Assignment #3 (Rhetorical Analysis)

My rhetorical analysis I did this weekend was kind of an interesting and unusual public service ad. It was designed to be funny at times, but eventually, it turns into a sarcastic, yet highly effective ad on registering to vote and then voting.
The ad was sent to me by a friend as a link from collegehumor.com, I believe. The audience is definitely towards young adults at voting age. I imagine this is the audience because a lot of times, younger audiences have a difficult time with voting. They ask what the point is, and this add directly brings that up. It appeals to the younger college-age crowd by using several celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Halle Berry, Ellen DeGeneres, several other comedians, Toby Maguire, a few rappers and other celebrities that would be considered "cool" to this age-group. In reality, it's a good move by whoever made the add to use people like this. All the celebrities make a sarcastic, yet highly effective add as to why college students should vote.
The add is fairly long. The first one minute and twenty seconds of the add is a series of celebrities saying things like "don't vote," "whatever you do, don't vote," "what's the point?" and other things like that which would appear to discourage the audience from voting. This turns out to be entirely sarcastic in the end and the whole attitude of the argument changes into a "this is why you should vote" argument.
An interesting thing about this add is that there is not a very strong, or at least reliable call for authority. There seems to be an entire lack of ethos altogether. The biggest claim that the add can make towards having ethos is something to the effect of, "Look! Celebrities! Celebrities are cool, so listen to the celebrities tell you to vote." However, this kind of ethos, weak as it might be, is probably perfect for the audience. College students do not generally care about what an intellect has to say to them. But they do have a respect and admiration towards hollywood celebrities. So ironically enough, the add's apparant lack of legitimate ethos acts as an ethos in and of itself to its intended audience.
Despite a seeming lack of ethos, this add is not lacking in pathos at all. After the first minute of the add, the emotional appeals seem to be coming at the audience in every second until it turns into a large and highly effective guilt trip. As mentioned earlier, the first part of the add it celebrities sarcastically saying, "don't vote." However, at about 1:20 into the add, Halle Berry changes things up by saying, "Don't vote ... unless you care about health care." The add then completely changes. A montage of celebrities go on to say, "if you care about gun control, women's rights, civil right, rising gas prices, social security, the war ... then you should vote." All of those issues play at a broad audience, but will hit pretty much everyone with at least one thing that would bring out an emotional response. Like I mentioned, the way this is put forward is almost a bit of a guilt trip. It is as if the add is saying, if you don't vote, you must not care about all these super important issues. And that is playing at shame or guilt as an emotion in and of itself, not to mention all the emotions that the various issues play at.
The logos of the add is subtle. It goes right along with the pathos. The logos can be summarized by saying that voting is the way for an individual to show that they care about these things. The audience is left to decide for themselves as to why caring and voting are connected, but the add assumes that the audience will be able to put that together for themselves. And in reality, college students should be able to pick up on that. The subtlety of the logos seems to add to the sarcastic nature of the add, which is one of the major strengths of the add to begin with. It is a very coy add.
In my opinion, this add was highly effective. In fact, it informed and convinced me that I should vote. It wasn't that I was against voting, but that I hadn't really thought about it before. The makers of the add seem to know that there are many people in their intended audience that are like that, and thus, take a "snap out of it" approach to the apathetic audience. And I'll be honest, it did snap me out of it. I believe that the add is effective because it concentrates on what will be effective in a political type argument to its audience. It focusses on emotions as opposed to authoritive figures in suits. The war, gasoline prices and other issues at play in politics can bring various strong emotions out of people, including the college age students. This add does a good job of bringing all those emotions closer to the surface and playing on them in a way that makes the audience say, "wait a minute! I do care about that. I should vote." All in all, I was very impressed with the effectiveness of the add.