PA Propaganda

Propaganda has used rhetoric in order to gain certain emotions for its audience to change their political views. At certain times, propaganda uses certain figures in a negative light such as"the other" in order for people to rally. This is what my class and I, Art of Rhetoric, had tried to understand. The techniques on how to unite people by through emotion, logic, and trust.  Not only that, but trying to use writing tools such as hyperbola, chamois, metaphor, and much more in order for the audience to believe that our statements are valid. We also learned through politicians in Chicago to understand their rhetoric such as Ugo Okere, candidate for the 40th Ward. All the techniques have been highly useful within looking not only at political videos, but also observing my own surroundings and trying to make myself more approchable during work. What we had to due for a project was to create propaganda about our mayoral candidate, and try to convince people through the art of rhetoric. Not only logos, pathos, ethos- but also things such as undermining certain characters while also over-exaggerating others. We also had to state clearly on what our stance is within these art pieces and what audience this art piece was for. The struggle/ enjoyment I had with this art piece was the animation. It took me all day and few others to finish it, but I believe it enhances the experience for one and show directly what the audience should be rooting for. What will happen to this project would be that it will be sent around to multiple candidates and citizens across Chicago. The reason is quite simple; it will be used to entice people into a People's Assembly. A "People's Assembly" is where a group of citizens come together in order to talk about certain issues that have been affecting the community for so long. These ideas coming up as either the safety or freedom of certain individuals within the limits of the community. For GCE's People's Assembly, we will be focusing mainly on the idea that students should be allowed within Chicago's political battlefield and have their perspective shown. These being certain policies that relate to education, poverty, and much more.

                                              

Untitled from Jeimar Neiza on Vimeo.

When making "King of Thought", I had two ideas: 1. What types of rhetorical techniques was it going to use in order grab the audience 2. How is it going to grab the audiences attention.

I believe in order to answer these questions, I must first explain my artwork piece by piece. First, I would like to talk about the name. The name "King of Thought" given for three reasons. The first being is that it related to the situation in which education was handle, and how it could impact the next generation of students . That Rahm Emmanual was consider a leader within the video, and would rather have his own way then the way of the people. Such as a selfish king. This being a perfect metaphor for what is happening right now. 

Not only, but the second reason being there is certain hyperbole when talking about these Kings, showing a black and white perspective on the situation. Rahm Emmanuel is only seen once and is shown to be a monstrous being who enjoys the downfall of students. He has no face and only shows emotion when being presented as a negative thing, such as the video call in out for his actions. The reason I bring this up is because throughout US history, certain figures have been placed as "the other" in order to promote violence and gain power. The biggest example would be in WWII, where multiple signs showed racist depictions of the Japanese from across the world. Exaggerating certain facial feature glorifying actions in a negative way and nobody disagreeing because propaganda was the only demonstration of those people at the time. My piece is no different, as not only glorifies Rahm as a villain, but glorifies Paul Vallas(the rhetorical Challenger) as a person that is extremely pure. To the point that there is even light behind him in one point in the video. Thus enforcing the black and white perspective onto the audience.

Which bring me to my third point-that the name itself was meant to lure audience in without even known the content. For most people and myself "King" is mostly associated with British Kings, in which the bloodline was bested upon by some deity, and therefore stating that they had all the power. This situation is no different, expect instead of a god or gods, it is society itself that chooses who can rule. Thus the name "King of Thought" rather then "Kings of Thought" with a main group of people that vote for Rahm rather then Paul. 

In the video, I had to address a certain audience so that they could look into my political perspective. I choose the audience of middle working class that is patriotic for the city. You could see this with the line " the working class of Chicago". Not only that, but I focused more on how Chicago could improve rather than the families improving or each of them have a specific dream. I generalized the students to make them seem as if all of them wanted to be businessmen or doctors more then anything else. I also stated "40-60 percent of residents" not "families", because I am trying to show more of a logos that shows the affect of the people in general. I also state the fact people of "ages 17-50" could gain this training despite most people associating students with young people. This allows the idea that Paul isn't just looking for young people, he is looking for Chicago itself to better improve for most ages.

Finally, I wish to talk about the message of this video. If it wasn't clear enough, I wanted to show off the policy in which core classes should be added with city colleges and that it would benefit every one. How the video present this is through animation, making it extremely visual creating a certain point. I wanted to show patriotism throughout all of the video as explain before. The best example would be the shot where a person (who assumably lives in the south side) is hear the narrator talk about this system being unfair. As the narrator is talk, we clearly see the person face drag from sadness to anger. This is extremely important because this person is both metaphorically and literally a citizen of Chicago and wants to fight against "the other". This being Rahm Emmanuel. Thus, it breaks the sound barrier not because it addresses the lower class, but also tries to address most of the patriots within Chicago.