Hello readers, thank you for visiting our blog! We are Joshua Davis, Sana Shah, and Jack Vigneron, three undergraduate students at the University of Maryland at College Park studying rhetoric through the university’s English department. After two weeks of intense research and analysis, we present to you Rhetorical Film: Civil Rights Edition. Since the introduction of the video camera in the late 1800s, film has been one of the key methods of expressing the culture and mindset of a society. In this particular edition, we are exploring how film has impacted the Civil Rights Movement. Even though slavery was abolished in the United States with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, there have still been lingering issues regarding racial equality. When you turn on the news, we continue to see police brutality, unfair trials, and riots, which lead to slogans like #blacklivesmatter that highlight the hostility that is still prevalent in our society today. The “Civil Rights movement” may have been generated in the 1960s but the fight has never stopped. This blog serves to compare how film portrayed these stories back in the 1960s and the progression of movement in this day and age.
The films we have chosen are To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Dear White People (2014). Through Harper Lee’s (may she rest in peace) story, we see the unfair treatment of the black community and how racial discrimination overrides justice. In Justin Simien’s Dear White People, we get reminded of the continuous oppression, even at higher-level institutions. Putting these works side-by-side, we can see the progression of the civil rights movement as the black community climbs the social ladder.
We begin the blog through kairos and stasis theory to reiterate the need for talking about these issues. As mentioned above, the issue of civil rights has never completely died down. As a result, this is just as much of a prime time as any to address these issues. People see To Kill a Mockingbird and want to keep situations like that in the past. However, they neglect to see that this unfair treatment is still happening under different circumstances that ends in the same result. The story of Dear White People may be an exaggeration of the current issues but one cannot dispute the hard truth within the story that many people still struggle with. The topic of race has gone through a roller coaster where people went from being blatantly racist to shying away from the topic. Now the topic is coming to the front again. Only this time, the talk of race serves to shine light on the ignorance and work to resolve these issues.
To ensure that we achieve good ethos, we looked at two films inspired by people who lived in similar events. Now that you (the reader) are up to speed with what is going on in our nation and why we chose these texts, this is the time to mention the creators behind the stories to generate a sense of an “inside look” from those who are experiencing these things firsthand, from a white woman looking from the outside to a black male looking from the inside.
Whether the reader has chosen to watch either movie or both at this point or not, the pathos serves to show how the audience typically feels after watching these movies. The way that makes people relate to these issues, can be too real to handle. Because such a strong pathos is delivered from those who posses great intrinsic and extrinsic ethos, this makes for two very successful films.
To conclude this edition, we provide our readers with logos, as we believe that people are more readily receptive of logic once they’ve released all of their emotion. This also serves as a lasting impression on our readers, as this may be the first bit of information they choose to share when telling other people what they have learned. We believe that appealing to logos is one of the most important factors in this case; therefore, we have saved the most dominant for last.
As you learn more about the civil epidemic that continues to taint the relationships that we have with one another, it is important to acknowledge the voices who are speaking out during this time and figuring out what can be done to end racial inequality. You see how it affects people and the reasons why it happens and the forces of retaliation that may stem from a continuously oppressive society. However, the first step is to begin talking and we hope that, after reading this blog, you will start the conversation, which will lead to understanding and, eventually, change.
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