Untitled

[perfectcrithits-blog]

Ideology of Lazer Team

The following is an application of four basic concepts of ideology on Rooster Teeth’s recent feature-length film Lazer Team.

Earlier this year, popular YouTube channel and video production company Rooster Teeth released its first feature length film Lazer Team. Despite the channel’s 8.6 million subscribers, the movie received poor reviews, rated at a score of 42 on Metacritic. However, rather than being a Hollywood-quality movie, the film serves a different purpose: Presenting an ideology that small or mid-sized companies and the producers of user-generated content can create products of a quality that can reach the silver screen. By applying the four questions of ideology as suggested by Brummett, one can understand what exactly this ideology is that Lazer Team presents, what audience the ideology is directed towards, and who benefits from such a line of thought.

First, it is important to understand the call-to-action presented by the film. Specifically, Lazer Team wishes to persuade its viewers that this type of content is worth supporting. The film is part of YouTube’s recently released service YouTube Red, which allows users to pay a monthly fee to see exclusive content from certain channels. Lazer Team was one of the first pieces of content exclusive to YouTube Red, and was initially used is currently one of the main methods of advertisement for the service. This film acts as a standard for this exclusive content, giving its audience a point from which to understand what sort of perks they would obtain by subscribing for the service. In this way, the movie acts as a metonymy for higher-level YouTube content, this specific movie acting as a representation for the rest of the content that is and will be provided on YouTube Red. The movie seeks to instill an ideal that such content requires the additional funding from the paid service to maintain that quality in future content. As such, the network of values that are conveyed by the film are as follows: YouTube content producers can release quality content, but such content often requires a higher budget than is afforded by a YouTube paygrade on its own. By paying the extra monthly fee for YouTube Red, these channels will have the added funds necessary to release such large scale productions, the quality of which will be worth the buy-in price.

However, in order for this ideology to be communicated, the audience must bring certain beliefs with them into their watching of the movie. The main belief that must be held by the audience, considering that the movie is trying to sell subscriptions to YouTube Red, is that YouTube content creators are people worth paying extra money to watch. Not everyone finds user-generated content such as Rooster Teeth’s work to be of the same quality as television or movies, so many might not find the subscription to be worth the increased quality of that content. However, media consumers have been shifting more towards internet content as of late, so the idea of smaller-scale productions sharing the enjoyability of creations with larger production values is becoming more widespread. These viewers often enjoy the familiarity that comes with a small-scale production, as well as the audience interaction that it often allows. For those that share these beliefs, being able to have higher-quality content with these familiar, sociable producers would most likely be worth the money.

Lazer Team leads its audience to these conclusions through the quality of the movie itself, as well as the casting of the characters. In order to show the quality of content that can be expected of a service, the best evidence is the content itself. All users of YouTube get a month of the service for free, during which time they can view content such as Lazer Team to gauge the quality of what will come to the service in the future. Just as stated before, this allows Lazer Team to act as a metonymy for the entirety of the content on YouTube Red. In a similar way, the actors and writers for the movie represent the content creators of YouTube, and how they remain mostly the same to how they create their original, smaller-scale content. The writing, subject matter, and sense of humor in the movie, although not popular for the movie-watching public at-large, are the same type of content featured in their normal YouTube videos, offering up a sense of familiarity to fans of the channel. This sense of familiarity acts as a standard of what can be expected of other channels if they receive the same funding, allowing these actors to act as metonymy for all YouTube content creators planning to produce content for the subscription service.

For any ideology, some parties benefit and others suffer from it. For this particular ideology, supporting more direct monetary funding for content creators, the main beneficiary are the content creators themselves, especially Rooster Teeth. They receive more money for the content they create, while being afforded the ability to create projects that would have otherwise been impossible for them. Additionally, YouTube itself profits from the thought process, as it receives a portion of the money from each subscription payment, as well as added viewership from those that are paying. However, while these channels often have large follower-bases, ranging up into the millions, not every subscriber has the money to spare to pay for a subscription. Additionally, some of these individuals do not support YouTube’s current business decisions, so they do not want to pay for subscriptions either. These parties ultimately suffer from the new subscription system, as they are restricted from content produced by their favorite creators.

By providing a high standard of quality for future content, Lazer Team persuades existing fans of Rooster Teeth’s content to pay money in return for higher quality content from the channel. By targeting a viewer base with ideologies valuing humor and practices similar to their own, Rooster Teeth is able to add other values onto their intricate web of ideologies, such as the value of higher-level content and the desire to produce such content. In a way, this is very similar to the tactics used in marketing and advertising, and serves a very similar purpose. The movie has not been out for very long, and YouTube Red as a service is relatively young, so it is unclear whether these methods of instilling ideologies have been successful, and if so, to what degree.

[perfectcrithits-blog]

Colbert on Immigration Laws: Playing a Character Ironically

The following is an analysis of Colbert’s opening address to Congress at a congressional hearing about immigration legislation.

The rhetorical practice of irony can applied in many ways and to different degrees, from simply making a statement opposite of one’s message to playing a whole character with literal and intended meanings at odds. For his opening address to Congress, Stephen Colbert uses the latter, playing the part of a supporter of anti-immigration ideas in order to highlight fallacies in those ideas. While these ironic criticisms of such opinions are effective in the truths and fallacies that they shed light on, the specific combination of person, place, and audience create some flaws within the argument.

Through the utilization of irony, Stephen Colbert was able to call into question the arguments that support closing off immigration and allowing less migrant workers into the US. Colbert starts his address with the same statements. He emphasizes that he is an American, and that Americans should have American things, not foreigners or things made by foreigners (in this case, foods picked by immigrants). In this persona, Colbert believes that the food of the US should be picked by American labor workers rather than migrant workers. However, he also believes that the menial work required to be a labor worker is unpleasant, and that he wishes to never do it. This comparison of statements outlines the same contradiction present in many conservative viewpoints: Although migrant workers are taking up jobs that American citizens could be taking, the jobs are unpleasant, and the working conditions are so poor that Americans would not take them anyway. This use of irony calls to mind two lines of thought. The first draws questions about the conservative side of the argument, such as “What jobs are immigrants really taking?” and “What jobs are Americans actually willing to take?” On the other hand, it brings up the problems of the migrant workers who are causing the supposed ‘problem’ such as, “Are migrant workers being compensated enough for the intense, tiring labor they perform?” and “Are there ways to improve the working conditions of such jobs enough for them to appeal to unemployed American workers?” These are questions that are otherwise not focused on in such discussions, but that effective applications of ironic discourse can bring out.

For all of the truths that a well-orchestrated use of irony can reveal, irony in itself cannot institute any sort of change. If Colbert were to stay in character throughout his whole address, he would be able to further point out the flaws in thinking of anti-immigration supporters and would be able to make a call to reconsider the values that are associated with immigration, but he would be unable to make any actual suggestion to fix those problems and flawed reasoning. Colbert knew this, and as such, he broke out of his ironic line of reasoning when it came time to make suggestions. His suggestions for future actions (offering more visas to immigrants, improving working conditions on farmlands, making manual labor and farm work more appetizing for Americans) were delivered without irony, and without the same tone of voice. Although he still keeps a little bit of humor peppered throughout, his words are more genuine. 

However, although Colbert’s choice of presenting his arguments is fraught with drawbacks. The main drawback of this argument is in the character that Colbert plays in order to make this ironic argument. This character, still named Stephen Colbert, is a heavily conservative and patriotic individual, yet he is also highly unintelligent. This is the same character that he plays when reporting the news on his show The Colbert Report, which is easy to tell since he uses the same cadence, tone of voice, and joke delivery in this opening address as he uses on his show. However, the joke delivery in particular is what makes this choice ill-suited for the setting of a congressional hearing. The Colbert Report is a show on a comedy network, Comedy Central, so humor can take the front seat and act as the vehicle that delivers the political messages and the news that Stephen Colbert regularly presents on his show. On the other hand, a congressional hearing is a place for more serious discourse, and although humor can bring a change of pace that can call attention to one’s argument, discussions that let humor take precedence over the message trying to be communicated asks for some level of backlash. In fact, Colbert did receive backlash for the way he presented his points, both during the hearing, from his congressional audience, and after the fact during press coverage. This meant that, although Colbert had solid ideas to put forth, and his arguments had merit within the discussion, the part of his address that was highlighted was the delivery of the message rather than the message itself.

Overall, for all of the ideas that Colbert’s address brought to the table of immigration and foreign worker legislation, the argument could have been made in a much better fashion. The way that he presented his ideas would have been much more suited to television or his own show. However, he still had experiences that were fairly uncommon at the time, so he still had the ethos to make the same argument in a way that was just as compelling, if not more so. His combination of celebrity with firsthand experience would have given his argument and his viewpoint more validity were he to present his ideas more seriously. However, since he decided to present his address with comedy, said comedy overshadowed his intended, more serious message.

[perfectcrithits-blog]

The Use of People as Metonym and Synecdoche

The following is an essay on the use of photos from the White House’s Flickr account (Seen Here https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/) use metonymy and synecdoche to make figures such as US President Barack Obama represent populations larger than themselves.

The images used in this essay are as follows:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/23609237064/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/20283636103/

In politics, skillful application of rhetoric is important to keep public approval and support, whether a candidate is on the campaign trail or not. While we are in the midst of the race that will remove Barack Obama from office, the White House’s Flickr page and its images show how this rhetoric, specifically in the form of images, can increase approval of the president while he is still in office. By observing how people, especially Obama, are depicted and positioned within these photographs, and displayed as symbols larger than themselves, shows the power the power that just a couple of pieces of this rhetoric, metonym and synecdoche, can convey very strong imagery.

One such image on the White House’s Flickr page depicts Obama visiting the Community Children’s Center in Lawrence, Kansas, a Head Start education institution. In this image, President Obama sits in between two young girls, all of them smiling happily. The President leans in towards the young girl in the right of the image, obviously in mid-discussion. In order to understand the messages conveyed within these images, it is important to understand the metonym naturally conveyed by the President of the United States. As the figurehead of the United States, the individual who represents the country in discussions with other nations, as well as in communications between the national government and the citizens of the US, the President acts as a physical, personified representation of the country. This relationship creates a metonymy, with the abstract concept of the United States Government made physical and concrete through the President. The young girl that Obama interacts with, on the other hand, represents young children in schools. Considering that the young girl is a member of a Head Start program, which is generally populated by children from low-income social classes and troubled homes, she could be more specifically seen as representing children at risk of poor education within the traditional school system. This representation is a synecdoche, as the young girl represents a population that she is only a single nonspecific part of. In the image, Obama is leaned in close to the young girl, listening and interested in what she has to say. This communicates that the nation and its government (Obama) are receptive of the plights of underprivileged children in need of a good education (the young girl). Obama is placed directly in the middle of the image, with class occurring around him, depicting the government in the middle of the effort to educate these children. The image would be more compelling if the children with Obama were interacting with each other more, and working on some task to show that the President was helping with the tasks at hand. Despite that oversight, the simple image is quite powerful, and the smiles on everyone’s faces communicate positivity and success in the effort. The image is effective for the way that it puts Obama in the middle of everything, and actively performing in the interaction, conveying an active effort from the government to assist the education system.

Another such image is an image of Obama and a military marine standing next to each other solemnly as they prepare to lay a wreath in National Heroes Park. The site is a historical site in Kingston, Jamaica, and acts a burial site for many of the nation’s historical figures and people of importance. In the image, both Obama and the soldier face away from the camera and stand with neutral postures, giving them a solemn silhouette. Just as in the previous image, Obama acts as a representation of the US. His political position and his regular appearance in the public eye mean that his build and his head are very familiar. This means that, despite the fact that he is not facing the camera, he can be recognized for exactly who he is. However, the soldier is an individual of a standard build with a plain haircut and a standardized uniform, making it difficult to tell exactly who he is, especially since his face cannot be seen. This vagueness allows for a translation from a single US Marine to the whole of the US Marines, creating a synecdoche. With the US Government (Obama) standing alongside the US military (the marine) the image uses two people to represent nearly the entirety of the US. Their presence in the middle of the image and their full bodies nearly taking up the entire vertical space of the photo makes them both look almost larger than life, adding to their symbolic nature within the photo. Having these two representations together in mourning for the important figures of Jamaica communicates that America’s heart is with the people of Jamaica. To the people of the US, the image acts as a reminder for Americans to be attentive to the affairs of other countries. The third person slightly to the left, another soldier, throws the image off-balance and adds an odd figure that was not necessary for the representation depicted by the image, as he does not seem to represent anything himself. Nonetheless, the photo provides a strong, compelling image that acts as both a show of sympathy and a call to action to be more aware for the affairs of other nations. The synecdoche and metonymy work together with the monolithic appearance of the two main figures of the photo, conveying an entire country with only two people, and doing so quite effectively.

Both of these images show how individual people, when portrayed just right within an image, can portray concepts and populations larger than themselves. When represented in this way, such photos use relatively few subjects to convey large-scale, deep messages with simple imagery. Because metonymy and synecdoche make for such powerful images and create strong, lasting representations, photographs like these are used throughout campaign videos, amongst press releases, in public relations from the President to the country, and in many other circumstances both on the campaign trail and once already in office

[perfectcrithits-blog]

The Effective Application of Alignment and Opposition by Al-Muslimi

The following is a critical analysis of the Narrative practices of Alignment and Opposition applied by Farea Al-Muslimi when discussing drone strikes in Yemen (Seen Here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4444260/farea-al-muslimi-testimony-drone-wars-senate-committee-hearing), presented in a public forum for its own dose of criticism. Feel free to comment and add critique of your own to my analysis, whether it be gentle or harsh.

In his appeal on the topic of targeted killings in Yemen, Al-Muslimi seeks to persuade the US Senate to put a stop to the drone attacks in Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen. In order to make his argument stronger, Al-Muslimi applies principles and characteristics of a narrative, particularly alignment and opposition. By defining a clear cut between good and bad, with the ‘good’ side being his particular desired end goal (the end of the US drone attacks), he seeks to persuade the Senate to join his cause and disable the drones over the Middle East. The rhetor carefully picks the way he portrays himself, the other entities in the narrative, and the audience in order to guide the audience to align with his side.

           First, it is necessary to define what the opposing forces of this narrative are, as described by Al-Muslimi. Considering that this is an autobiographical narrative, it can be assumed that one conflicting side of this narrative is the rhetor himself. Judging by the fact that this is a text made in order to gather sympathy and convince the Senate that his opinion is valuable and worth aligning oneself with, it is also evident that Al-Muslimi seeks to position his side of this story as the more likable force of good that a reader would desire to align with. At the end of this appeal, he states that “when Americans truly know about how much pain and suffering US airstrikes have caused… they will reject this devastating targeted killing program.” As he seeks an end to the presence of drones and targeted strikes in Yemen, it is clear that Al-Muslimi is positioning whatever force is using these airstrikes as the force that is opposing his own position. However, although the US military and air force are behind those targeted airstrikes, the speaker is not positioning either of these groups as the opposing forces. Throughout the narrative, the speaker often states how much he loves the US, and never calls it a negative force. In the second paragraph, Al-Muslimi mentions that a US Air Force member he met while in the country for high school was “his best friend in America” and “ended up being like a father to [him].” When describing the bombing of his own village in the ninth paragraph, and how he thought that his American friend may have been the perpetrator of the attack, he simply states, “I was torn between this great country that I love [the US] and the drone above my head…” rather than stating that he was angry with America, like much of the rest of Yemen was. Al-Muslimi chooses his words carefully to make sure that America is not positioned as the aggressor, but instead fills that aggressor role with the drone strikes themselves or the ideals that keep them going

           This decision is very deliberate and important. Al-Muslimi strongly allies himself with the US, which is especially clear when he says, “I believe in America,” in the last paragraph, in which he discusses putting an end to the targeted attacks. Through this alignment, he positions all of America on the ‘good’ side of his narrative, forming an opposition between the targeted attack program and the whole of America, not just himself. Considering that he is making his appeal to the US Senate, the whole of the audience he is trying to persuade is American, making his argument rather effective in this regard. In this way, he poses a sort of call to action to the whole of the US Senate, describing that, as a force of good, and as a force that is desirable to align oneself with, they should provide an opposition to the much less pleasant and desirable side of drone strikes that, as Al-Muslimi rather unpleasantly states in the seventh paragraph, killed more than forty civilians and left their bodies “so decimated that it was impossible to differentiate between those of children, women and their animals.”

           However, Al-Muslimi’s particular approach is not without its flaws. The speaker aligns most of the characters and forces in the story with himself, putting them all on one side of the opposition. This leaves the other side of the opposition, the ‘evil side’, looking rather barren and without many participants. The only character that might be categorized as part of the other side is Hameed Al-Radmi, who is described as the target of a drone attack in paragraph three, but who is not discussed very heavily, nor is he ever confirmed to be a part of the terrorist cell that the drones seek to thwart. The force on the other side of the argument from Al-Muslimi is only mentioned at the end of his appeal, when he discusses that he seeks to eliminate the targeted attack program. Although most narratives clearly have one side that the reader is intended to align with (the side of the protagonist), the opposite side is usually still portrayed enough that they can be fully comprehended, and the reader could possibly align with that side as well. Without giving any more than a cursory description of the purpose or merit of the drones present in Yemen, it leaves that side of the conflict nearly empty, opening Al-Muslimi to harsh counter-argument. However, considering that he is speaking directly to the US Senate, his audience probably knows most of what there is to say about the drone program, and giving support to the missile strikes in Yemen would dampen the emotional impact of his narrative.

           Through his alignment of himself with the US and against drone strikes, Al-Muslimi makes a compelling argument against the continued use of drones in Yemen. However, what makes this rhetorical tactic especially powerful is his use of open-endedness at the end of his appeal. In a normal narrative, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, meaning that the reader can align with whichever side they like, follow it to the story’s end, and then detach as the narrative finds closure. However, Al-Muslimi’s story lacks an end, and has no closure. This leaves the reader, aligned with the speaker, left in a story that is still happening to this day, and in the case of the Senate members who were spoken to, leaves them in a position where they can still guide the narrative to a beneficial ending. This means that, until the drone program is put to an end, the audience will be left in an uncomfortable position without closure, which can be rather compelling in itself.