#meth ad

[itsjustliah]

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Burke’s Pendtad - Analysis

Burke’s Pendtad focuses on five main things: scene, act, agent, agency, and purpose.  These things are not unlike who, what, when, why, and how in a sense, because they break down the ad or specific source even further.  When you consider all the factors in one scene, you get the entire message and this can be attributed to reading between the lines or using what is already present to think further and engage more into what is being presented (Foss 2004).  His pentad is used to analyze things further, and can be easily applied to anything, which is why I chose an ad to apply it to.  

In this ad, we can see that it has all the stages of the pentad, so I decided to analyze each one individually.  The scene level of the pentad relates to where they are and what’s happening within the space.  In this ad, we can see that there are two scenes playing out at once; one in the living room with the parents, and one with the addict, their son, outside of the house, begging and screaming to be let in.  They are two different parts of the ad when you watch each one individually, but they’re from two perspectives.  You have the desperate parents, crying and holding each other in the living room, neither one wanting to let their son in, but not wanting to keep him out, and then you have the son who is attempting to break down the door to get in because his parents have locked him out.  They both convey the same message, and are meant to shock you into reality.  

The act portion of the pentad is what the medium in whatever context you’re applying this to, does.  What do they do?  What is the specific action?  In this ad, the action is on both the boy and the parents.  The parents locked him out of the house, which led to his yelling.  Externally, this can refer to the increase in meth user related deaths in Montana, resulting in these shock ads.  They knew they had to do something about it, so they acted on making ads.

The agent is another pentad that refers to what led up to the act, which in this ad’s case is the boy doing meth.  The parents have locked him out of the house because of his meth use, making the pentad come full circle.  Externally, this can refer to the extreme use of meth in Montana, which is why this ad was released.  You can infer that the parents had tried to make him stop and threatened that if he didn’t, he’d get locked out, and since he didn’t stop, this was the end result.

The agency, another part of the pentad, is what tools were used in the action.  In this ad, you can look at the tools internally (within the ad) or externally (outside the ad).  Internally in the ad, the parents used separation against their kid, locking him out, and the boy used force and anger to try and get them to open the door.  Externally, the creator of the ad decided to use shock and pull at your heartstrings, showing that a broken family can be the result of meth use.

Lastly, the purpose of the ad is obvious internally and externally.  They use shock to make you think twice about doing meth because they show you the consequences, both by the family and of the user. 

References:

Foss, S. K. (2004). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.