The office

The TV show The Office is one of the funniest shows on primetime. It targets a wide audience ranging from mid twenties to middle aged people who work in an office or who have an insane boss. Its purpose is to make light of working in an office. It contains all three rhetorical appeals. It mostly uses pathos, but ethos is very present and logos is sprinkled occasionally throughout a season. For example, in the second episode of the fourth season Micheal, the insane boss, talks about ageism and the Act of 1967 which stated that a person who is 40 or older can't be discriminated against or fired because of their age. The show is very heavy on pathos and ethos. The show is a comedy and it is trying to make the people who work in offices laugh, so it forms a bond with them. There is a lot of ethos because of all of the sarcastic jokes. The jokes are phrased intelligently and flow nicely.
The Office says a lot about our society. We rebel against authority and authority figures. This is apparent in almost every episode, although in a few select episodes it's more evident. Jim and the rest of the works of Dunder Mifflin rebel against Micheal basically daily by not doing their work. In one episode during the second season Jim holds an office Olympics while Micheal is out at a meeting. The Office also proves that our society values sarcasm. Sarcasm is used on a daily basis in television and even with everyday people. Our society is very sarcastic and it comes across in the show.

Bones vs NCIS

Bones and NCIS are both television shows that deal with solving murders. These shows are very similar in several aspects. Both shows have a team of professionals who work for some government agency to solve murders. The team in NCIS solves murders for the Navy and the team in Bones solves murders for the FBI. Both teams are excellent at what they do and always get their man or woman. The teams, also, are like a close knit family. In both shows everyone helps each other through life's problems. They even have two characters that are similar in each show.
Zach Addy is an assistant to Dr. Brennan in Bones. He is a geeky lab tech who is learning from Dr. Brennan how to tell how someone died by looking at their bones. He is picked on and blamed for everything that goes wrong in the lab by Hodgins, another lab tech. Zach is very similar to McGee, who is the geeky member of the team from NCIS. McGee is a computer geek who is constantly picked on by Tony, the street smart member of the team. Both Zack and McGee are the geeky younger comic relief on their shows.
Both shows contain a comic aspect to them. They also have character plots that their rival shows don't.

Accepted

The movie Accepted is about a group of high school graduates who were rejected from college, so they created their own. The movie was made for high school and college students. The purpose of the movie is to point out the flaws of the college system. Accepted uses all three rhetorical appeals. Pathos is very prominent all throughout the movie. Ethos is used heavily as well. Logos is not used very often. There are a few statistics thrown in occasionally throughout the movie. The movie is a comedy and so it uses a lot of pathos. Ethos is used a lot because of all of the sarcastic jokes that make up the movie.
Accepted speaks volumes about our society. It has become socially unacceptable to not go to college. Someone without a college degree is considered a slacker or a deadbeat and is stereotyped as being the manager of a fast food restaurant. This is not fair because college isn't right for some people. Accepted also goes over the fear of rejection in several different forms. The main character is rejected by the girl that he likes plus 7 or 8 different colleges. He is also alienated from his parents who prefer his little sister, who is an eighth grade student already preparing for the SATs and college. Also, the movie talks about the stress of waiting for an acceptance letter and the classes. In the movie there are some extreme cases of stressed students. One student is trying to write down everything the teacher is saying because he believes it might be on the midterm or final. The stress of college is overwhelming and can do terrible things to the student, but it is socially sanctioned and must be done in order to land a decent career.

Synthesis

The two texts that I will synthesize are Plato's the Allegory of the Cave and the movie The Island. There are many similarities between these two texts. They are both about a person finding out that the world is completely different than what they were taught. In The Island the main character is a clone who escapes from the facility that he was created in. He ventures into the real world trying to figure out what is right and what is a lie. In The Allegory of the Cave the main character escapes from prison, which was in a cave. He discovers that everything he was taught was not the truth. He grew up in the cave and was taught through shadows on the cave wall. When he escapes he learns that everything is not shadows. In both stories the main characters return to their prison and try to inform the other prisoners. They can't go back to believing the lies they were told before their breakout.

My def of Joy

Joy, to me, is doing something that makes me happy. It's something that that makes me smile and laugh constantly. It would also make me feel calm and relaxed.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

In Plato's book, The Republic, Plato explains his theories about how everything is forms. He does this by writing a story about some prisoners who are chained together facing a cave wall. These prisoners grew up in the cave. Behind the prisoners there is a short wall and behind that is a large fire. The guards teach the prisoners by putting shadows of animals and objects on the wall in front of the prisoners. One prisoner escapes and sees that animals and objects are not shadows. Having seen this he can't go back to believing the guards.
Reality TV is changing our perspectives on reality. These shows are over dramatized and scripted. Most people, however, believe that they are not scripted. They are starting beginning to act like these people. My sister loves the reality show The Hills. She is constantly acting like the girls on that show. She believes she can’t live unless there is drama in her life. She can’t go back to a relatively drama free life. She has to continually pick fights with family and friends and put her boyfriend in the center of her life.

Gender Roles in society

A gender role can be defined as a specific set of socially accepted actions associated with a gender. There is a significant difference between the roles of men and women. Men are supposed to bring home the money, fix the broken items around the house, and be macho. Women are supposed to raise the children, do the household chores, make dinner, listen to their husbands, and look pretty. These roles are not only insulting and oppressive but completely unreasonable. According to these roles women have no identity. They are only known as a wife and a mother. They are not allowed to have money or think for themselves. Women have been trying to fight this oppression since the 60's. Women and men should be treated the same and have the same opportunities. The roles aren't fair to men either. Men are expected to be macho and mostly unfeeling. The ad is a good example of the roles men and women are expected to fill. Women are objects that men own. These roles are holding us back. Society shouldn't be setting roles for people because this only leads to intolerance. A woman can fix a sink just as well as a man can. We should be able to coexist without any prejudices. The world would be so much better without gender roles.