So while browsing YouTube for some mood music to help pump me up to get the rest of my homework done, this video showed up in my recommended list. I had a feeling it would turn out to be relevant to our reading, and decided to watch.
Besides the interesting conversation we could have about the apparently very broad use of rhetoric big corporations use to reach an audience without the consumer even being aware of potential hypocrisies connected to their favorite brands, the reason it reminded me of our current Aristotle reading is I found it reminiscent to what Aristotle said about how to prove your opponent as unkind: "[w]e can also see how to eliminate the idea of kindness and make our opponents appear unkind: we may maintain that they are being or have been helpful simply to promote their own interest" (112). Here, the speaker is taking companies, brands, or campaigns that might be seen as respectable, and pointing out that they are also connected to companies/brands/campaigns that are less respectable or just polar opposite to the first, the drawn conclusion being that these companies don't care about their consumers, no matter how noble or caring their message or goal might seem, their work is just one of many ways to get money out of us. Thus, the speaker is able to use an Aristotelian form of rhetoric to turn these companies from seemingly kind to seemingly unkind.
No comments:
Post a Comment