Homework WK4

The art of rhetoric has been a powerful weapon of persuasion from the ancient times up until now.  Rhetoric, as defined by Ott, Brian L. and Mack, Robert L, is “the use of symbols by humans to influence and move other humans”. Due to the fact that rhetoric uses symbols as means of persuasion it is intrinsically biased. It is important for us to be cognizant of the fact that all media is rhetorical and is not made for entertainment exclusively. All media messages convey certain meaning, which is a priori not neutral or objective, by consuming any type of media (whether it be a documentary about World War II or the latest trap song by Young Thug) we are obtaining certain opinions, beliefs, attitudes and values while at the same time disregarding others.

Rhetoric has four structures: cluster, narrative, form and genre. As defined by Burke it is “an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence.” For example, if a family member of a character in a movie is brutally killed, you would expect that character to try and take revenge. This is an example of progressive form, although forms can be repetitive, conventional as well as minor. Another way in which we can investigate the structure of rhetoric is genre. Genre is defined as “a class or constellation of messages that share discernible stylistic or formal (syntactic), substantive (semantic), and situational (pragmatic) characteristics”. This basically means that movies, books, or songs belonging to the same genre often share similar plot, aesthetic elements, characters etc. Genre is an extremely appealing structure since it makes it easier for the audience to choose the exact content which will fulfil their current emotional needs.

Among all the things existing in our culture, even culture itself is rhetorical.  But what is culture precisely? When defining culture most people have a feeling that it is related to class and prestige, however sociologist Michael Richardson argues that: “Culture is simply what human beings produce and the means by which we preserve what we have produced.” Culture is not only about operas, classic music, “high literature” but also about street fashion, fandoms, manga, cartoons. It is collective, historical, rhetorical, but most of all, it is ideological.

“Ideology is a system of ideas that unconsciously shapes and constrains both our beliefs and our behaviors”. By joining any collective, we are joining a culture, which means that we are being subject to culture’s ideology. As Althusser claims “individuals are actually a collection of different ideological systems fused into one identity”. This idea suggests that humans are intrinsically interpellated and that ideology both creates and controls us. Interpellation  limits our beliefs, actions, our perception. Interpellation is not about our conscious consent to acquire a certain ideology, it actually has to do with us agreeing to be perceived the way culture/society perceives us and behaving in such manner. In this system only subjects exist, because identity, that stems from ideological beliefs which themselves are biased, is fake and without any intrinsic meaning. When put like that, although depressing, we can conclude that individuals actually do not exist outside culture, so I guess it is not wrong to conclude that “we (only) live in a society” as the popular meme suggests.

American Dream is considered to be one of the most prevalent hegemonic ideologies. The term “hegemonic” means that it is a type of ideology which individuals support even though it does not support them. Apart from hegemony, another important concept that helps us understand ideologies is doxa. Bourdieu defined doxa as knowledge “which is beyond question and which each agent tacitly accords by the mere fact of acting in accord with social convention.” It is not only part of common sense, it is a part of social existence that is never questioned, a part of reality we never even think about changing. As previously stated, American dream is an ideology which promotes the basic idea is that anyone can be successful if they work hard. This kind of thinking implies that people who are not successful or rich, since success and wealth are basically synonyms in capitalist society, are like that because they simply do not work hard enough. This completely disregards various factors that can make someone less likely to succeed, the most obvious being institutionalized discrimination towards women, LGBTQ+ community, people of different ethnical background, people that are not white, older people, immigrants, etc. The way in which this ideology also functions is by presenting tokens - individuals who managed to succeed regardless of the unlikeliness of doing so; those are people who were not born rich or did not have any prospects of success. The message sent by these tokens is “If I can succeed anyone can”, which yet again excludes a majority of equally talented and hard-working people who simply did not succeed; they weren't lucky enough. On the surface, the basic message is that if you get rich, you will be happy and fulfil your dream, however the underlying goal of this ideology is not to make one rich but to make them a slave to capitalism, since spending copious amounts of money is socially desirable.

  One of the main principles based on which American ideology functions is exclusion, rather than inclusion. Exclusion is the process of annihilating certain groups and it usually occurs in five different ways: absence, assimilation, whitewashing, stereotyping and othering. Othering relies on the idea that being “white” is “normal” while all other races are “different”. “White” is even regarded as a non-race. One of the more popular scandals regarding African American community is a photo of an African American boy wearing a hoodie that said “i’m the coolest monkey in the jungle” released on  H&M’s online store. Although H&M apologized for their negligent behavior and lack of awareness it was highly criticized and a rapper called Ski Mask The Slump God even released a song bearing the same name, in an attempt to mock their mistake. Another way in which non-white people are “othered” in present day media is by “exoticizing” them. Think about the way different tribes across the world are depicted in documentaries. The problem here is that for someone from Western countries the tribal way of life may seem strange or fascinating, however there is nothing intrinsically exotic about that kind of life for people from the tribes. This idea that all non-white people are “exotic” originates in the very beginnings of colonization and sadly it is still very present.

 In conclusion, I hate it here.