Rhetorical Analysis V1: Interracial = Including a Black Person?

While the Interracial Relationships video did an admirable job attempting to address an important issue in today's society, it fails to penetrate the issue at a deep enough level and also to establish pathos with the audience because of its narrow focus on African Americans as well as difficulties with the narrator’s voice and an unclear goal within the video.

The issue of interracial relationships is difficult to tackle and while attempting it at all is admirable in its own right, the very first step that should be taken in every case is a step away from the issue. It’s extremely important that when talking about any issue dealing with race that the author realizes the sheer number and variety of races that populate the world as a whole. Having realized that simple fact, the author will then by necessity be forced to take into account the ways in which an issue has affected every race and not just the race of the author him/herself. This first step is essential to establishing ethos with the audience because in any academic medium, the author of a piece is expected to remain as unbiased as possible so as to allow evidence to prove his/her thesis rather than sheer emotional weight or pathos. The text slide in the video in which the argument finally becomes clear is one that simultaneously seems to complicate the argument by specifically dealing with interracial relationships involving a black individual. Also, practically the only fact in the film was specifically based on a black and white couple, and every picture shown at the end of the video involved at least one black person. The video’s failure to demonstrate its understanding of the problem on a larger scale removes almost every iota of credibility from the video and leaves the video with only a couple of means to get through to the audience.
Along with the video’s narrow focus on the black individual, the lack of properly cited material also brings the author’s credibility into question. The credits only include the first names of the individuals who created it. There are no attributions to the writers of the songs used in the film, or of the movies, interviews, and news clips. The individuals being interviewed were not mentioned or thanked. This loss of credibility weakens the group’s argument.which leads the audience to feel that the argument itself isn’t supported by facts. This can be dangerous in an advocacy film as the film could then have the reverse effect of encouraging its audience towards the opposite point of view from the author, or at the very least, lose the attention of the audience.
The narrator of the film is the next difficulty because of its particular monotone quality. It seems to say a great deal of words with very little substance.

Interrelational Film Notes

1. Film starts with several different interracial comedic scenes which could draw the audience in but fail to do so as the film quickly switches to a serious voice recording.
2. The first text slide moves by so quickly that you feel like you’ve missed something. If you pause on the frame you can read through the text but it doesn’t seem to be explained at all either by the text itself or by the voice.
3. There are two separate points of view laid out in the video, an interview with an older white male who is against interracial relationships but claims not to be a racist and a young hispanic man who thinks interracial relationships are fine. The group seems to have spent more time on the white male which confuses the audience as to whether they are arguing for or against interracial relationship until we get to the slide at 0:54 where the text clearly demonstrates that the video is advocating for acceptance of interracial relationships.
4. We next see a news report of the extreme anti-interracial relationship view which involves a man hiring an assassin to kill his daughter in law. This is followed by another text frame in which it becomes clear that the creators of the video are probably black because of the specificity of dealing with thoughts on black people involved in interracial relationships. As a white male myself this automatically distances me from the topic at hand. There is also traditionally african american music playing in the background which seems to detract even more from the ethos of the authors as it would seem that they are unable to pull back and look at the larger picture of what interracial relationships mean. A clip of a black TV show on BET is seen next and seems to go off topic in a way because it is dealing with specifically black individuals who enter into interracial relationships. The scope of the topic seems much narrower than it should be.
5. What would seem to be primary research is shown in a series of interviews starting with a young black woman, an older black woman, a younger hispanic woman, a younger black man, and finally a younger white male. These interviews are actually one of the better sections of the video as they seem to show a large variety of differing viewpoints even within the same races and all of the people being interviewed seem to be well spoken and have strong opinions on the matter.
6. The voice comes back into it again but in reality it tends towards the monotone and because of the lack of visual stimuli during the spoken sections the voice becomes less interesting and the audience begins to lose interest.
7. There is a text slide which brings up the Miscegenation law which was on the first text slide but once again the audience doesn’t really get enough information about what happened. The music is upbeat at this point perhaps to emphasize the positivity The Lovings overturning the Miscegenation law although it doesn’t seem to be stated whether they are successful or not.
8. Finally the video is concluded with around 15 pictures of various interracial couples, mosty famous and pretty much explicitly including one black person.
9. Credits include first names only of the group members but no citing for the news reports or movies used in the film.