Category Archives: 2021 Class Session

Class 1.2

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Practicing Mise-en-Scene Analysis

Start by reading the handout and watching the video I’ve posted on this page. I’d hoped to show the video during our last class, but there just wasn’t time.

For HW, write a response to BOTH of the following prompts.

Working with Symbols & Metonyms
One of the most valuable insights in Finley’s video (linked above) is his account of how movies can dramatize abstract events by reference to concrete objects, as for example when the heroine in The Devil Wears Prada quits her glamorous boss by throwing her cellphone into a fountain.

As a further instance, what do you make of the recurring references to the Statue of Liberty in this 9:15 clip from “The Chinese Exclusion Act,” an episode from PBS’s documentary series, American Experience? In a brief response (3-5 sentences max) focusing on a particular moment in the clip (include the time signature), talk about how the documentary manipulates the statue to say something about America’s commitment to the ideals the statue symbolizes.

Imagining the American South
We watched a short clip from Gone with the Wind in our last class, taking note of how that movie conjures up an idealized image of life under slavery. (The full movie is available for viewing on the Humanities Blackboard site, if you’re curious, but it is NOT a course requirement.)

As a counter to that piece of Lost-Cause propaganda, read this excerpt from Richard Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices, a 1941 book-length essay illustrated using photographs of rural and urban poverty taken by the FSA, a Depression-era government agency. In a brief response (3-5 sentences max) focusing on a particular visual—one conjured by the text or in a photo—how does Wright use images to fight back against the myth of Dixieland promulgated in movies like Gone with the Wind?

In Class

Mao Sculptures

Discussion:

  • What rhetorical message(s) were these sculptures erected to express?
  • What message does photographer Cheng Wenjun express by documenting them so exhaustively?
Columbus Sculpture Defaced

Discussion:

  • This sculpture was erected in 1979 by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization with strong Italian-American roots, in Boston’s North End, a historically Italian neighborhood. What rhetorical message does it express?
  • What message(s) do you sense in the action of vandals?
Tiawan's Solution
This 2017 NYTimes article details how Taiwan has dealt with a plethora of statues of former nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Read the article, then join in discussion.

Class 1.1

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The Power of Images

We’re used to thinking of rhetoric in terms of verbal expression, scrutinizing political speeches and news coverage for evidence of bias. But our thinking is also shaped by images. Caricatures influence us in an obvious way, holding something up for us to ridicule. Realistic drawings and photographs are far more subtle, purporting to depict the world as it is, even as they offer a selective sample.

This semester in Rhetoric we will focus on the power of images, movies, monuments and other visual artifacts. I will give some rudimentary instruction in the art of photography. And at the end of the term you will produce a short video essay.

In preparation for our first class, I have a brief HW prompt for you:

  • Watch this 4:30 clip from Newsy.com on a 2019 museum exhibit on the role played by Chinese workers in building the Transcontinental Railroad back in the 1860s. I’m particularly interested in the concept of erasure, as discussed by both the exhibit curator and a Stanford professor. Is it worse to be rendered invisible (as for example Chinese workers left out of the iconic photograph celebrating the joining of the Western with the Eastern railroad network in 1869)? Or is it worse to be caricatured, as witness the political poster shown at 2:41 in the video? Or, indeed, am I posing a false dichotomy in asking those questions?

Keep your response short: 3-5 sentences at most. At the same time, try to ground your response in specific details from primary sources presented in the video or in short but salient quotations from experts interviewed in the video.

In Class

Monuments and Myth
Mise-en-scene

The French phrase “mise-en-scene” refers to everything that’s captured by the camera on a movie set: lighting, acting, props, scenery, etc.

Here’s a Handout from the UNC writing center characterizing Mise-en-scene analysis:

Mise-en-scene analysis is analysis of the arrangement of compositional elements in film—essentially, the analysis of audiovisual elements that most distinctly separate film analysis from literary analysis. Remember that the important part of a mise-en-scene analysis is not just identifying the elements of a scene, but explaining the significance behind them.

  • What effects are created in a scene, and what is their purpose?
  • How does the film attempt to achieve its goal by the way it looks, and does it succeed?

Audiovisual elements that can be analyzed include (but are not limited to): props and costumes, setting, lighting, camera angles, frames, special effects, choreography, music, color values, depth, placement of characters, etc. Mise-en-scene is typically the most foreign part of writing film analysis because the other components discussed are common to literary analysis, while mise-en-scene deals with elements unique to film…. Rewatching the film and creating screen captures (still images) of certain scenes can help with detailed analysis of colors, positioning of actors, placement of objects, etc. Listening to the soundtrack can also be helpful, especially when placed in the context of particular scenes.

Some example questions:

  • How is the lighting used to construct mood? Does the mood shift at any point during the film, and how is that shift in mood created?
  • What does the setting say about certain characters? How are props used to reveal aspects of their personality?
  • What songs were used, and why were they chosen? Are there any messages in the lyrics that pertain to the theme?”

(Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/film-analysis/ )

Here’s a video introduction, with a somewhat different emphasis, by Mr. Finley of RTHS:

Idealizing the South
Humanities Blackboard Site