Essay 3 Assignment

Engl360

Anjie Zhao

Essay 3

Dec-4-2014

Modern Rhetoric in Music Videos

Nowadays, rhetoric relies on multimedia, which includes a combination of video, audio, text, still pictures and others. The strength of multimedia is it enables audience to observe and interpret several different kinds of media at the same time; such process brings greater impact on the audience than a single text or a single media. In my essay, I will analyze a music video for “We Are Young” made by Fun (check out the link in the citation page). This music video is multi-media based; it embodies multiple rhetorical expression including oral text (lyrics), background music, music composition, visual images, slow motion videos, and American cultural elements. All of these rhetorical modes belong to modern day rhetoric, and they together to create strong emotional appeals. I will talk about how this music video serves as a good example as modern rhetoric and how its rhetorical techniques fit into modern audience’s expectations. I will also talk about how this music video connects to ancient rhetors such as Aristotle and ancient rhetorical techniques such as ethos, pathos, and logos.

The structure of this music video is very modern in general, because ancient rhetoric does not involve multi-media rhetoric. Such multi-media composition creates a stronger impact on audience by using appeals to both visual and audio; audience not only can hear the story, but also see the story by watching the video. Such effect by multi-media videos like can be found anywhere in 20th or 21st centuries, such as on YouTube. Before 20th century, people aren’t able to access different media at the same time, because devices like music video wasn’t officially invented until 1950; people didn’t think they can actually “observe” visual content of the song; before music video was invented, people relies on imagination based on the music and the rhythm. Differently, people today become materialistic, they rely highly on senses (the ability to feel, hear, and see) because of the influence of multi-media. While they listen to a song, they also expect there are visual or motion videos that supports the music. This music video satisfies modern day people’s expectation for multimedia text structure.

One technique of modern rhetoric is “multi-media storytelling”, which is an effective rhetorical process. Such storytelling technique is often used in a movie. The use of multiple different media contributes to the same story. In the music video for “We Are Young”, as soon as the music starts, we see a young man coolly adjusts his collar in front of the camera, a pianist sets his fingers on the piano, and then the guitar player is about to play the guitar. These scenes are being set together to show that a music band is about to perform some music performance. And the guy who adjusted his collar earlier starts singing; the lyric said “… My lover she is waiting for me just across the bar,” and immediately the camera shifts to the image of a girl who is standing in a bar, waiting for her boyfriend. This example shows that the singer plays the role of the narrator and is using his song to tell a story which happened in a bar. And the video clips serve as visual supports or visual evidences for the oral or musical texts. This is because as the guy sings more and more, the visual story gets developed, and the audience sees the visual motions and gets a deeper understanding of the lyric based on the visual. Using both video and audio simultaneously for a story is only possible in modern time. This music video is fully multi-media based thus is able to fulfill the requirements for multi-text storytelling technique.

Another modern rhetorical technique used in this music video is “slow motion.” As I said in the previous paragraph, modern day people are familiar with the rhetorical techniques used in music video production. Movie editing programs such as Microsoft’s Movie Maker includes “slow motion effect.” Such program is first released in 2000; before that year people do not know about this rhetorical technique. Slow motion effect can be edited through video editing programs, and is meant for the purpose of helping people keep track of what’s going on in the video. In some way, slow motion effects also emphasize on artistic portrayal of the plots of the story. The music video of the song “We Are Young” is an example of these rhetorical influences. For example, at 0:50 second of this music video, a guy is hitting the girl with a glass bottle, his movement is decorated by slow motion effect, you can see the glass bottle slowly breaks on the girl’s head, and the broken glasses slowly flying in the air. This depiction satisfies audience’s aesthetic taste because it’s creative and unique. Slow motion effect also match the guy’s movement with each words of the lyric such as “Tonight, we are young” (Klasfeld, 2011). This slows down the scene and makes the scene clear for observation. Audiences are able to focus their attention for the very moment of the hitting (the guy’s movement). The music turns explosively exciting when the bottle hits the girl’s head. This creates a strong emotional appeal; audience’s emotion reaches its peak when they see the glass breaks, and at the same time hears the song hits its climax. In modern days, people who love Rock music tend to think that the explosive moments in a song give them chill, that is why they love such music. These fans will expect such explosive moments in the music video, because such moments represent their unique life style and lift their spirit. Slow motion effect crucially contributes to the creation of such explosive moments and is adopted by the modern media industry.

In this music video, the editor also uses American traditions, cultures and norms as rhetorical techniques. For example, as the video goes on, you would notice that people in the bar are messing around and partying. They are spraying beers, throwing food, breaking things, dancing, and being wild. Partying is a big part of American’s tradition. The target audience for this video is the American youth, because if you look closely you will find almost everyone in this music video are young and there are no old people. And partying is also what young people most likely to do. This video is spreading this life style of being wild and free in order to attract young American’s attention. The lyric of the song express the same idea. In the lyric, it said “Tonight, we are young, so we set the world on fire, and we can burn brighter”(Klasfeld, 2011). These words encourages people to break free from social constrains and pursue freedom; these ideas emphasize on strong emotional appeals for young people’s desires and needs to be free. In addition, this music video also includes American’s idea about love and sexuality. In the video, there is a couple standing in the crowd; there are creams on the girl’s face and the guy is kissing her hard. This portrays the American ideal of how people love; and in American culture, young people’s relationship should always involve intimate interactions between a boy and a girl. This media production is trying to use all the appealing ideas about American dream, freedom, and love to meet the expectation of American youth; Again, the video portraits the American youth in an wild way because the society believes that young people are supposed to be wild. In contrast, people rarely behave wildly in the ancient times; before the 19^th century while technologies or sexually suggestive music are not developed, people hardly think American youth in an sexual or violent way. People perhaps will have negative perceptions about young people acting violent. However, the violence in this music video is portrayed in a positive way. This is also a cultural character for modern Americans. Nowadays, people hold more freedom than before, thus they expect things to be stimulating, especially in the media. The crime rate in America is higher than before too. It’s not hard to guess that American people become more open minded or tolerant with sex, drugs, and crime today. Thus they don’t mind seeing violence in music videos, because modernity has shaped their cultural values and norms; American people become like to watch violence in media. This can show that this music video is only designed for modern time audiences because its content fits into modern people’s values and ideas. In addition, the setting provides evidence of the “modern time”; the casual dresses, cellphones, plastic cups, the bar and the people’s haircut all can show that it’s 21^st century instead of ancient time. American people have unique ways of dressing. This can be considered an appeal to value. For example, white American guy would like to dress in a suit in public or workplace. In this video, the guy who is singing the song dressed formally; he is in a black suit and wearing a bowtie, like a gentleman. This also connects audience with the American ideal, because Western men are more likely to dress formally and in a suit, unlike Asian men who do not have customs or traditions to wear suit. While American people watch this video they get the idea it’s about American people, not people from other cultures, they feel more connected to cultural ideas being conveyed in this video, because they know such video is depicting a part of their lives, thus they are more likely to watch it.

We can also connect this music video with ancient rhetors. This music video has adopted some important rhetorical modes from ancient rhetoric. For example, this music video used Aristotle’s pathos. According to Aristotle, pathos embodies the appeal to audience’s sympathy and imagination. Aristotle said appeal to pathos is not just appeal to emotion but also appeal to “shared feelings”. Audience is able to share the same feeling with the author of the lyric or the creator of the video. I think this music video definitely provide audience with shared sympathy and imagination. An example would be the so called “American dream.” As I said earlier, this music video focuses on the idea of freedom. While people sees all the people are throwing things and doing what they want in this video, they will share the same feeling of being set free. They will also connect the video to their own lives and the free times in their lives, just like going out at night and play. These imaginations are culturally-based, if you are not American, you may not believe that throwing things or hanging out in a bar is freedom.

In conclusion, the music video for “We Are Young” fits perfectly into the category of modern time rhetoric because of the depiction of its multi-media structure, editing effects, and modern cultures. By analyzing this music video, I realize the powerfulness of technology. Technology helps us make more effective products. This music video, if without either the video part or the audio, would appear less attractive to audiences. This is because multimedia has made the emotional appeal stronger. The two different media emphasizes on the same message and at the same time. This doubles the level of effectives of a single text.

Citation

Klasfeld, M. (Director). (2011). We Are Young [Music Video]. United States: Fueled By Ramen. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv6dMFF_yts

Blog Post 17: RT, Toulmin, pp. 1410-1428; Foucault, Order of Discourse, pp. 1432-1436 and 1460-1470

RT, Toulmin, pp. 1410-1428; Foucault, Order of Discourse, pp. 1432-1436 and 1460-1470

In the chapter of Stephen Toulmin, Toulmin said logic argument is separated from human understanding. I understand his point; I think that sometimes you understand something doesn’t mean you are logically thinking it. Toulmin set up some rules for logic argument. He said an argument should contain five steps; they are claim, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal. I actually wrote a Toulmin essay based on this format in my Engl301. And I think this format is well-structured and ensures the clarity and effectiveness of an argument. Before learning how to write Toulmin essay, my argument lacks warrant, qualification, and rebuttal, thus is weak and incomplete compares to the Toulmin structure. Toulmin said knowledge is the product of argument, and I can’t agree more. I think that while you are learning something, you are always using logic to prove or disprove, and make sense of an argument. Toulmin said scientific knowledge improves not because of accumulation but because of change of perception. He also rejects absolute rationality. I think we cannot always be rational because we all have emotion; we sometimes can get irrational due to the influence by our emotion. This is why I agree with Toulmin on the idea we cannot have absolute rationality. I think that Toulmin’s logical argument is similar to Aristotle’s syllogism in some way. For example, Aristotle said syllogism shows while A equals B and B equals C, A is most certainly equals C. Similarly, Toulmin said Petersen is a Swede and Swedes are almost certainly not a Roman Catholic, thus Petersen is almost certainly not a Roman Catholic. I think that Toulmin’s argument somehow adopts Aristotle’s syllogism. The difference between Toulmin and Aristotle is that Toulmin’s logical argument contains disagreement, opposite views, qualifiers, and rebuttal while Aristotle’s syllogism doesn’t. Aristotle’s syllogism seems less complex in comparison with Toulmin model.

One thing that interests me is that Michel Foucault studies different art of knowledge such as psychology and madness, treatment of prisoners, and relationship between language and knowledge. One thing I like about him is he said it’s not enough for people to accept and pay attention to new knowledge. He said “knowledge is created not by act of observing but through relations” (p. 1433). I think that he has very good point here. I think it’s true that people often ignore new products or theories when it firsts appears and without proven or examination. But overtime, as the relationship between the product and the society slowly builds up, more and more people are likely to buy and consume the product, and the product will no longer be new. I also agree with him on the idea that authorizing power makes it possible for us to speak certain knowledge. I think what he meant here is that if you have power or authority, it will help you get more attention while you express your new idea. Your authority gives a force for people to respect and adopt your knowledge.