This post is in response to Dr. DeVries post about Nixon/Kennedy and the Aristotle reading. In this modern or rather postmodern world, not only do we have to deal with constructing arguments in written and verbal forms, but we must have the appropriate image to persuade. Our perception of what is true has changed. Physical appearance is an important part in the way people receive messages from an orator. Of course, this perception is involved with technology.
Our eyes are on the frontline of message reception. We constantly are receiving messages first from the television, the films, the internet, and other types of visual media (e.g. video billboards such as the ones found on Hollywood Blvd and on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood) therefore there must be a visual language, a visual rhetoric if you will. We see then we hear. This visual rhetoric plays on the receiver’s emotions and biases. Visual rhetoric distorts the truth in ways that dull the receiver’s senses. Aristotle said that an orator should not argue to the judges emotions, but this is what I see and hear in the media everyday.
Because people are not reading the message and not hearing it, they become passive and accepting of any bogus argument, arguments that play to our emotions. Maybe people just shut down and consume, “Buy more…get an ipod, purchase that life insurance.” Now, you don’t have to think about how you are being put to sleep (oppressed). It makes me think about the eighties film, They Live, staring Rowdy Roddy Piper. He is an “average joe” who puts on a pair of sunglasses. Suddenly these glasses make it possible for him to hear and see the real messages being piped to the people on a 24/7 basis. The messages are sleep, reproduce, don’t question authority, work, don’t ask for more etc….He sees the power structure of the dominate culture keeping him a slave. I would definitely recommend this film.
The media shouts at us, the mantra,”seeing is believing,” just because one can see it (the argument) makes it real/true/ or sound. This makes be think about what is good. If something looks good then it is good. Good brings happiness and happiness is what the human animal strives for. Some how, I have it in mind the connection between choosing the visually appealing because it is good, and good equals happiness, and happiness is true. Aristotle went on an in-depth discussion of happiness in Book I.
It makes the political beautiful and that helps create narratives that the masses can believe in, a narrative that is indisputable because it is visually appealing, meaning it is true. So, the people become passive receivers instead of active listeners. Something like that.