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Rhetorical Techniques Used In Supersize Me

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In 2003, a brave, middle-aged man named Morgan Spurlock decided to take one for the human race and carry out a scientific experiment using himself as the guinea pig. Morgan Spurlock, the director, producer and the star of the documentary, Supersize Me, decided to go on a diet that consists of nothing but McDonald’s products for thirty days straight, including their bottled water. Spurlock then followed a specific set of rules to govern his eating habits. Throughout the 100-minutes film, which filmed and documented his actions for thirty days, Spurlock wittingly brought awareness with the sneaking danger behind fast food meals by using mastered rhetorical appeals: logos, pathos and ethos. Although all the rhetorical appeals were intertwined with each other throughout the film, Supersize Me starts out with using logos. Logos is the appeal to logic, which means to argue with the usage of reason and cold, hard facts. Logos is very important, especially in this documentary because the point of it is to raise awareness about the things that we put into our bodies and to encourage everyone …show more content…

Spurlock himself is obviously no nutritionist, nor is a politician (which is what his documentary eventually tend to veer off into); therefore, Supersize Me’s appeal to ethics is not as strong as it could be. However, Spurlock still establishes the document’s reliability by visiting various health professionals, and have them establish the credibility. Ethos is another important rhetorical appeal in this documentary, if not the most. Throughout the film, he establishes his own credibility by carrying out the experiment on himself and film the whole process, which allows the viewers to be apart of his life for thirty days straight, and it is no doubt one of the strongest method of ethos ever. Without credibility, the viewers most likely won’t even be bothered into watching this

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