Post #6 Pentadic Criticism

Pentadic Criticism

Pentadic criticism is based on ideas presented by Kenneth Burke and his work on how people understand rhetoric today.  Pentadic criticism has five parts which include:

  • Agent:  this concept describes who is doing the act or the one who wanted the action to happen
  • Act:  the way in which the rhetor describes the activity that the agent has done, based on the information presented
  • Agency:  the specific tools used to allow the act to occur
  • Scene:  this concept describes where the act takes place
  • Purpose:  the reason the agent did the act

The artifact I decided to look at is a PSA done by MTV about their anti-bullying initiative, “A Thin Line,” which includes other issues that are common among teenagers.  The PSA ad that I looked at had a boy watching another boy get bullied by their classmates and the insults consisted of basically calling the boy gay and things of that nature.  At the end of the ad the scene zooms out to show the original boy that saw the bullying, looking at a computer screen where there were comments aimed towards the boy who was being bullied in the first scene.  The ad ends with a voiceover saying, “The things you see happening online have real consequences, will you stand up or stand by?”

The agent of this ad would be MTV, because they are hired actors to make the act happen.  The act would be the boy watching the bullying happen, because the main message at the end is a question of whether or not he will say something.  The act is not centered around the bullying itself, but the idea that teenagers will make a change by standing up for each other.  The agency would be the people who work for MTV involved in developing the ad and how it should be portrayed, because MTV is a channel commonly watched by teenagers this is the way in which the anti-bullying agenda could better connect with teenagers.  The scene of this would be the school library and the bedroom where the bullying takes place in person and online.  The purpose of this ad is to encourage teenagers to stand up for one another by not standing by watching their peers get bullied, but instead offering a helping hand for the bullied student to have support.

Critical Essay #2

I have decided to focus my Critical Essay #2 on metaphoric criticism and the artifact I have decided to use is the song, “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You,” by Heart.  This song is about a woman trying to find a man to get her pregnant, because her husband is unable to have children.  I chose this artifact, because listening to this song as a thirteen year old I did not really understand the metaphors that were in the song and now as an adult it is clear that this is not really a love song, but actually a song about conception.

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