SWA5

Making a Killing
Mike White’s “Making a Killing,” portrayed all the elements of rhetoric quite nicely. The most prominent element, in my opinion was exigence. This, however, is rather obvious being that every essay in this chapter is spawned from the Virginia Tech shootings.
The text element is a rather simple one. The essay is written for the New York Times, shortly after the incident occurred, in order to give weary defense to the violent film industry. White stated that while most of his childhood sleepovers surrounded the watching of unnecessarily violent films, “nobody ever got shot in the face in my backyard.” After establishing that point however he later moves on to ask the violent film industry to stop and think before cashing those big checks. While White’s paper does come across as wishy-washy, there are clear supporting details to all of his arguments.
The targeted audience is the New York Times readers, obviously. More importantly, White intended to reach those people who were trying to blame the violent film industry for the killings. White was quick in notifying his audience that the industry was aware of its possible role in the 32 deaths at Virginia Tech. He did want to make it known that the film industry was not entirely to blame for this madness. While he admits that the statement “movies don’t kill people, lunatics kill people,” gives a, possibly exaggerated, sense of freedom to the screenwriters, he implicitly states that it is not the movies that cause people how to act the way they do. Not in such an extreme way at least.
The author is a key part of this piece, more so than most. The fact that Mike White is himself a screenwriter gives much more credit to his standing up and saying that these movies, while not killing anyone of their own accord, may be immoral. It is a lot easier to call out someone else or their profession than it is to stand up and say that you are wrong. If White was more definitive with his argument it would lend even more credit than it currently does.
The last sentence of the essay outlines one of the major constraints in this essay. White is reluctant to call out his own profession, for obvious reasons. After all, you would be fairly reluctant to agree with someone who claimed that teaching English to college students was detrimental to society. Of course that is a ridiculous statement, but portrays a similar situation. Another main constraint that White has is his forum. The New York Times is one of the most respected newspapers in the world. With political correctness being a huge issue in such a widely read paper, coupled with how fresh the events were in everyone’s mind, White had to be very careful not to step on any toes while writing this essay.
Lastly the exigence: on the surface this was written as a response to the terrible events of Virginia Tech. When you read further, you will see that the true motivation is to gently scold the violent film industry, citing current events as evidence. This argument has been played over and over again, and will continue to be so every time something catastrophic happens such as these shootings. Unfortunately, until someone comes up with a new argument, or a new angle to work, it really has all been said.