History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma
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| Language: | English |
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Ashland University Honors Theses / OhioLINK
2017
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| Online Access: | http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=auhonors1493777011073985 |
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ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-auhonors14937770110739852021-08-03T07:02:19Z History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma Meadows, Bethany African American Studies African Americans Black History Film Studies Rhetoric rhetoric Neo-Aristotelian rhetoric archetypal metaphors language Selma Martin Luther King Jr Ava DuVernay Our God Is Marching On Nobel Peace Prize Civil Rights Movement film studies African Americans Ava DuVernay, director of Selma (2014), altered Paul Webb’s original screenplay in several ways. While critics of the film usually discuss DuVernay’s depictions of President Lyndon B. Johnson, critics have not yet focused on the changes, both subtle and significant, to all of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historical speeches that had to be rewritten because the film did not receive the rights. This forced DuVernay to create speeches in the spirit of King’s in regard to his appeal to the audience’s sense of justice and ideals of freedom, and to establish a rhetorical call-to-action for the contemporary audience. To compare the differences in orations between history and film, I conducted the rhetorical analyses using the Neo-Aristotelian, or Traditional, approach. The editor of Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action, Jim Kuypers, defines this approach as “focused on the three modes of proof identified by Aristotle, (logos, ethos, and pathos), which broadly speaking defined rational argument, appeals to credibility, and rhetoric that produced an emotional response.” While other speeches and writings of King, such as “I Have a Dream” or “Letter from Birmingham,” are usually studied extensively, the speeches this capstone examines have not had as much attention. I perform rhetorical analyses on King’s historical “Our God Is Marching On!” speech, the film’s version of “Our God Is Marching On!,” the film’s original song “Glory” based on King’s references and allusions in his speeches, King’s historical “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance” speech, and the visual rhetoric of the “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance” speech All of these works both by King and DuVernay not only revolve around the proficient use of logos, ethos, and pathos, but also around archetypal metaphors of war, rising light, and darkness. In this capstone, I found that even though both versions were rhetorically similar due to the use of archetypal metaphors, which appeal to the audiences’ ideals of freedom, sense of hope and of justice, they were different in their establishment of agency, imagery, diction, and syntax. I concluded that these differences should be attributed to the need to appeal to a twenty-first century, contemporary audience. 2017-10-29 English text Ashland University Honors Theses / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=auhonors1493777011073985 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=auhonors1493777011073985 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws. |
| collection |
NDLTD |
| language |
English |
| sources |
NDLTD |
| topic |
African American Studies African Americans Black History Film Studies Rhetoric rhetoric Neo-Aristotelian rhetoric archetypal metaphors language Selma Martin Luther King Jr Ava DuVernay Our God Is Marching On Nobel Peace Prize Civil Rights Movement film studies African Americans |
| spellingShingle |
African American Studies African Americans Black History Film Studies Rhetoric rhetoric Neo-Aristotelian rhetoric archetypal metaphors language Selma Martin Luther King Jr Ava DuVernay Our God Is Marching On Nobel Peace Prize Civil Rights Movement film studies African Americans Meadows, Bethany History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma |
| author |
Meadows, Bethany |
| author_facet |
Meadows, Bethany |
| author_sort |
Meadows, Bethany |
| title |
History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma |
| title_short |
History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma |
| title_full |
History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma |
| title_fullStr |
History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma |
| title_full_unstemmed |
History Versus Film: An Examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric and Ava DuVernay's Selma |
| title_sort |
history versus film: an examination of martin luther king, jr.'s rhetoric and ava duvernay's selma |
| publisher |
Ashland University Honors Theses / OhioLINK |
| publishDate |
2017 |
| url |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=auhonors1493777011073985 |
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AT meadowsbethany historyversusfilmanexaminationofmartinlutherkingjrsrhetoricandavaduvernaysselma |
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1719452155026341888 |