Research on Rhetoric Reveals Idealogical Messages
By: Lisa R. Weidman
When most people watch a movie, they get caught up in the plot, the nail-biting action, the drama, or perhaps the humor. They leave the movie theatre–or the comfort of their family room–feeling amused, thrilled, and maybe even moved. But for Dr. Michele Ramsey, films are more than vehicles for entertainment; they are rhetorical messages that dramatize the ways people use language and images to tell stories and foster identification within and between citizens.
Ramsey, Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) and Women’s Studies, and Coordinator of the Communication Arts and Sciences degree program at Penn State Berks, has devoted much of her research to the study of political rhetoric, but has focused most recently on the rhetoric of film.
She considers the role of social, political, and economic context in the production of films and the stories they tell, including the characters they construct.
“Through film, we get ideas about what it means to be a good American, about capitalism, about individualism, and about good moral character,” explains Ramsey. “For example, many films perpetuate the ‘Horatio Alger’ myth, telling stories about people who achieve success by their own efforts in the face of great obstacles, and communicate important messages to citizens about the value of rugged individualism over alternatives like collective action.”
Human beings are storytellers, and those stories are told from a cultural bias, explains Ramsey. So, people need to think critically and assess the stories they are told.
“One of the problems we have in the United States is that we don’t make media literacy a part of our elementary and secondary education curricula,” states Ramsey. “We learn about ‘our world’ from stories that are often told through film and television. Since we all have biases, our entertainment is also biased, which colors our perceptions of the world and its possibilities in very important ways. Thus, when citizens aren’t taught to be critical of the ideologies embedded in entertainment, we risk creating ‘realities’ that can be quite limiting.”
Ramsey adds, “It’s so important to talk about these themes in pop culture products such as films because ideology is most powerful when it’s least visible.”
Students at Penn State Berks share Ramsey’s enthusiasm for research in film rhetoric. She and graduate Jonathan Hendrickson co-authored an essay on Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima, a film that claims to tell the story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it. Ramsey and Hendrickson, however, point out that the story is actually “told” through a very American individualist lens in spite of the fact that the film centers on a culture that was far more collective at that time in history.
Currently, Ramsey and Ben Sneeringer, another former student and the teaching assistant for her “Rhetoric of Film” and “Rhetoric of American Horror Films” classes, are conducting research on a specific genre of horror films.
“Horror often responds to social issues,” explains Ramsey. “For example, cloning was addressed in Alien and anxiety about global pandemics and wars are often reflected in apocalyptic horror films.”
Sneeringer states, “My work with Dr. Ramsey has been eye opening, as any work with film research really should be. Film is virtually a limitless source of identity revelation, whether in horror or any other genre. It is one of the most powerful and accessible realms to learn about ourselves. I only hope that the type of work Dr. Ramsey and myself are so enthusiastic about can continue to spread, hopefully, faster than a zombie outbreak.”
Ramsey and Sneeringer are focusing on films such as Rosemary’s Baby and It’s Alive, which were released right before the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. They note that these films, where parents choose to mother the Devil’s spawn or father a murdering mutant baby simply because their maternal and paternal instincts are so strong, speak indirectly to the debates about abortion that flooded the public domain in the late ’60s and early ’70s by suggesting that even children set on ruling the world from Hell or viciously killing are worth parenting and thus also lives worth protecting.
“Other trends in horror films–such as the move to make children villains in films like The Exorcist and The Omen, the shift from the villainy of traditional monsters such as Dracula and Frankenstein to the creation of very human “monsters” like Hannibal Lecter or Freddy Krueger, or the emergence of the slasher genre–are usually linked to new fears and changes in socio-political contexts,” adds Ramsey.
Her focus on the socio-political implications of films should not be surprising since Ramsey also studies political rhetoric, specifically focusing on marginalized populations such as women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens.
In her office on campus, Ramsey has a collection of suffrage cartoons that illustrate how the cultural context and dispute over women’s right to vote during the early 1900s was used by first-wave feminists as a means of making political arguments.
Ramsey began her college career as a political science major but took a few basic communication courses and started to make the connection between the two areas. When it came time to enroll in graduate school, she decided that communication and rhetoric was the right path for her.
A champion for the rights of marginalized populations on campus, Ramsey recently received the Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equity (CLGBTE) Award for Excellence in Curricular Integration. The award honors individuals who strive to improve the climate at Penn State for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, specifically through curricular integration efforts. She was also the selected by the Penn State Women’s Commission in 2010 as their “Achieving Woman” in the faculty category for consistently demonstrating outstanding leadership, professional accomplishment, equal opportunity, and public service.
With regard to her focus on women’s and LGBT issues, Ramsey says, “I credit my discipline of Communication Arts and Sciences for the seamless way that I’m able to try to impact our students and our community through my teaching, research, and service. In communication and rhetorical studies, we are encouraged to make sure that our courses and research recognize that the disenfranchisement of any group in our society threatens our entire system of open, free human communication, and that communication that promotes dialogue is the best and only acceptable means of addressing complex and controversial social issues.
“The students always leave my film classes amazed at how little they’ve assessed popular culture up until that point, but fascinated by how much they now realize they’ve been taught about their world through entertainment.”
Smiling, Ramsey adds, “They also complain that they can’t watch a film or a television show without recognizing the powerful ideological messages about things like race, class, and gender that are embedded in those texts. My hope is that their knowledge of the important role popular culture plays in how we develop as people and as citizens will be passed on by them to later generations, and that someday those powerful messages that serve to advantage some and disadvantage many others won’t be as powerful anymore.”