Purpose

The Purpose of this blog is to critique and analyze two different texts that are related to the topic at hand, The Nuclear Family. The authors will also be able to give the audience an understanding of the common similarities and differences between a family in the 1960's and a family now.

Friday, February 27, 2015

A Date With Your Family (video): Appeals to Ethos

In the video "A Date With Your Family," the creator of the video uses limited appeals to ethos, or credibility, to reinforce the argument that happiness comes through being a member of a traditionally structured nuclear family.  While there aren't an abundance of distinct appeals to ethos, the way the video is fundamentally structured can actually be seen as one such appeal.
Possibly the omniscient narrator of this video?

The video is structured so that the audience watches characters move about, and listen to the narration of a regal sounding man.  The use of an omniscient, removed narrator is an appeal to ethos because it gives the narrator an almost God-like presence. With only a strong voice and no visual presence, the narrator takes on a mystical quality, and being the only source of words, he is the final judge on what the audience directly interprets from the video.  Without a narrator, the audience could make any number of interpretations of the images and interactions in the video.  However, with a narrator, his words become the first source of interpretation and meaning.  With this in mind, anything the narrator says has a special quality of importance and credibility.  Combine that quality with the narrator's use of the command form (e.g. "it is never good to allow telephone conversations to interfere with studies"), and the audience is directly swayed to his argument by a strong appeal to ethos.

A. Jacob Shapiro





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4 comments:

  1. Cameron NasseriMarch 1, 2015 at 7:57 AM

    Unfortunately, your video only appeared as a picture for me. I do agree that the use of ethos in your explanation of the video would allow a connection to be made to the reader through ethos but i think something like this appeals to pathos more. I would imagine a video with a soothing voice telling me that a traditional nuclear voice would play on emotions because it would make me visualize and believe in that kind of family. The ethos would be more knowledgable than passionate.
    -Kara Gans

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  2. UnknownMarch 1, 2015 at 6:08 PM

    I really liked your interpretation of ethos from this video, and I never really though too much about the narrator playing a major role in what the audience thought about this video. Also, another examples of ethos to explain the American family values in the 1950s would be the actors in this documentary. They conveyed a sense of what was expected in the 1950s by the way the acted and even who or how many people were in the family.

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  3. UnknownMarch 1, 2015 at 7:12 PM

    If possible include more background on the creator of the video to establish his credibility

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  4. Cameron NasseriMarch 2, 2015 at 7:36 PM

    What does he mean by "it is never good to allow telephone conversations to interfere with studies?"

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