Thursday, October 1, 2015

Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies in "Quentin Tarantino's comments on Film vs Digital"

In the following blog post I analyze the techniques on display in my text.
Screenshot taken by Dylan Cotter 10/1/2015 "Magic of Editing" Public Domain Usage

Appeals to credibility or character:

1. Yes I can see a few example of Ethos in this text, personal stories, tone, the author's public image, and information about the author's expertise are all on display here, mainly the author's image and expertise as Tarantino is a huge filmmaker/director and heavily influential to all those who make films and watch films, everyone knows Pulp Fiction.

2. Tarantino doesn't use these strategies, he already is a heavily influential director and he knows people will listen to him but he doesn't have to work at employing these strategies. However using personal experiences and his tone will relate to the listener and hopefully get them to agree with his point, so he is trying to get people on board with his opinion. 

3. These strategies make the audience believe the author more. In this case Tarantino is already such a celebrity that his credibility isn't in question. These strategies just help him all the more. 

4. Because he is such an influential person, his celebrity will cause people to listen to his argument anyway, and his use of personal stories and tone that sounds scared and desperate at times will make his argument all the more effective to those who are listening and agree with him.

5. The author is obviously bias because of his opinion on the topic. The text that i am analyzing is purely an opinion and a strong one at that, so yes it is bias however I don't believe it hurts his credibility all that much because of who he is. 

Appeals to Emotion:

1. There are a few examples of pathos in this text such as, personal stories, tone and use of words. The most obvious example is Tarantino calling the digital age the "death of film" because it is such a emotionally charged word choice. 

2. The author is trying to get people to see how this type of change will hurt the film industry. He is trying to get people to question their opinions and how they view this issue. 

3. I think he is effective in his goal of getting people to question their opinions and stances on this issue. I know that I certainly have. 

4. These responses are effective in sparking the debate about this issue. Only people who really know and care about film will care about this issue, so sparking beat among those people is the authors goal and it does it effectively. 

5. I think that sparking this debate adds to his credibility. He supports the use of film and some filmmakers don't care either way, so the fact that he was able to get people talking about this is a testament to his credibility. 

Appeals to Logic/ Reason:

1. He really doesn't use any connection listed to logic or reason,  he uses historical record of some sort, talking about what he always thought the "magic of movies" was. However he really doesn't use anything else. 

2. I don't really think he is trying to employ any response with these strategies because he really doesn't use any of these strategies. His one strategy that was sort of close was his use of historical record but that was his own use of his own history

3. The actual response is to other uses of ethos or pathos not logos. So there is no actual result from this strategy. 

4. They are neither because they are not used here, all other strategies that he employs are effective but not this one because he doesn't use it.

Reflection:

I read Kelly's blog post on this issue and hear are some similarities I found. Like me, Kelly's author didn't use one of the three strategies as outlined in the book (hers was emotion), this makes it very hard on us to write about this section, however i feel like most every article or text you will find will use 2/3 of these sections. If they use 3/3 then the piece is exemplary but most will use 2/3.

4 comments:

  1. Your article is interesting because Tarantino doesn't use much, if any, logic. He instead relies on being famous in the film community as well as his passion about the issue to form his argument.

    My article is part of a bigger controversy that involves people from all walks of life. Your article is part of a debate that not as many people know about, but the people are that are involved are equally passionate.

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  2. I also thought your post was interesting as your author didnt use any logic. This is different from my post as my author used many examples to support her argument while keeping emotion out of the mix. We both seem to have a good understanding of the rhetorical strategies in our text though, which is good.

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  3. Hello,
    Your post was very fun to read and easy to follow along with. I was especially surprised that your author didn't use any real logic or statistics, as pointed out by the previous commentators and the article when I read it. What I found most bizarre was the fact that a renowned director like Tarantino didn't use hard facts to support his claims, only his fame and interest in the issue. We both seem to recognize that logic in an article is far more important than emotional appeals.

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  4. I found your post pretty fun to read. Because it was about a topic that is easy to follow the information you observed was easy to absorb. Tarantino being the author of your article made the rhetorical analysis of his strategies really interesting because he really doesn't need to apply the rules of writing to get people to form an opinion or listen to what he says. Very cool.

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