Kelly urinating on an underage girl is against the law. Tom’s rebuttal is presented confidently with the logos to say that R. He starts rough presenting pathos as a weak argument to say, “Why R. Riley enters the scene with his rant about R. Huey responds with “Aye man you do what you got to do,” which then presents logos because it’s Tom’s job to prosecute people for their wrong doings and he shouldn’t have to apologize. Kelly, which presents pathos because he is being sincere about their emotional response to the trial. These arguments are presented from the very beginning when Tom says how sorry he is about having to prosecute R. Kelly trial.Īs it relates to rhetoric, what do we see here? Well, we can easily see a clear portrayal of the three appeals to effecting persuasion, according to Aristotle: ethos (to understand human character and goodness in various forms), pathos (to understand emotions), and logos (to reason logically). Here is a scene from the episode where Riley presents an argument against his neighbor, Tom Dubois about the R. Kelly’s Lawyer (voiced by Adam West): self explanatory description/ guest star for this episode
#Boondocks episodes youtube trial#
I’m going to try to keep things light heartened but still present a concrete example by using an episode of The Boondocks titled ‘ The Trial of R. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at how the rhetorical function to persuade relates to how the court system in America works. I don’t know about you but this sounds like how the justice system works to me. He also says that before specific audiences we must not only possess the knowledge to prove that our case is valid but be able to apply instruction (evidence) and use persuasion to convince them. Rhetoric can be used to show the truth of things in the natural tendency in which they happen to prevail over their opponents in a conversation or for better use of a word an argument. Aristotle agrees with me on that (or rather I agree with him). Rhetoric is useful for a multitude of things. People who are in the advertising industry, politics, and any discourse that requires you to watch what you say because others are watching you as a brand or a being, well those are the people who pay attention rhetoric. We all somehow use rhetoric without even consciously realizing it, well at least most of us anyway. After reading various definitions of rhetoric over the course of two weeks and trying to understand all perspectives of why and how, not only ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle but also historical figures like John Locke and George Kennedy, explain rhetoric based on their societal time and personal experiences I’ve come to realize that rhetoric is based on everything.