Multimodal Persuasive Campaign

 Multimodal Persuasive Campaign

Issue: The negative impact behind the romanticization of mental 

Stance: I argue that romanticizing mental health is extremely negative and specifically am striving to get people to realize their negative habits.

Genre 1: Podcast

Mostly unscripted discussion on issues pertaining to the mental health of the youth, explicit and discusses controversial topics.

Audience: Young adults or older teenagers especially ones interested in psychological matters.

Final version here

Genre 2: Facebook Post

A raw post advising parents to make sure that their own kids don't fall into the habits of becoming romantics towards mental illness.

Audience: Older parents who use Facebook

Genre 3: Movie Review on a blogpost

I will be reviewing the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and seeing specifically how it romanticizes mental illness.

Audience: Younger people who like to blog and are interested in film/psychology

Blog:

A film that does mental health more or less right…
I loved One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Its cinematography is beautiful with slow and still camera shots that made the whole film feel stable and detached from the individuals we were seeing. It mise en scène was filled to the brim with a melancholy and overbearing white which really reminded you of the character's uncanny situation situation. Its soundtrack is filled with life and emotion and really helps you get to the next emotional connection with the film. But where the film excels the most is in its writing, the film has an amazing cast of characters that all feel real and human with their own intrinsic motivations and feelings. Often it is hard to write characters with mental health problems, especially when you yourself aren't afflicted by one. There are two major types of errors that come with writing characters with mental issues, one of these is when they are dehumanized, sometimes characters are written in such ways that they aren't even seen as human in the film, and while this film suffers from that sometimes from the more catatonic characters, for the most part even the most severe patients, like Chief, have realistic and human characteristics. Another issue that is even more common and harmful is when a mental illness becomes romanticized through the character. One perfect example of this is the film Girl Interrupted, the main characters look, personality, and love life are very frequently romanticized because of the appealing aesthetic it presents. This causes people to associate the mental illness she has with those same characteristics and thus people can indulge in self-destructive behaviors because of the film. This also occurs in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with the film's main character wearing a nice leather jacket, having his way with women, and being overall liked by the crew but it's punished in this movie severely and shows a great critique in the system while not excusing his attitudes or leaving people wanting to be just like him. Overall this film is excellent and an emotional rollercoaster that will keep you hooked every step of the way, I highly recommend it, and I'm giving this one an 8/10!

Rhetorical Rationale

Across all three sources, it's clear that my overall purpose is to send the message to people that romanticizing mental illness is negative and can oftentimes be detrimental. Much of my arguments can be seen in the video essay that I analyzed in my Rhetorical analysis; “the desire to be sad: "tragically beautiful" art & romanticizing mental illness”. But instead of taking the approach of taking our generation and comparing it to older sources of media and literature and seeing how everything connects and applies to each other. Instead, I decided to focus on our media and how people in today's society are behaving and reacting to our environment.

 My first source; the podcast, is definitely fighting for the fact that the romanticization of mental health is negative. It specifically focuses on how echo chambers are detrimental to groups and how the internet can actually lead to isolation and make for an easier environment for these. Before there is any dialouge, I use the genre convention of having a very standout intro that grabs the viewer's attention and is iconic which not only builds ethos as a brand but also declares the name of the show and makes it more likely that the audience remembers and spreads the content elsewhere. As soon as the interview begins I use ethos again, introducing the subject that I'm speaking to as a doctor which instantly builds credibility and makes people more likely to trust the content that I am distributing. I decided to make use of the gentle sound of music by the artist Ichiko Aoba who is a very gentle-sounding artist that serves as good background noise to keep the audience engaged and make all of what is being said much more relaxing despite the serious subject matter. The first thing I choose to discuss is the tragedies that happened in Buffalo, New York. I am utilizing the mode of persuasion known as pathos as I am blaming echo chambers and the internet as the cause of how someone could stoop to this point. The loss of life is bound to reach people's emotional sides but I don't stay on that matter for too long as it is a sensitive subject and the genre of a podcast is typically more casual. Swiftly I move on to give examples in other subject areas; showing where other cases of echo chambers can take place. I use the example of Hitler and his subjugates for two main reasons, one of which is to once again use pathos because I’m tying the mass extinction that was the holocaust with the idea that their ideologies came from an echo chamber thus making people associate echo chambers with even mean horrors and making it easier for the audience to see just how harmful this can be for people. Another element I draw from this point is logos because the tie to our world history makes this concept seem more set in stone as it has been here for a while and logistically people will trust it more. Finally, I use all the negativity that I have built with echo chambers and proceed to tie echo chambers together with the internet, beginning with the claim that the Buffalo shooter was in an internet group that served as an echo chamber to get him to do these horrible actions this once again using pathos to get people to sympathize and realize that one way or another the internet was responsible for the victims of the shooting. In the podcast, we talk about Fight Club which is a very popular piece of literature and thus appeals to people's logos, this is when we begin to talk about pop culture which makes sense considering our genre, talking about TV shows and using terminology like alpha which is a very popular term in todays media. The entire podcast employs very raw dialect and true back-and-forth conversation which is very common for the genre. A few other ways genre convention is used in this mode of sending my message is the very opinionated nature of the whole piece, there is evidence used to support every argument but much of it is based on raw opinion which is very common for this area of media, and an outro is utilized as a way to tie everything together and leave the audience satisfied. Overall I feel that the first piece I created does an excellent job of conveying its message to a younger demographic of people who are interested in psychology.

My second source is a Facebook post, and for this piece of media, I focused on specifically trying to draw in an older demographic of people. I chose to make a Facebook post because it is an application used by older individuals and my post is made supposedly by an older professor which will cause the audience to relate to the person who published the post. It also appeals to people's ethos as he is a professor which means that he is more credible as a source. It's been liked by a large sum of people so it's more likely that it will be trusted by new people viewing the post. The very beginning of the post is meant to play with people's pathos and logos by giving statistically accurate information about the number of deaths that happen every day in the world due to suicide. It is an attention-grabbing statement that will especially appeal to older parents. The post is very aggressive which is very in line with the genre and encourages parents to ensure that their own kids are being safe. This appeals to pathos because there is nothing a parent cares more about than their kids. The voice I chose to employ was a very loud one that encouraged action. I use a lot of punctuation and capital letters to make the voice more obvious, writing like this is very common in this genre and will make it more likely for people to comply with the message. I think this source will be very effective at conveying its message to parents with children.

The film review targets movie fans who are unaware of this problem in film-related media. I take a much more passive voice but knowledgeable and confident voice which is common in this genre. I make a lot of comparisons to other films which strengthens my logos as it makes me seem knowledgeable in the subject. I talk about the subject of the film that is being reviewed to draw the attention of the movie junkie audience and use it as a ploy to send the message of the fact that romanticization is negative and can be very harmful.  I feel that this was a good way to approach the subject in a genre that the subject is not typically talked about.