Entry #4 Rhetoric of Scream

 I wanted to tie in the concept of rhetoric and appeals with my interest in media including movies, games, and shows. Today I wanted to look at the new Scream movie that released on March 10th as well as the rhetorical appeals that I believe that I saw while watching this movie. I will try not to go into anything very specific as to avoid any spoilers, mainly I will avoid anything that was not in the trailers leading up to this movie. 

To start, I have been a fan of the Scream franchise for quite a while so I was excited when the 5th Scream movie was announced and then released last year. So naturally, I was excited to watch the 6th installment of the series when it arrived in theaters. Ever since I watched it in theaters a couple days ago I have been thinking about it, and I have thought about the rhetorical appeals that this movie would have in it. So, I thought it would be interesting to look at how horror movies, specifically Scream 6 handles and displays rhetorical appeals throughout the movie. 

Since it is a horror movie, it seems obvious that there will be lack of logos, or any logical appeal. It is commonly known that horror movie characters will hardly ever make the smartest decisions, but there is a high appeal to pathos or the emotional appeal. Since horror movies scare the audience and people keep coming back to see horror movies there seems to be an emotional tie that people feel towards these kinds of movies. We keep coming back to horror movies because of the tense emotions we feel, the scenes that cause anxiety and cause us to yell at the screen telling the character to "Turn Around!" and we keep coming back to this. Especially in the case of the Scream franchise where the movies are a murder mystery in which the audience suspects any members of the cast to be the Ghostface. These are all emotions that tie us into these kinds of movies and specifically towards the Scream franchise, its fun to keep guessing who it is and finding out of you are wrong or not by the end of the movie. 

One actor of the more recent two Scream movies talked in detail in an interview about his experiences while filming these movies. Mason Gooding who plays Chad Minks-Martin talked a lot about Screams 5 and 6 in this interview with Men's Health and he also talks about some of the emotional appeals towards movies like these. Lastly, ethos can also be observed in these movies. It can be observed within the morals the characters may have, or it can tie in to the credibility of one character which can sway how we think of them. I think pathos plays a more attentive role in the series but ethos is certainly there.

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At the end of the day I think it can be interesting to find the rhetoric in the things that we like or enjoy doing. That is why I looked at something I liked and tried tying it in to something I am learning in class. It's something that even you could do to, so why not try it.