A Date With Your Family: Pathos

In the video "A Date With the Family," the audience is instructed on the protocol and expectations of a family dinner.  Through this instructive video, a portrait of the typical American family is painted.  Its members are white, two parents are present (a man and a woman), and there are three kids (two boys and one girl). The women are shown doing housework and preparing dinner, and the men are shown working on school work and coming back from a job.

Not only is this family portrayed to be "normal," but the creator of the video also uses the pathos rhetorical technique to portray them as being happy and content.  Throughout the movie, the characters are smiling and carefree.  The older son and daughter are described as being "quite content with life," because they are looking forward to dinner with their stereotypical family.  After the family sits down for dinner, the narrator says, "the dinner date has started, and they're all happy about it."  By using positive language and showing the family looking jovial and lively, the creator of the video appeals to the audience's emotional desire for happiness.  Coupling the happiness with the portrayal of a typical nuclear family, the video's creator is establishing the notion that having this type of family structure will lead to happiness.  It is interesting to consider that, while the expectation of a happy family in 1950s and 60s brings to mind the family shown in this video, a happy family today could be of any color, origin, sexual orientation, or structure.  A happy family today could have two dads, two moms, one parent, parents of different races, adopted children, or a number of other variations of the "traditional" family structure.  Clearly a revolution in the structure of the nuclear family has occurred from the 1960s to now.

A. Jacob Shapiro

An example of what a 21st century family could look like