'Rhetorical Analysis Of Don Delillo's Videotape'

Viewers across the nation are affected by the social media causing stress on the subject by bombarding the public with media stories, rumors and “a sense of mass panic”. Victims have to relive that horrible moment because the media wants to

Cesar Chavez, a civil rights leader fighting for improving pay and working conditions of farmers, employs the use of nonviolence resistance in his role as a leader of the United Farm Workers. As a child, Chavez and his family worked as farmers on a field as migrant workers who were most likely treated in an unjust manner and thus, he dedicated his life to improving the conditions for all farmers. To honor Martin Luther King Jr. on the 10th anniversary of his death, Chavez wrote to a religious magazine that helps people in need about the benefits of nonviolent resistance. Throughout his letter, Chavez applies rhetorical devices such as pathos, diction, and juxtaposition to persuade and inform people about how powerful and effective nonviolence techniques can be for civil rights.

Don DeLillo’s short story, “Videotape” presents a cynical, social commentary on the overexposure of heinous acts by means of new media outlets, such as the videotape, which contributes to the commercialization of tragedy for viewers and the resulting desensitization of the public that occurs. The story is focused on one of many homicides committed by the Texas Highway Killer, which has coincidentally been recorded by an unknown 12-year-old girl playing with a video camera in the back of her family’s car. The events are presented in a conversational tone in the second-person, layering in an additional narrative frame of a hypothetical and cynical “every-man” and his wife, responding to the incident. This parallels the viewpoints of society without making broad assumptions and allows the reader to interpret the framework that DeLillo constructs without having it stated outright. In addition, the presentation, reaction, and consumption of news of the homicide is entwined with the narrative as it occurs, and the author explores each of these – the use and consumption of media – to prompt readers to analyze the same themes surrounding themselves. DeLillo employs the juxtaposition of the infantile camera-girl with the harshness of the video’s content by mirroring the presentation with his diction, while also commentating on the authenticity and “realness” of the tape and examining its effect on the hypothetical consumer through repetition and second-person syntax.

Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea.”

How can we determine what’s real? “The mass media were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of surface reflection of the mirror” was once said by Dominic Strinati (1992). The short fiction, “Videotape,” was written by Don DeLillo in 1997 published in one of his novels Underworld (1997). The themes of postmodernism and how the role of mass media forms false representation, resulting in changes of the meaning behind events, is centered on the story “Videotape”. The impact of media attracts the society to postmodernism with the obsession of violence.

The news media likes the sensational, and so they splash headlines like "Preppers arrested because they were preparing for Martial Law". The headline was not even close to the truth, but once the toothpaste is out of the tube and all that.

Given everything that has been going on in this country, people turn to hate crimes and rioting thinking it is the best solution to solve every problem given to us by the government and the media. One of the big problems is the media, whether it be the news on TV or the internet, they contort every problem to conform to what they want there viewers to believe. As one of my college professors told me “sometimes the media has to create their own problems so they can cover the story” (Riggenbach), ok something like that. For example, there was a story on the news where someone caught a cop shooting what looked like a homeless man. Since more people watch the news on TV versus reading a story on a website they don't get the whole thing. What had

Secondly, news channels tend to sensationalize and report what is shocking. In internet terms, “clickbait.” As the saying goes, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” Hence even though there are one billion possible things to report each day, including countless positive stories and consciousness-raising events, the selected stories are rarely the most important, but some of the most negative, fear-based stories you can

And the sad truth is that we get desensitized to watching violence on news and television. It’s very disturbing to me that television news rating depend on the horrific stories of the day to get people to watch the news. It boggles my mind how anyone could sit and the watch the news for more than fifteen minutes a

Popular culture 's obsession with morbid subjects is an amazing phenomenon. Each time a brutal crime comes to light or a country is struck by a natural disaster, the media flocks to document every aspect of the incident, trying to understand how or why this could happen. And, without fail, consumers of this media will feel the urge to educate themselves on all of the details. What fuels this fascination for war, gore, and more? Many believe that the interest comes from an existential standpoint—morbid curiosity is often based on empathy, as well as existentialism. People who, for example, view graphic images of a crime scene will often think whether this could happen to them, which sparks an inner acceptance of life 's fragility. Those who indulge in the macabre are generally not deliberately searching for things that will disturb them—rather, they are subconsciously checking how society is responding to the problem. By seeing volunteers help a country recovering from a tsunami, or following the progress of investigators as they work to track down a criminal, people are comforting themselves by seeing that society can still function as a helping community. In addition to viewing the event and its aftermath, the most interesting aspect of a gruesome incident is the factors that led to it. The most prominent examples of this are serial killers. With incredibly complicated psyches, childhood trauma, and a gradual development of violence, these murderers offer a

Furthermore, dehumanization not only applies to the body but what about the mind. Senseless acts of violence have increased with the times. Minds and bodies are being maimed as we watch, a scale model of Vietnam (Didion, #). Watching violent acts on TV every day can affect the way we process the tragedy. Society no longer mourns a death for long periods of time, we would rather mourn a death for a moment and continue our dinner. Didion’s book was set in 1967 right around the time the Vietnam war was taken place on live broadcast depicting men stepping on landmines and losing limbs, also the Detroit riots were happening. Approximately forty-three people died, thirty-three were black and ten were white, and let us not forget the ruthless acts

This film talks about American culture, which it defines as very individualistic. It goes on to speculate why it came to be individualistic and why being as such is not positive. They refer to the media and social media as alienating us from nature as well as isolating us emotionally. This as well diverting our attention from our surroundings and predisposing us to having ADHD as well as being negative to our physical health. I think the video is about how the American population is being conditioned through the media. Good examples are provided to support their case. There are many topics that are covered in this video from consumerism to war, and the video is no doubt enlightening. They video takes us on a journey to show how America is changing

They say that it is because bad news attracts more audiences than good news, which is only logical, as humans are fearful creatures who like to be informed of the perils of their environment. This idea of negativism is demonstrated by the news channel, ABC, when they mention a story about a teen who was shot and killed in a neighborhood. Notably, this story was placed in the middle of the news broadcast right after the weather forecast, which many may say is boring after a certain period of time. Thus, they report the murder of a teenager in order to maintain audience attention. Even more so, the fact that they show the footage of the teen’s final moments before his murder, and the fact that they mention that he was fourteen years old when he was murdered only proves this point more, as these details draw in strong emotional responses from viewers.

Our phones vibrate with news alerts. The talking heads fill the air over cable news captions that shout “breaking news” in red. If the latest mass shooting does not move you to cry or feel sympathy, it is probably because you may be losing emotional reaction to an event, which is slowing becoming more common every day. According to psychological experts, the lack of emotion response is due to desensitization. One shooting is a tragedy, but twenty is a statistic fact. Clark and Blankenburg studied four daily newspapers, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, and San Francisco Chronicle which he discovered that 17.6% of all news items within forty years contained violence; at a rate of 2.3 violent items per page. The past five years, news reports on violence including stories about mass shooting, bombings, police brutality, terrorism, and among other events have become the primary focus of news today. Each report is usually followed by explosive Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, arguments about politics in violence, and slowly the latest tragedy becoming old news. As we read these number and watch the reports on [TV], we become numb to the actual event. With the constant 24-hour news cycle the public is getting adjusted to an act of violence and its aftermath. The desensitization theory believes that the more violence viewers are exposed to in the media over time, the less sensitive they become to it. Violence will no longer seem to bother them or bother them less than it did before. Dr. Pam Ramsden, Professor at the University of Bradford, performed a study where 189 participants were exposed to violent news about terrorism and school shootings. The analysis showed that 22% of participants were significantly affected by the news. In conclusion, the professor found that

In other words TV news loves drama and will put anything on to draw watchers attention. When they hear or