Television is ubiquitous in America Culture. The average American watches am average of five hours of television every day. This is rather significant, because this means that if a person works full-time, then odds are they spend only slightly less time watching television than they do earn their livelihood. People work in order to maintain their lives, and if those lives outside of work consist of watching television, then it seems the cultural answer to the question, “Why are you working so hard?” seems to be, “So that I can watch TV.” From a profit perspective, TV programming is just the means to selling advertisement. Production companies do not make compelling TV programs to entertain us, and they make them sell our things. The heart of the television industry is the advertising industry. They make their money not off their programming, but based on what exists between the programming. In this essay I attempt to get further insight into the argument of TV by rhetorically analyzing Maria Winn’s argument against TV, and also by going straight to the reason for TV’s existence, and analyzing Television commercials both generally, and then digging in depth into the rhetoric employed in Lexus’s car advertisement “Amazing in Motion.”
Her article, “Television: The Plug-In Drug” Marie Winn compares television to a drug. One of the rhetorical skills she employs is comparing television consumption to drugs. She builds her ethos by citing laws in the United States which make a strong case that American culture considers TV watching a human right. In the American justice system, if a person much has all of their assets reprocessed due to a situation like bankruptcy, the government or debt holder is legally barred from repossessing a television because it has the rank of “legal necessity” (Winn, 438).
She continues to develop her argument-using ethos as a rhetorical skill. She cites early predictions people made when television was new on the scene. The same things that people criticize about television today—namely parents using it as a babysitter instead of interacting with their kids in meaningful ways—was seen as one of the television's merits. In the 1940s and 1950s, the influence of child psychology and fostering a child’s emotional development had yet to be announced to the culture. The result was that it was not a faux pas to discuss the merits of television as a childcare device. Winn cites a writer from the 50s who said that television should be in “every home where there are children” (Winn, 438).
Winn’s argument is made less compelling by the fact that much of her research is outdated. Certainly, there is something valuable in learning the history of television. But it is less convincing to look at the past without drawing parallels to the future. Win continues to try to win over her readers with ethos mixed with the logos of moderation. She writes that “parents” today “have accepted a television-dominated family life” and that this acceptance has blinded them from accurately addressing the negative results that too much television will have in a person’s life.
Anything that anyone spends significant time with is going to influence them. The more time a person spends doing something, the higher the influence. It is not just about it being more of an influence; the increased influence will be less detectable since the object is such a pervading presence in a person’s life. Other problems in the United States, such as out of control consumerism, fast-food diets, and political polarity might have their origins in the fact that the average American will spend five hours a day , which means the influence of television is likely to be profound on behavior and identity. While five hours seem to be an extremely excessive amount of time to spend daily watching television, this is only the average amount of time that Americans watch TV. Many Americans are watching significantly more, such as eight hours a day. This means that work and television account for most American’s life, since this is where they spend most of their time.
So what kind of rhetorical messages are being “sold” to Americans who spend most of their free time watching TV? TV Advertisements are not usually what is thought of when people think of television. Mostly people think of TV programming over the commercials. But it is important to realize that it is for these commercials that a television exists, so an analysis of them is crucial for our purposes in this essay.
Watching just one television program is usually enough to get an idea of what sort of products companies want American consumers to spend their money on. Car commercials take on a certain format, as do fast-food commercials, beer commercials, makeup commercials and pharmaceutical and insurance commercials. For this essay we will focus on a car commercial and the argument that it makes to potential consumers of the product.
There is a Lexus car advertisement called “Amazing in Motion.” It is a bit of a departure from most car commercials in that; it barely features a car. The commercial starts with upbeat music and the words “Amazing in Motion” stream across the screen in front of a dinosaur skeleton. Then the music rises and the view sees a flock of futuristic robots flying around the city. Since the viewer is unsure about what the robots are or what they are doing, Lexus is using pathos in order to get a particular response from viewers. Because these robots are doing something that robots currently do not have the capability of doing, Lexus is going for a very particular “WOW factor” from its audience. This is a pathetical argument. Those robots, were they real, would be “amazing in motion.” As it is, the robots only exist as a series of computer codes and were made by a CGI production team.
The Lexus commercial is trying to sell a car to consumers, but instead of telling them about the car, they are simply trying to paint an amazing picture, and then using a non sequitur and attaching it to their car. Lexus’s basic argument is as follows. 1) These flying robots you see are awesome and amazing. 2) These flying robots are amazing like a Lexus car. 3) Therefore, Lexus cars are amazing like a Lexus car.
Any American adult not suffering from delusions would be able to distinguish between the flying robots in the car commercial and the car. Lexus spent millions of dollars creating this commercial because they thought it would be effective. Advertising companies rely on research which shows that even though the logical mind of Americans knows that these flying robots have nothing do with a Lexus car, if they can make a pathetical argument, they can bypass any logical argument and appeal directly to a consumers emotions. Fast food commercials do this in a much more direct way. They know that logically, their food is unhealthy and that a logical person concerned with his or her health should avoid their products. But they also know that the “hunger” drive and the “craving for calories” are more powerful than a human’s logical cognitive systems. This is why fast-food commercials are all essentially the same. Advertisers know that all they need to do is throw a big juicy burger on the screen in order to appeal an influence a person’s dietary decisions.
So while Win argues uses ethos against TV, TV advertisers are mostly using pathetical arguments to connect unrelated, attractive concepts to their products. Winn wants to use logos and ethos to convince her audience to spend less time watching TV while TV is making a much more powerful argument do to it being as Winn mentions, like a drug. One drawback of constantly consuming this drug is that it constantly exposes to viewer to compelling pathological arguments which can go on to influence a viewer's value system. While the viewer might think he is able to resists such rhetorical traps, the advertising industry is powerful, they use market-tested research, and they know how to influence even those who feel that they are immune to such influences. This is what is at stake in the great TV debate, and based on the amount of time that Americans currently spend watching TV, it seems to be a debate that pathos, or the TV, is currently winning.
Works Cited
"Lexus TV Commercial, 'Amazing in Motion: Strobe' Song by Computer Magic." ISpot.tv. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.
Winn, Maria. "The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn." The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.
