John Armellino

ERH 202WX

Major Garriott

Due 5/1/15

Reflective Essay on Dramatism

In this course I have been paying particular attention to rhetoric in films, specifically films of the horror genre. I have learned that this community utilizes the horror genre to study the darker recesses of the human mind, and what drives us to commit both terrible and heroic acts. This topic means that I have been primarily focused on Kenneth Burke, a rhetorician of the 20th century. As the course progressed, I used my knowledge of the horror film genre to further my understanding of Burke, and then used that knowledge to better understand the way he defined rhetoric. I will explain how I did this. You see, (good) horror films focus on the unseen, the unknown qualities of life that we do not often think about, but are there in our subconscious. Horror filmmakers of the late twentieth century took this aspect of the genre to a whole new, gruesomely fun level (more blood, more humor, more commentary on society). While most horror movies may not be the genius examination of the human condition that I would like them to be, they do tend to focus on the strangest and vilest of human behaviors. Although their subjects are strange, horror films always have the familiar element of flawed human characters that make mistakes like we do, and do terrible things like a lot of us are more capable of than we realize. I started to, through the lens of the horror film genre, learn and understand the theories of the rhetorician Kenneth Burke, who discusses what drives humans to do what they do. I found a definition of rhetoric that I was able to comprehend and enjoyed learning about.
Burke’s definition of rhetoric is “the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents,” which makes sense to me. I always saw rhetoric as the use of language to persuade others. Films very much make an attempt “to form attitudes” in others, but I was never sure how that worked exactly until taking this course. When reading about Burke’s theory of dramatism, I started to understand not just the purpose of rhetoric in art (exploring our actions through our motivations), but how it works. Burke’s outlook on the world as a drama unfolding before our eyes made complete sense to me the first time I read about it. Drama as a metaphor for life struck me as especially applicable to the horror genre, in which certain horror tropes (creepy kids, haunted houses, etc.) emerged and were experimented with in order to analyze human and societal behavior, specifically our fears. I discussed the horror film The Thing and its look into our survival instincts and paranoia. In other words, the horror genre is examining our motivations. Burke believed that “to understand human acts, one must understand human motives.” He created what is called the Dramatistic Pentad, a set of terms that aims to explain why people behave the way that they do. Since it is a pentad, there are five terms: the act (what is done), the scene (the setting, location), the agents (who is acting), agency (how the agents act), and purpose (why do they act). All are factors in the drama that we create.
This theory of rhetoric came easily to me, since I have always been good at analyzing films. As an avid movie buff I enjoy examining characters and their motivations, so Burke’s pentad plays right into this hobby of mine. Horror movies have long been a subject of my obsessions, and in my research essay, I took a look at how horror films of the late 20th century were used to bring societal ills to light, as well act as “commentary on our deepest, darkest fears and/or our secret desires.” When I learned about Burke’s pentad, I could perfectly place all the categories; the setting, the characters, the action, the agents, and the purpose. It is so easily translatable to film that I could begin to use the pentad to analyze real life situations. Now, that may seem contradictory, but when I watch a good horror film, I always compare it to reality. I do not necessarily examine whether zombies or shape shifting aliens could exist in the real world (they totally could), no, I compare the behaviors of the main characters to how humans behave in reality. Burke’s pentad is a simple, elegant way for me to translate the rhetorical message behind a film to real life, since the pentad is meant to assess real human beings.
The theory of dramatism, to me, is almost empirical in its use. It may not be hard science in the traditional use of the term, but I found that I could apply its elements to drama and reality. All I had to do was plug in variables until I had a conclusion that made sense. I may have had a rather roundabout way of learning this particular subject, but Kenneth Burke has provided a highway of sorts to understanding horror films as a rhetorical genre. Once I understood the theory of dramatism as an almost scientific examination of human behavior, it all clicked in my head. The theory is easily applicable to any genre, but the horror genre has always struck me as the most interesting of any class of film. And now, I am able to effectively examine films within that group more effectively.