Advertising Rhetoric-JF

I chose the Charlie Sheen video for my blog post because of the situation it creates. The rhetorical situation that is created is certainly a fascinating one. The author is clearly DirecTV or one of its associates. The purpose is to influence the audience to subscribe to DirecTV. The setting of the commercial is on the television in one of DirecTV’s paid time slots. The audience is the general public. The text is the video itself. The video dramatizes the effects of cable television to convince the audience to switch to DirecTV. Because of its dramatization, I think the advertisement is not effective. If the dramatization had not been included and more facts and statistics had been used, I would consider the advertisement as effective. I considered the video amusing, but amusing advertisements are not valid reason to purchase a product. If the authors had incorporated factual statistics behind their humor, I might have considered the advertisement as effective.

The most effective part of the video and rhetorical situation was its humor and references to movies and other popular culture. The video begins by implying that if you watch cable, you will go to a bar. It continues by implying that after a few drinks, you would be up to going to a Turkish bath house. That, to me, is quite funny, and contains a pop culture reference with the mention of a Turkish bath house. The video implies that you would then meet Charlie Sheen at the bath house. At this point, I found the video very amusing. I can’t picture myself being inebriated enough to want to publicly bathe, but Charlie Sheen desiring to bathe publicly for some reason seems significantly more realistic. The video ends by implying that once you and Charlie Sheen have met, you would perform scenes from the famous Charlie Sheen movie, Platoon. I found this to be even more amusing than the rest of the commercial because not only is Platoon one of my favorite movies, but also I don’t think that would be what I would do with Charlie Sheen if we had any interaction at all. Even if I was under the influence of alcohol, I don’t think I’d want to perform scenes from a violent movie with anyone, especially Charlie Sheen.

 

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