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Rhetorical Analysis: The Invisible War

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On January 22, 2012, director and writer Kirby Dick released his documentary The Invisible War, arguing that the prominent issue of sexual assault in the military is continually ignored by United States military officials. The director uses the rhetorical devices of conduplicatio and procatalepsis, cinematography techniques of close-up and computer-generated, and the propaganda techniques of testimonial and plain folk to depict how the issue of sexual assault is not acknowledged by military officials, who make victims feel unprotected and vulnerable. The director’s purpose is to evoke sympathy for current and former members of the United States military who became victims of sexual assault while serving in the military yet their perpetrators …show more content…

Dick uses conduplicatio to emphasize the issue of men in the military being sexually assaulted. US Army member Russell Strand emphasizes that there is a “heavily masculine” theme and “be all you can be” stigma in the military, which leads some members to go to extremes to prove they are not “weak”. When a male in the military is assaulted, he may feel as if he has to put up a wall of masculinity to prevent being labeled as a “buddy-fucker”. Dick uses this strategy to emphasize how male victims are made out to feel ashamed because of the men they are supposed to fight with publically questioning the victim’s masculinity. In order to avoid being labeled as “scrawny” or “weak”, men will not report their assaults. The military is promoting a stigma of “masculinity”, which makes men feel afraid to seek justice for their assaults. The military is encouraging members to make their fellow servicemen, who are victims, feel …show more content…

The directors zoom in and out on different boxes of the chart, and use the pedestal technique to follow the voiceover’s description of the chart. This visualization allows for the audience to explicitly see how a process, which should be objective and take the time necessary to fully investigate a case, is short and fails to bring justice to the victims of sexual assault in the military. The visualization allows for viewers to fully view the process and how the various routes to justice are not taken. Without the flow chart, viewers may not understand the process to bring a conviction against a perpetrator of sexual assault. If so, then the audience may be under the impression that there are only limited options to bring justice to perpetrators, which is why they are allowed to face no consequences for their

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