website that was suggested in the textbook, I noticed that many apple ads are on that webpage for us students to check out.  I clicked one of the links that took me to an apple computer ad and could read the meaning inside and out. 

Apple, with the particular ad that I was seeing, was obviously trying to audience business men of all shapes and sizes with their different shaped and sized macbooks.  It uses logos because it tells about how the computers are made and gives statistics on the sizes of the memory and the length of the screen, the physical abilities of the computer. Some of the obvious rhetorical strategies were definitely compare and contrast, analogy, and examples.  In these three strategies, it also contributed with a slight sense of humor in that the larger macbook was sitting on the midget's lap, and the over-sized man had the smaller computer.

Another ad that I came across was the very popular, "Got Milk?" ad that is on posters, websites, TV channels, and much more. The publishers of this advertisement are trying to entice their audience of parents, nutritionists, and even the kids!  They use logos when presenting their statistics about calcium and "building strong bones".  Pathos is incorporated with the cute, humorous milky mustaches that the actors have after drinking the milk. This is especially thrown out to the kids because I remember when I was younger wondering how that worked and drinking glass after glass of milk trying to get the same white line above my upper lip. 

Advertisement publishers know what they're doing when they write the ads that are published everyday for various audiences.  They are definitely deeply researched and have more meaning than the regular audience can see without analyzing. These rhetorical strategies are what make the audience interested in the product. 

Rhetoric

All throughout my schooling teachers would express finding rhetorical questions in the texts that were assigned in their classes.  I never knew that rhetoric was actually outside of basic literature and questions used in novels. I read chapter one in Envision in Depth and I really did learn something!! I learned that yes, rhetoric was in MANY more places than just literature and novels.  On my way back to Clemson from Myrtle Beach today, I passed hundreds of billboards and came across a crazy number of advertisements for other things such as restaurants that advertise their food as being "the best southern food anyone has every tasted" and other statements like that.

It's not just advertisements, though.  In my preacher's sermon today, he was making statements about how we, as Christians, could be controversial with other people of the world, but still portray a Christ-like attitude.  He'd make suggestions and ask questions that we knew we weren't supposed to answer, but think about.  That's rhetoric!!

I found out that rhetoric is not just in novels and other writings, it's all around me. I even use rhetoric!! I found myself remembering how I had advised someone to go with a Nikon camera instead of a Cannon based merely off of my opinions and thoughts.  I'm being rhetorical!!!