Wednesday, April 30, 2008

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.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

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.