Let Me Here Your Monologue First!

     The arts aren’t for everyone. Well let’s make this a little more magnified: the arts aren’t necessarily for the typical macho man, as stereotypical as that sounds. So it wasn’t a surprise to me that the only people who replied with  a yes to my request to go see the play Frozen by Bryony Lavery at the Downtown Theatre were girls (minus my friend Tim who is a theatre major). No current boy thing of mine was eager to go, regardless of my plea and rants about doing things I like, instead of being stuck in front of the ESPN network all day with the occasional switch to Call of Duty every hour on the hour. 



Penn State School of Theatre students who peform these fantastic plays. Check them out here !



     But as Frozen went on, and that two hour time span was chock full of emotional moments of crying and philosophical arguments that I know my boy thing wouldn’t have grasped anyway, I was glad I came with my girls (minus Tim). Not only did I have time without vigorous button pounding, but I had time to contemplate the overall message of the play. Frozen had hidden deep meanings throughout it, but for the purpose of rhetoric blogs, I chose to point out one specific act that struck me as interesting in the rhetorical aspect and its relationship to the real world.

     Frozen is about three separate life experiences occurring at the same time that all interconnect. One is a mother, Nancy, who lost her daughter, Rhona, at the age of 10 when another character, Ralph, abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered her in a shed not far from Nancy’s own home. The third character in the play is Agnetha, an American scholar who travels to England to present her thesis about whether or not murder is a forgivable act. Agnetha determines her decision on the thesis after doing multiple cognitive studies on Ralph while he is imprisoned for the murder of not only Rhona but several other young girls in England.

     One act in the play is a monologue by Nancy in which she speaks to the audience about the organization she is leading to find the lost children, like Rhona, of parents in England. She tells how she gets up in front of hundreds of people to speak about her experience and persuades them to donate money and assist her in locating the children around England who have been kidnapped. Her actions to find Rhona are an example of rhetoric. Her rhetoric is filled with emotion and personal experience which forces people to think of no other option but to help her find the lost children.

     However, as Nancy is giving her monologue, the audience can see a different twinkle in her eye that is not just for other parents to find their children. Nancy stresses to the audience (the people present at the play) that her goal is deceiving, that she honestly could care less about the other lost children of England, and that she really just desires something more selfish, to just have Rhona back in her arms.

Political cartoon displaying promises found here

     This example of rhetoric allowed me to witness that rhetorical arguments that we often see are sometimes misleading.  Not everyone is truthful in the hopes they wish to accomplish and they may actually have a different goal in mind that would not necessarily be approved by their audience. Speakers may throw out inspirational words and personal experiences to persuade you to do a certain thing, but in reality their motives are narcissistic. Promises by political leaders would probably be the most common form of this deception, but we may also hear the most influential, historical, and widely respected people practicing the same actions.

     Rhetoric might be used for more evil than good. We are noticing the things people are saying, but what about the things they aren't saying? It makes me wonder, who can you really trust to persuade you if aren’t present for their monologue?

"Omg, inbg."

     If you and I are having a peaceful night-in, popping microwaveable goodies and downing as much caffeine in our systems as humanly possible and I don’t scream at you to find the clicker so that we can change the awful and pointless commercial on, that’s how you can be certain that this commercial is a good one.  Commercials like this are rare. You know, the ones that intrigue you from the initial second and keep you laughing until the final 30^th second. Due to our irony-hungry and easily jaded generation, more and more we viewers are seeing commercials that are not just informatory, but interesting as well.

     There is a strict criteria for a successful commercial. It must be persuasive, captivating, humorous, relatable, and memorable. All of these elements demonstrate forms of rhetoric that the creator forces on the audience to get their point across. Once the point is apparent to the viewer, the main goal is for the audience to follow, purchase, or spread the word about the subject seen through that magical talking box.

     The Cingular commercial below in particular illustrates a simple form of rhetoric in which the company is attempting to persuade current and new costumers to purchase the unlimited texting. The commercial uses common ideologies, or a commonplace, about modern American families.

     Cingular carefully positions the commercial in the setting of a typical upper middle class household which is the primary demographic of their customers. They use an argument to spark a sense of familiarity in the viewers due to the inevitable confrontations between every parent and teenager that have ever walked this fine earth and also the rise of “text lingo” that baffle all people still.  This understanding is a way of using ethos and pathos to generate emotion in the audience rather than using something like a dying cat to make viewers feel heartbroken. Cingular’s approach creates familiarity but keeps the element of humor intact.

    Even the minute things, like spelling out the foreign language (well it might as well be foreign) of the teenager at the bottom of the screen keeps the viewers transfixed. Also, keeping the commercial short, sweet, and to the point and then introducing an entire screen of bright colored orange to grab attention once more forces the audiences’ mind to relate back to the main argument at hand.

     All these features of the rhetoric Cingular commercial not only solved my conflict a couple years ago of excessive texting  which led to not-so-excessive checking accounts, but still has me saying “idk my bff jill.”