Sunday, March 22, 2009

Rhetorical Analysis - Music Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egaLLElOQks&feature=channel

The music video I decided to analyze is called Cleaning Out My Closet by Eminem.  Now the lyrics are quite powerful and can be interpreted many different ways, but the music video shows his intentions much more clearly.  The argument is what are the consequences of bad parenting on the child’s emotional and psychological state.  He argues that bad parenting degrades the child’s emotional and psychological state, because bad parenting gives the child negative a negative view of life.   His audience is people that abuse other people and think it has no effect on their lives.  The goal of the argument is to get people to see how his abusive mother hurt him and made him hate her, and he hopes to keep that from happening to other people. He uses a lot of pathos to make his argument.  He shows images of his father beating his mother and the negative impact it left on him.  It also shows him as a child hiding in the closet from his mom so she wouldn’t beat him.  It shows his mom doing drugs and pouring Lysol into his cereal.  I think the most effective part of the music video, however, is that it never shows his mom’s face.  It only shows shots from the neck down, which shows how emotionally and psychologically bruised he is from his childhood.  It also shows a book that he wrote when he was a child to his mom that starts out by saying I love you mom, then it goes to I hate you mom and then again I HATE YOU MOM.  It’s very powerful.  I think all of his arguments are very powerful.  They are examples of what abusive people really would do, and they relate very well to the audience.  I think the argument was extremely effective because he shows images that are very sad but actually happen, and it shows how mad he was after and how much he hates his mom now.  

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