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RCL 5: More Than a Game

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Everyone loves games. This commonality is one of the defining qualities of human beings, as people are hardwired to be competitive and relish in their successes. Even more captivating, perhaps, is the disappointment of losing, as it fills us with a fervent and even angry determination not to repeat the mistakes that allowed victory to slyly elude our grasp. Humans’ favorites games are, without a doubt, sports, as their physical dynamic and “spectacle” quality warrant an unmatched exhilaration for both viewers and players. The most unifying of these sports is basketball. Basketball is a “link” among people simply because so many people love it and can play it. Rich and poor, black and white, young and old, people everywhere love basketball. Additionally, it is the most popularly played sport in the United States, partly due to the fact that all it requires is a ball and a hoop. More importantly, however, is the sport’s unique quality of “impactability.”. Since a standard basketball team only has five players on the floor at a time, a number that hails in comparison to nearly every other sport on the globe, the ability of one or a few players to have a profound impact on the game is greatly magnified. This quality is one that makes basketball very likeable among a wide scope of people, as players can be very much involved in a team effort while also making a profound impact on the game themselves. This seemingly paradoxical pairing of individuality and teamwork coupled with the diverse popularity of the sport has prompted me to study a “story” within basketball to illustrate a paradigm shift. The thread I plan to follow will be a medium by which many essences of humanity and American culture specifically can be illuminated. This story will track the evolution of the game of basketball at the professional level in the United States, particularly in the NBA. The primary question on which I will base my research is, “How did the way the game of basketball is played at the NBA level evolve from the league’s origin to yield the well-rounded game we see today in the context of both formal rule changes and unwritten developments of playing style; was this paradigm shift primarily prompted by rapidly fluctuating and diverging styles of play, or rather by a steady trend marked by a uniform progression toward the modern game?”

The game of basketball is one like no other, and it is especially meaningful to me, as I made some of my best memories and learned some of my toughest, most valuable lessons while playing for my high school team. Basketball demands an unmatched combination of enjoyment and toughness; it is one of the fastest-paced and highest scoring sports, which warrant feelings of intensity and exhilaration that are unequaled by any other game. Additionally, the sport accentuates a variety of intense athletic skills, often coupling opposites like endurance and quick muscle movements; these unique combinations formulate a particular definition of “challenging” in the sports world. Another aspect of the game that separates it from others is its malleability. The game was “made to change” as it very much originated as an adaptation to limited indoor circumstances. The game of basketball in the NBA is vastly different from the way it was at its beginning, and it will continue to evolve in gargantuan ways into the decades that follow. This continuous change and assimilation to the needs and desires of each new generation is very much an accepted part of the game, especially at the professional level. This is another aspect of basketball that makes it unique, as many sports, such as baseball, do not share this adaptability and often clash with change in a manner of disapproval or through an ineffective attempt to “modernize” the game. The unique levels of challenge and thrill basketball offers blended with its remarkable ability to change as its patrons and fans see fit make the sport heavily reflective of American culture. Our people is one of innovation, one of perseverance, and one of acceptance, all tenets that are at play within the game of basketball. For these reasons, the game is very much worth studying, and a look at the shift in the way basketball is played at the NBA level is sure to illuminate a bigger picture of American culture and the values which it endorses.

I plan to begin my “story” with the birth of the NBA in 1946, as it quickly became the premier league in the United States and has remained so to this day. I intend to relate the evolution of play in the NBA through a variety of mediums, but the quintessential method I will employ to track this development will be by relating the stories of individual dynasties and stars. By “dynasties” I am referring to teams throughout history that dominated the league for at least a few years, typically winning several championships. By “stars” I am simply referring to the individual players throughout the ages that asserted themselves as all-time greats. I believe these two components of the NBA are integral in detailing the evolution of the game, as the way the game changes, the way an entire league adapts their style of play, is based heavily on “what is working”, or the practices of the people who are winning. Tracking the development of basketball by these means is practical because it provides a chronological timeline of the sport’s progression. Stars and dynasties are linked to eras, thus by following the rise and fall of different players and franchises, I will be able to paint a sensible and sequential picture of how the game has evolved. Another advantage to exploring these concepts, particularly in the heydays of different stars, references an assertion I made earlier. Individual players can make greater impacts in basketball than they can in any other sport due to the limited number of players on the floor and in the league. Thus, the NBA offers a lense that most other professional sports leagues don’t in the fluctuation of different styles of play due to the success of specific players.

I believe that a fascinating paradigm shift is embedded in the very existence of the NBA, a league that people around the world love so well. The game of basketball welcomes change by nature, and change it has. From humble beginnings in 1946 to perhaps the most diverse and multifaceted professional sports game in the world today, the league has prospered in dynasties of stars and superteams, directional trends that favor one fundamental style over another, rapid fluctuations in pace and amount of scoring, and league experiments with rule changes and innovative additions. There is an ocean of smaller developments by which to track the evolution of the game as a whole, and I am intent on conducting thorough research and a contemplative analysis of these many facets to paint an informative picture of this progression. In detailing this paradigm shift, I will be doing more than just tracking the development of a game, however. I will be taking an in depth look at the unique culture that is basketball, a culture of unity, uniqueness, and adaptability that is reflected heavily in the NBA. The game of basketball, especially in this elite league, is one that requires grit and skill, individuality and comradery, and diversity and conformity. By evaluating a game molded out of these far-reaching qualities, I will be tracking the evolution and hidden elements of an entire culture itself.

RCL 4: Everyone’s A Critic

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When I was thirteen years old, I attended the first Pittsburgh Pirates playoff game the team had qualified for in over two decades. Being a lifelong Pirates fan, I had gone through quite a bit of torment from season after season of disappointment and shattered dreams. But that was all over on the night of October 1, 2013, as I and more than 40,000 others piled into PNC Park to propel our team into a new era of success. The game could not have gone better. Right from the get-go the Pirates came out swinging (literally), sending two towering homeruns into the left field bleachers within a matter of two innings. The Bucs would go on to win 6-2, doing so amidst a roaring sea of black which let out twenty-one years’ worth of bottled up sorrow in the form of deafening, insurmountable cheering. I couldn’t have been happier for my team, but perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the night was bringing defeat to our deeply-hated and long-time rivals in the Cincinnati Reds. To this day, I remember relishing just as much in watching these foes falter as I did watching the Pirates triumph. This anecdote illustrates a strange and yet ubiquitous aspect of human nature: we LOVE to hate things, sometimes even more than we love to love things. Whatever the reason for this, it is certainly true, and it can be seen in countless aspects of daily life. Whether it’s Penn State students unifying in their contempt for Pitt or an old couple denouncing a restaurant for its frigid temperatures and terrible service, dislike is often a means of unification and a method by which we humans “entertain ourselves.” This may sound troubling, but I assert that dislike is, in many ways, a healthy feature of human nature, as long as it is not taken to extremes. Disliking things not only allows us to form our own identities and develop our own tastes, but it also gives us a sense of unity when we can relate to the dislikes of others. Perhaps the best way to put this “love to hate” principle into action would be by picking apart a piece of media, as this is something everyone is thoroughly familiar with and a practice many take joy in. The “public communicator” I want to take down is the print ad shown above, which advertises the Reebok clothing brand. This ad is, in no uncertain terms, horrendous, and it falters in a number of ways. The poster above fails dramatically to successfully advertise its product through its crude and out of place appeals to comedy and logic, its underdeveloped and unattractive visual organization, and its gross lack of allusions and references with which to assemble its credibility.

The first thing you will notice when taking a gander at this ad is its strange and somewhat offensive caption that reads in white block letters, “Cheat on your girlfriend, not on your workout.” The first and most obvious purpose of this message is an appeal to emotions, particularly to comedy. The ad is certainly meant to be a joke, and its goal is to grab the viewer’s attention by making them laugh through a supposedly relatable exaggeration. The problem lies in the fact that the message is not relatable, and, in turn, not funny. The creator of the ad pegged his audience as mainly comprised of men who are either not loyal to their significant other or who find the prospect of being disloyal rather trivial and perhaps even comedic. Unfortunately, assuming your audience to be one of this makeup is inherently bound to steer your argument in the wrong direction, as, by and large, cheating is viewed as a reprehensible act that is not to be joked about. Rather than evoke a sense of humor, the ad makes its viewers feel rather awkward and perhaps even sorry for the spouse or significant other of whoever came up with this catch phrase. In addition to a comedic appeal, this caption is also meant to convey something of a logical argument. The words lay out an indirect logical trail that consists of an assertion that you can only focus your daily efforts on a certain amount of activities. Because of this limitation, you should focus on things that actually matter, like your workout, and curtail other behaviors of less significance, such as remaining loyal to your girlfriend. Finally, in order to make the most out of your workout, which is of such importance, you should buy athletic gear from Reebok. The problem with this logical thread is that it is very inaccurate in predicting how people think. Needless to say, relationships are typically at the forefront of importance for most people who are in them and take them seriously. So any prediction that a majority of viewers would succumb to the viewpoint that relationships are relatively unimportant is terribly uninformed and inaccurate, and this is why the logic falls just as hard as the appeal to comedy.

Another area in which the ad falters is in its ruse of a cohesive visual presentation. Ocular organization is one of the key ingredients in developing an effective advertisement, especially in a print ad such as the one I chose. Ironically, this is perhaps the field in which the ad falters the most, as it fails to use its imagery to draw the audience’s attention even remotely. First, the poster’s visuals are severely underdeveloped. The ad features a blurry close-up of a man who appears to be working out, and he is wearing Reebok shorts. These are about the only two things that are evident, as all the viewers can see is a portion of the man’s midsection, forearm, and hand, in addition to a bland background. You cannot see what workout the man is doing, nor whether he is alone or interacting with others. In addition, you can’t see the expression on his face, what is going on around him, and a boatload of other commonalities. This lack of expansion leaves the viewers puzzled and does not even tap into how the Reebok brand is useful for working out. Viewers are left utterly confused and unconvinced. In addition to this lack of a sensible organization of imagery, viewers are also turned off by the dire lack of any visually pleasing element whatsoever. The ad is plagued by a permeating orangish hue that is oddly out of place and yet seems to take center stage. The entire image of what is seen of the man is obtrusively bleary, and it completely shatters any degree of focus the ad had to begin with. Finally, the image is covered with faded and bland white text that is just another interruption in this bumbling collection of visuals.

The ad’s final downfall lies in its lack of any credibility outside of its brand, Reebok. Print ads, especially ones that are trying to sell items from a sports brand, depend on some outside source of credibility. For example, Nike ads often depict basketball players wearing their shoes in an attempt to grab your attention and establish an ethos that will persuade viewers to buy their brand. Ads like these don’t necessarily have to go this far into displaying a sense of credibility, but they should at least appeal to this idea at some level. For example, a sports clothing ad could depict an athletic-bodied man wearing its brand so that viewers could be convinced that if someone of that level of fitness would utilize the brand, it must be trustworthy. The Reebok poster I chose does no such thing, not even showing so much of what the wearer of the clothes looks like. Because of this, the viewers have no inclination to believe that what Reebok sells is good or useful, and they are even further dissuaded from purchasing their products.

The Reebok print ad I chose fails miserably to offer any effective argumentation for why clothing from its brand should be bought. In fact, it does just the opposite, repelling its viewers at every turn and faltering more with each new tactic than the last. The poster fails through its misuse of appeals to comedy and logic, its stagnant and unappealing organization of imagery, and its total absence of any variance of a credibility appeal whatsoever. Though this ad does a terrible job at convincing its viewers to buy Reebok, it is successful at one thing. This ad is a rejuvenating assertion that sometimes, it is just really fun to hate something.

PAS 3: Stories; The Language of the Mind

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It’s sometime around midnight, and you and your family are sitting around a roaring fire in a picturesque campsite on the edge of the Blueridge Mountains. Everyone is all settled down for some smores, laughs, and, of course, ghost stories. Each sibling tries his hand at a tale of terror, none of which are truly engaging or scary. Just when everyone’s attention has effectively faded, your father jumps in and begins to unfurl a new narrative. At first, no one is giving much thought to what he’s saying, as it’s getting pretty late and everyone’s eyes are becoming weary. But it soon becomes evident that this isn’t just any story, and without even knowing it, everyone begins to perk up and become immersed in his words. The yarn your father spins is equally as unsettling as it is intriguing, and no one knows whether they can’t shake their attention for a moment or can’t take another second. With a long and heart-pounding buildup of tension, everyone is on the edge of their seat from the moment they lent an ear. Finally, just when you and your siblings let your guard down, thinking that a peaceful ending has been derived from all the madness that led up to it, your father strikes with an unexpected and eerie twist to leave his listeners’ blood running ice cold. There is nothing quite like being swept up in a truly amazing story, and we’ve all had this feeling before. Though often hard to come by, great tales are all around us, in books, movies, novellas, even online. Everyone loves a good story because they are the means by which we make sense of things. The human brain always works much better with a narrative; it is truly no good at memorizing facts and truths (or at least not nearly as good). The reason for this is that stories have something lectures don’t, and that is emotion. Emotion is one of the most heavily-applied features of the human mind, so it is fitting that our means of interpreting the world around us would involve emotion to some extent. Though many claim to know a good story when they hear/see one, not too many can name the facets that go into crafting a masterpiece like this, and that is why so few can do it. Sure there are the overarching cliches that everyone knows you need for a good story: well-developed and likeable characters, an interesting conflict, a unique relation of events, a twist of some kind, etc. However, I believe there is one overarching concept that is the key to crafting a great story, and it is one that is often overlooked. The key to assembling a masterful tale is simply making it believable.

Many may find this assertion strange, as often some of the best stories are among the most far-fetched and most “separate” from reality. After all, if you consider our reality as the limit to what good stories can fall under, there is truly not much to work with. However, this is not exactly what I mean when I say “believable.” Allow me to lay out a definition for the rule of believability I think narratives must follow in order to be of any substance: The story must make sense within the reality of its context. This means that a story must abide by the principles of reality that are assumed to exist within the setting in which the story takes place. To give an example, allow me to compare two vastly popular and critically acclaimed movies in The Shining and The Silence of the Lambs. The Shining follows a troubled writer, Jack Torrance, who takes the job of winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Jack brings with him his wife Wendy and his young son, Danny. Strange occurrences soon begin to unfold, including Danny being plagued by eerie and morbid visions of ghosts and Jack resorting to strange behaviors as a result of his boredom. Things soon take a turn for the worst as Danny’s visions become reality and Jack goes off the deep end, running amuck in an effort to kill his family with an axe. The Silence of the Lambs follows young FBI training student Clarice Starling and her efforts to interview masterful psychiatrist and crazed psychopath Hannibal Lecter while he serves a life sentence. Starling’s goal in conducting these interviews is to gain insights on the identity and whereabouts of a crazed serial killer known as Buffalo Bill. Little does she know, the cunning and diabolical Lecter will soon turn the tables on her and her colleagues in a brilliant escape plan that adds an entirely new dynamic to this spine-chilling thriller.

The Shining is a great movie because it is very believable, while The Silence of the Lambs falters as a result of its inability to align itself with reality. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “How could a movie like The Shining, in which there are supernatural powers and ghosts, possibly be more realistic than The Silence of the Lambs, a crime thriller in which nothing “physically impossible” happens?” This takes me back to the rule of being believable “within the reality of a context.” In The Shining, the “context” that is assumed to be governing reality based on the background of the story is a world in which ghosts exist. So if we simply apply the rule, “Ghosts exist,” to The Shining, it is very believable indeed. The story not only remains consistent in the means by which it depicts the supernatural, which is one of subtlety accompanied by feelings of uneasiness, but it also depicts ghosts and visions in a manner that is very ambiguous. The viewer often questions whether they are seeing ghosts or the imagination of the characters, and it is often not entirely understood why the ghosts make their appearances. In addition, the ghosts appear just like normal people, but their presence is made to be known by the eerie atmosphere and by the fact that there should be no one but the family in the hotel. As the supernatural is something that is very mysterious and uncertain to us as viewers, these portrayals work magnificently to align with our perceptions of the “ghost reality.” Had the appearances of ghosts in the movie been more clear and had the ghosts been differentiated from our main characters in some physical way, the “reality” of the movie would have been tainted.

This brings me to The Silence of the Lambs. This movie features a great idea for a story and is enhanced by one of the great movie villains of all time in Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whom viewers can’t help but admire despite his gruesomely wicked deeds. However, in the end, it is not a great story as a result of its failure to abide by the reality of its context. The context that governs the reality of The Silence of the Lambs is one that is close to actual reality in which an infamous serial killer, Buffalo Bill, is on the loose. In the movie, Hannibal Lecter crafts a wildly unrealistic escape plan in which he frees himself from a “cage” in the middle of a giant room of a holding facility. Lecter tricks the guards who are bringing him his dinner, beats them to death, and then proceeds to use the skin of one of their faces to disguise himself as a guard who has been beaten unrecognizably. Thinking he is indeed a guard, emergency officials escort Lecter in an ambulance, from which he makes his escape. This plan is simply too far-fetched to be believed in the context of the story. The plan raises several problems, such as Lecter being in an isolated cage instead of a well-monitored cell, a skinny doctor being able to beat two trained guards into near oblivion, and well-trained officials mistakenly escorting a prisoner with a “skin mask” disguise. To name a few more drastic discrepancies from reality, the hall in which Lecter is kept to serve his life sentence looks more like a science fiction dungeon than a maximum security hall, and the manner in which Buffalo Bill is caught is very dubious in that backup is not called for by Starling once she suspects she has stumbled upon the whereabouts of the psychopath. In short, there is no quick “rule” we can apply to The Silence of the Lambs, like, “Ghosts aren’t real,” that justify its separateness from reality, and that is why it is not a complete story.

Stories are not only a means by which we are entertained, but they are also a means by which we experience reality. In this light, it makes sense that for stories to be of merit, they must follow some rules of reality; otherwise they will not be believed by their audience and will cease to stimulate the minds of those who experience them. Though humans innately operate heavily with emotions, they also operate with logic, and this is where the aspect of reality comes in. If stories don’t make some sense logically, our minds will not find them engaging. But if a narrative operates within a context of reality, its viewers can identify with the story. This identification, though seemingly a small aspect in a wide array of the elements that make a good story, is, in fact, the key to every tale that has ever been related.

RCL 3: Freudian Persuasion; TV Ads on our Minds

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You’re sitting in your favorite chair one evening just after polishing off a hearty meal, and you’re deeply engaged in the season finale of your favorite drama on television. The show is well into its climax, and in a few short moments you will finally discover the fate that befalls the characters you have come to love. You’re hanging on the edge of your seat, and just when you think the show has reached its last few frames…a commercial airs. At first you are taken aback, and you’re not really sure why you’ve lost view of the setting you were just so deeply immersed in. But when you realize the answer, your surprise is rapidly replaced by disgust. You lean back in your chair, eyes rolling and arms folded. “Why do they even show commercials?” you snap aloud. “It’s not like I’m going to buy the thing they’re selling just because I saw a commercial for it.” This is the conscious opinion many people have of commercials: they are meaningless little sequences that come between the things we really want to watch, and they have no effect on the public. While it is true that no one really gets excited to sit down and watch commercials, there often is more to their substance than meets the eye. The idea that commercials have no effect on the public is simply untrue; evidence to this point can be seen in the vast amount of commercially advertised products that are sold every day, such as State Farm insurance policies, Doritos, and Chevrolets. So how do commercials attract so many customers while remaining “on the down low.” They appeal to our subconscious minds rather than our conscious minds. Commercials, unlike shows or speeches, only have thirty seconds or a minute to get their point across. This means they cannot use the same tactics as these other mediums to persuade their viewers. Commercials rely mainly on attention grabbers that will stick in our subconscious minds rather than play out in our heads as a brilliant and put-together argument. Though many might not consider commercials examples of rhetoric, they certainly are, as they are one of the greatest persuaders in our society. With any piece of rhetoric, an analysis can be made of the elements and strategies that make it effective, and commercials are no exception. Though it may seem challenging to complete a cohesive interpretation of something that appeals to our subconscious minds, with a bit of digging, an ocean of tactics and appeals can be found in even the shortest of ads.

An ad I chose to analyze is one of a thread of several Direct TV ads that aired a handful of years ago, and it can be viewed in the link below. To summarize, this ad follows a pattern that begins with a man becoming agitated while being put on hold with the cable company. A deep-voiced narrator then proceeds to lay out a progression of events that results due to the ad’s “protagonist” being kept on hold, and this is accompanied by quickly-changing scenes that depict each part of the sequence the narrator lays out. The protagonist feels trapped by being kept on hold, so he tries hang-gliding to fight this feeling. As he is sailing through the sky, he crashes into a telephone wire, which results in the grid going down throughout the nearby city. This widespread power-outage leads to a rampant spread of crime that plagues the entire area. Just when the consequences of a cable phone line hold seem to have developed into an epidemic for the entire area and not just our protagonist, chance circles around to punish the poor guy when his dad is punched in the gut over a can of soup during a Katrina-like raid of the local supermarket. The ad closes with the following advice: “Don’t have your dad get punched over a can of soup. Get rid of cable and upgrade to Direct TV.” Though on its surface it may seem rather simple, this ad is filled with a mountain of appeals to logos, pathos and ethos that have a remarkable persuasive effect on our subconscious minds.

First, this ad appeals to logos, or our sense of logic. The ad takes us through an absurd and rather hilarious sequence of events that take a sharp, unrealistic turn early on, and then finish with a contrastingly simple, yet even more ludicrous consequence. So it’s not exactly easy to see where the logic fits into this. Though the events that occur don’t really make sense, they do illustrate a sensible point: the idea that something bad could happen as a result of our cable not working, outside of simply not being able to watch our programs. Since television is such a routine form of heavily-desired entertainment for so many, it makes sense that a disruption in using this technology could have consequences in our daily lives, as it would be interrupting something we are so used to. People do not like to have their routines interrupted, especially the aspects of those routines that they enjoy. Most people can relate to the idea of having their day “ruined” or at least made worse by some form of routine technology failing to cooperate, and that is why the basis of this argument works so well logically.

In addition to logic, an allure of ethos, or credibility, also appears in this commercial. Though it may sound somewhat silly, the narrator’s voice serves very effectively as an assertion of credibility. This unseen storyteller relays the events that occur in a deep, clear, and articulate voice, and one that is pleasing to the ear. He sounds like a “man of business”, which inclines the viewers (listeners) to believe him. In addition to the perception that the narrator knows what he’s talking about, his voice also conveys a hint of comedic appeal, as he relays the absurd sequences in an almost sarcastically serious tone. This unique combination further inclines the listeners to believe him as a truly talented orator with the ability to blend aspects of seriousness and comedy simply by speaking. Another way in which this ad makes use of an appeal to ethos lies in its context. This ad was made by Direct TV, a company which has had a great deal of success and is one of the most popular and long-standing broadcast satellite providers in recent years. The fact that this commercial was made by a company of such magnitude and reliability alone serves as a tremendous reference to its credibility.

The most essential persuasive method this thirty second cluster of scenarios utilizes is pathos, or an appeal to emotion. The primary emotion this commercial appeals to is our sense of humor, and it does a marvelous job. Though the most effective means of using pathos is typically characterized by an audience being made to empathize with a certain group and, in turn, identify with an argument, this is not always the best practice. In the case of this ad, humor is used to quickly grab our attention, and this references my earlier assertion that ads need to use aspects that appeal to our subconscious mind so that we will keep them in the back of our minds, rather than lay out a craftily-structured argument that makes us sympathize with the cause of the argument. The ad uses a unique and unexpected comedic structure that sets it apart from most other commercials, and arguments for that matter. The ad starts with a scenario in which a man’s cable is not working and he feels trapped, a rather normal start. However, the sequence quickly turns to relay a number of comedic, outlandish occurrences, each of which is more absurd than the last. This increasing preposterousness, coupled with the unfittingly newsman-like voice of the narrator makes for some laughs early on. By the middle of the ad, we think we get the point. Each event will be crazier than the last, and each new scenario will relate a widespread consequence that was derived from a relatively insignificant start, and we will get a good kick out of each chaotic scene. However, the end of the ad takes an unexpected turn, in which it narrates a small event that occurs in the midst of all the madness that resulted from the protagonist’s cable not working at the start. In a hilarious turn of events, the protagonist’s dad is slugged in the gut while slowly reaching for a can of soup on a shelf in a supermarket that is being raided. This event is hilarious not only because it serves as a bit of slapstick humor that had not appeared before and was not expected, but more importantly because it represents the sequence of events circling back to bite our protagonist, which was the message of the ad all along. This event is made even more hilarious as the protagonist stumbles down the sidewalk outside the supermarket, dragging broken hang-glider and all, to peer at the fruit of his unanswered cable call shown by his father crouched over, gasping for air. This hilarious turn of events not only keeps us intrigued throughout the ad, but it also makes us remember it after it is complete. This memorable aspect of the ad makes viewers much more likely to purchase Direct TV.

Commercials, though seemingly a small and unappealing element of popular culture, can, in fact, be some of the most persuading pieces of rhetoric around. The Direct TV ad I chose uses appeals of logos through hinting at situations concerning technology that commonly apply to our daily lives, through ethos through the charismatic voice of its narrator and well-known reputation of the company that made it, and through a unique use of pathos in which unexpected and absurdly simple humor is used to keep the ad in the subconscious memory of its viewers. These three appeals, coupled with one another, make for a very compelling argument in a short segment that, to most, seems like just an interruption.