Fahrenheit 9/11's Purpose-Driven Agents: A Multipentadic Approach to Political Entertainment

Samantha Senda-Cook, University of Utah

Abstract

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, a financial success in the box office, stirred controversy and conversation among US American publics. Using Kenneth Burke’s pentad, the author demonstrates how Moore situated the act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose in the film’s two major narratives--that of George W. Bush and that of the poverty-stricken people of Flint, Michigan. By naming the dominant term in each pentad, the author argues that Moore relied on the same philosophical school identified by Burke, the mystic perspective, to highlight what Moore constructed as the motivations of the agents of these two pentads. This supported Moore’s thesis of identifying the United States as classist and underlies his attempt to compel audience members to challenge this system. Additionally, the author explores Moore’s use of perspective by incongruity with his employment of the film format and his juxtaposition of the two pentads. Finally, the author contends that scholars should attend to the complexities, as well as the effects, of political entertainment to better understand the strategies of this powerful genre. Key words: Kenneth Burke, pentad, Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, politics, entertainment, classism, perspective by incongruity.

USING A MICROPHONE AND A BLUE-COLLAR PERSONA, Michael Moore has raised eyebrows, voices, and boiling points; his overtly subjective documentary style of filmmaking caters to a generation immersed in audio/visual stimulation. In the summer 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 stretched conceptions of politics and entertainment. From a rhetorical standpoint, the mixture of jokes, popular music, story telling, and documentation allowed Moore to involve audience members in ways that politics alone could not. Also, this film managed to criticize George W. Bush, then a presidential candidate, while skirting to Federal Election Commission (FEC) laws concerning political messages. That is not to say that people did not try to prohibit the film’s release since it was so close to the election. However, Moore used every attack as fuel to promote his movie, stating:

I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there [that] tried to stop this movie either through harassment campaigns, going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, or the things they said on television. All they have done is give[n] more publicity to the film (qtd. in Coorey & Cock, 2004).

This is one of several controversies that preceded the film. These controversies likely enabled Fahrenheit 9/11 to make a political statement, attract large audiences, and gross $21.8 million in the first weekend of its release (Bowles, 2004).

Besides the monetary impact of the documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 exemplifies the murky realm of political entertainment. Baym (2005) emphasized that productions that fall into the political entertainment category are not simply what Wilder (2005) called “infotainment,” which implies that both the information and the entertainment aspects lose quality in this format. Instead, “the languages of [news, politics, entertainment, and marketing] have lost their distinctiveness and are being melded into previously unimaginable combinations” (Baym, p. 262). Interrogating these new combinations is essential to understanding not only how audience members use political entertainment, but also the rhetorical strategies producers of it employ (Rockler, 2003).

Previous work has illuminated the rhetorical functions and audience effects of political entertainment. In addition to Fahrenheit 9/11, researchers have engaged The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The West Wing, and some Saturday Night Live sketches to determine the contributions such programs make to a complex political milieu. The shows tend to fall somewhere between fiction and nonfiction and include pop culture accoutrements, which makes them difficult to dismiss as entertainment and almost impossible to exclude as a political force. Scholars have taken up the task of addressing the so-called “fake news” of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (e.g., Baym, 2005; Baym, 2007; Borden & Tew, 2007; Jones, 2005; Love, 2007), the fiction of The West Wing (e.g., Holbert, Tschida, Dixon, Cherry, Steuber, & Airne, 2005; Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles, 2002), and the late night jesters of talk shows and Saturday Night Live (e.g., Hollander, 2005; Smith & Voth, 2002).

However, these studies do not provide a complete picture of how political entertainment works rhetorically. They have informed our knowledge of the effects of such programs as well as some of the rhetorical devices they have employed, but not the rhetorical function of constructing the motivations of others. In particular, this research has focused on political entertainment that fabricates all or some of its content. Although critics claimed that Fahrenheit 9/11 strayed from the truth, Moore did not present his work as fictional. He created a version of history. Therefore, while The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live cast real politicians and real political situations in their productions, they do not claim to adhere to facts of any kind. As a result, examining the motives that Moore created for the “characters” in his film is important.

Rather than focusing on the effects or rhetoric of fictionalized representations, my analysis considers the strategies used by a rhetor who constructed the motivations of real people. Although many journalists speculated about the motives of Moore himself (e.g., Cheney, 2004; Hernandez, 2004; Moore, J., 2004; Nader, n.d.; Parry, 2004; Peterson, 2004), it is more interesting—and more attainable—to examine how Moore represented Bush’s motivations and thus challenged Bush’s characterizations of himself. Moore’s motivations are somewhat obvious. He wanted to end the second Bush’s presidency, as a number of scholars have explained (e.g., Briley, 2005; Holbert & Hansen, 2006; Lawrence, 2005; Levin, 2004; Wilshire, 2005), and respond to what he perceived to be weak journalism in the US, as Conway (2005) and Economou (2004) contended.

The rhetorical strategy of reconstructing Bush’s motives using political entertainment allowed Moore an opportunity to reshape audience interpretations of political turmoil. When rhetors cast the motivations of other people, they give audience members a lens through which they may examine those people. In other words, representing motives has a strong rhetorical function. Analyzing the depictions of motives of politicians and the public in political entertainment will help researchers understand how this effective rhetorical strategy is used to placate audiences, encourage them to laugh at monumental government mistakes, or incite them to challenge oppressive government structures. Thus, employing a tool like Burke’s pentad makes sense for analyzing different kinds of political entertainment.

Rhetorical scholarship is enhanced because the pentad offers a means of analyzing the nuances within the text that create constructions of others’ motivations. In this case, Moore presented two contrasting stories in order to illustrate not only the danger that accompanied the Bush administration and the flaws in the US socio-economic structure, but also to encourage audience members to confront these issues.

I argue that Moore’s version of history, Fahrenheit 9/11, offered two primary stories in order to emphasize the oppressive structure of the US class system. Burke’s pentad functions as a means of determining how Moore represented the motives of Bush and US soldiers in these stories. I answer Rountree’s (2001) call for multipentadic approaches to contemporary texts and use perspective by incongruity, another Burkean concept, to tease out the differences between the purpose-driven agents of these two pentads. Combining these theories provides another tool for political entertainment scholars to use. Examining the broader story lines of political entertainment with an eye for motive and juxtaposition complicates a burgeoning genre of information production.

In this essay, I provide an overview of the pentad and focus specifically on a multipentadic approach. Then, I proffer Fahrenheit 9/11 as a case study to demonstrate the potential impact that the pentad and perspective by incongruity can have on political entertainment analysis when used in conjunction. After I articulate two separate pentads within Moore’s film and discuss the dominant term, purpose, in those pentads, I return to the broader issue of political entertainment.

Pentad Interplay and Perspective by Incongruity

To begin, the pentad has been widely adopted by communication scholars and offers an effective means of critiquing rhetorical strategies. Burke’s (1952) concept of dramatism undergirds a pentadic approach to rhetorical analysis. This critical tool offers a means of investigating a rhetor’s strategic construction of motives—in this case, Moore’s constructions of Bush’s motives as well as the soldiers’ motives. Identifying the five elements of the pentad, the dominant term and ratios in rhetorical situations comprises the critical task, but recent applications of the pentad offer additional manifestations of this critical tool. Specifically, I am interested in multipentadic approaches that highlight the interplay between different constructions of motives in one text.

In determining how the rhetor attends to the five elements that comprise the pentad—act, agent, scene, agency, and purpose—and the relationships among these elements, the rhetor’s conceptualization of the motives for action become clear. Burke (1952) identified the five elements that comprise the pentad as: “act (names what took place, in thought or deed), scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred), agent (the person or kind of person that performed the act), agency (what means or instruments he [sic] used), and purpose” (why the agent performed the act) (p. x). Some scholars have used Burke’s pentad as a means to further theory or invent ideas (e.g., Keith, 1979), but most scholars—and indeed Burke himself—argue that the pentad’s primary use lies in critical analysis (e.g., Abrams, 1981; Birdsell, 1987; Bizzell & Herzberg, 2001; Blankenship, Fine, & Davis, 1983; Burgchardt, 2005; Burke, 1978; Brummett, 1994; Foss, 2004; Fox, 2002; Hamlin & Nichols, 1973; Ling, 1970). Specifically, the pentad is necessary in order to make “rounded statements” about motives (Burke, 1952, p. x). Burke stated that the characterization of each element by a rhetor is a construction of the agent’s motives. This enables the rhetor to interpret a situation in a specific way and invite the audience to accept that interpretation. If the rhetor identifies her/himself as the agent, then (s)he has said something about her/his motives. However, if the rhetor chooses to exclude him/herself, as in Fahrenheit 9/11, then (s)he has said something about someone else’s motivations.

Although some pentadic analyses (e.g., Abrams, 1981) have simply identified the five elements in a rhetorical situation, a more complex endeavor involves identifying dominant terms and ratios as well as their corresponding philosophical schools. Burke (1952) claimed that ratios—relationships between pentadic elements—reveal the justifications and motivations that the rhetor supplies to the audience. Fox (2002) explained that the terms themselves do little to advance a critique; however, when shifted and coupled, they reveal what the rhetor stresses and thus what (s)he finds most important in a particular situation. This is the dominant term of the pentad, and it allows for further analysis of the text. Burke suggested that for each dominant term in a pentad, there is a corresponding philosophy. When the scene is emphasized, the rhetor subscribes to materialism; it is idealism when the rhetor features the agent and pragmatism when (s)he focuses on the agency; if the purpose is highlighted, then mysticism is the philosophical system; finally, when the act is stressed, realism is the philosophy. In addition to exposing the perspective of the rhetor, the terms also employ a structure that Rountree (1998) argued links our understandings of all of the terms together.

Likewise, the terms of one pentad affect how we conceptualize other pentads (Rountree, 2001). As such, multipentadic critiques can reveal complex rhetorical strategies that frame how audiences are encouraged to view information within the artifact as well as future situations. Identifying and comparing two pentads—or more—in a single text allows a rhetorician to see how they constrain and enable, undermine and support one another. In identifying two pentads in Senator Edward Kennedy’s speech, Ling (1970) demonstrated not only the insight gained by the dominant terms, but also that gained from a multipentadic approach. Birdsell (1987) countered this approach with a proposal that modifying the elements of the pentad and seeking a common root term “can help explain the interrelationships among various sets of motives” (275). Although this approach seems fruitful for investigating subtle shifts in a pentad, I contend that political entertainment benefits from a multipentadic approach oriented by perspective by incongruity. My research indicates that perspective by incongruity is a useful tool for analyzing media in general and political entertainment in particular. For example, Rockler (2002) explained how this theory can challenge students to overcome the assumption that because a TV program or film is entertaining, it should not be analyzed. As my critique shows, the combination of these two concepts—the pentad and perspective by incongruity—dissects Moore’s strategic constructions and exposes their differing yet complementary parts.

Fahrenheit 9/11 as a Case Study

Fahrenheit 9/11 contributed to an already turbulent political milieu in 2004 (Goodnight, 2005). As is popular with media criticism, scholars have articulated the effects that this film had on audiences’ political knowledge and partisan opinions (e.g., Goodnight, 2005; Stroud, 2005; Toplin, 2006). This focus on effects mirrors a common focus of political entertainment scholars in general (e.g., Hollander, 2005; Young, 2004) and so it makes sense that scholars would seek to understand how Fahrenheit 9/11 affected Republicans’ ambivalence (Holbert & Hansen, 2006), how it affected the political climate and personal sensibilities in 2004 (Toplin, 2006), how Fahrenheit 9/11 did not have the effect it should have because Bush was reelected (Wilshire, 2005), and how selective exposure altered the effects that the film had on audiences (Stroud, 2005). Although Holbert, Hansen, Mortensen, and Caplan (2007) analyzed the filmmaker’s influences, there is a lacuna of criticism that focus on Moore’s construction of characters’ motivations. After I briefly ground Fahrenheit 9/11 in the cultural climate, with regard to both politics and the film itself, I delineate the terms of the two salient pentads and suggest that Moore plays these against one another in order to emphasize the classist oppression in contemporary US American culture.

Grounding Fahrenheit 9/11

Bitzer (1968) suggested that an exigence, in part, generates a rhetorical situation to which a rhetor may feel the need to respond. Although Moore’s oeuvre demonstrates a commitment to challenging class issues, the exigence to which Fahrenheit 9/11 responded began in 2000 when it was clear that George H. W. Bush would be sworn into the office of the president. On January 28, 2003, Bush outlined the danger that would confront the United States (and the world) in the State of the Union address, and he began the war in Iraq. This was the focus of Fahrenheit 9/11. In the following months, the Bush administration pushed for offensive action in Iraq and the United Nations voted against a war (DeYoung & Pincus, 2003; Nichols, 2003; Tyler & Barringer, 2003; Weisman & Barringer, 2003). After nearly four months of speculative reports from Hans Blix and U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, the president and his advisors made the decision to invade Iraq to find and destroy the weapons of mass destruction. Announcing that the time for diplomacy had passed on March 17, Bush declared that Hussein had two days to give up the illegal weapons (Burns, 2003; Bush, 2003b). On March 19, Bush announced that Saddam Hussein’s forty-eight hours had come to an end, and it was time to “disarm Iraq, free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger” (p. 329). People reacted to Bush’s announcement with varying degrees of concern and/or relief. The US people were at odds with one another, arguing over the legitimacy of the invasion (Clemetson, 2003; Deans, 2003; Sleeth, 2003). Almost a year later, Hussein was caught, but US American soldiers were still in Iraq (Gaurino, 2003). Among Democrats, an anybody-but-Bush mentality emerged and many candidates surfaced (Maggi, 2004; Whoriskey & Rein, 2004). Everyone who perceived a problem had an idea about how to solve it. Thus, Moore saw an opportunity to expose what he construed as Bush’s manipulation of the US American public and to publicize the faults of the US class system.

The estimated gross of Fahrenheit 9/11 in the US alone, nearly $120 million, was certainly a result of timing (Taibbi, 2004; Waxman, 2004). By releasing his film a few months before the presidential election, Moore generated sold-out shows across the United States. Additionally, the months leading up to the release proved that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Although Fahrenheit 9/11 was dogged by controversies that threatened to halt the release and played in only 868 theaters, the film was financially successful. Four major, nationally covered clashes emerged within a month and a half prior to the release of the film. Moore embraced these controversies because he believed that if people knew the truth, his version of the truth anyway, they would take the first steps toward solving the world’s problems. Although Moore’s solution would begin with ousting Bush, it would not end there.

Moore developed two primary tales in Fahrenheit 9/11: that of the upper class and their hunger for wealth, and that of the lower class and their dutiful service to the US government. Moore portrayed the act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose to suit his thesis and his perspective, emphasizing the purpose in each pentad. He edited the film in a way that expressed a stark contrast between the wealthy in Washington and poor in Flint, Michigan. This contrast was made more salient by the similarities between the pentads. In particular, the privileging of purpose in both and the overlapping scenes and acts represented not antithetical perspectives, but rather perspectives interplayed. Thus, he provided the audience with a perspective based on the incongruity of the two pentads as well as the presentation of evidence.

Although Moore is the creator of this artifact, I contend that his explicit involvement ended there. Just as an author of a history book does, Moore shifted the audience’s focus from himself, as storyteller, to the drama of the story itself. Therefore, I do not identify him as a part of either pentad. In seeking to deconstruct the persona that Bush (and the Bush administration) created for him/itself, Moore presented not just the mistakes the administration made, but, more importantly, the calculated efforts to pursue war.

Bush’s Pentad

The symbolic choices Moore made and the narrative structure he imposed indicates a mystic philosophical perspective for the first pentad. As the rhetor of this film, Moore offered many narratives within narratives and extensive possibilities for variations in the pentadic identifications; however, I focus on the two major story lines. Fahrenheit 9/11 encouraged the audience to see the four years prefacing the film as follows: The act (attacking Iraq) The scene (post-September 11, 2001) The agent (George W. Bush) The agency (the office of the United States President) The purpose (substantial financial gain and maintenance of power structures)

Act. Moore proffered many different acts that could be identified as the fault of Bush, but the most poignant act is that of attacking Iraq, and this reinforced Moore’s thesis. The other acts, such as dubious business dealings, irresponsible planning, and questionable appointments are either overshadowed by or encompassed within the war in Iraq. Instead of spending a great deal of time exploring the people hurt by these other acts, Moore used them to satirically critique Bush. By devoting such a large portion of the film to the people fighting in Iraq, Moore contrasted the people who make decisions (Bush and his aides) with the people who answer a patriotic call even with limited resources (people in Flint).

From a retaliation perspective, the attack against Iraq did not make sense (as I will explain). However, Moore suggested that the US public had no problem swallowing this because the environment cultivated by the government following the attacks of September 11 allowed the Bush administration to take advantage of pervasive fear.

Scene. According to Moore, creating an atmosphere steeped in panic diverted the attention of the US public from the specifics of a retaliation attack and toward the need for such an attack. Moore argued that the government kept people perpetually terrified and confused by administering nonspecific warnings. By including an interview with congressperson and psychologist Jim McDermott, Moore offered a professional opinion on the actions of the Bush administration during the months following the attacks of September 11. Moore also visually reinforced this memory of the atmosphere by presenting the terrorism alert scale (red = extreme, orange = high, etc.) while McDermott said that the government would raise and lower the levels without providing any specific information.

The filmmaker quoted a few unidentified people from a rural town to illustrate the level of uncertainty and alarm among private citizens: “Never trust nobody you don’t know and even if you do know them, you can’t really trust them then” (M. Moore, 2004). “Sometimes when I see certain people, I think, ‘Oh my goodness, could they be a terrorist?’” (M. Moore, 2004). Then, Moore quoted Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security, to exemplify his point; Ridge cautioned, “every family in America should prepare itself for a terrorist attack” (M. Moore, 2004). Moore reinforced this notion by cutting to a commercial for a personal bomb shelter. By focusing on the government, Moore emphasized the administration’s explicit efforts to create a scene of fear rather than one of conciliation.

Agent.The film commenced by recounting the beginning of Bush’s presidency, after which Moore featured members of Bush’s administration (specifically Condolezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Tom Ridge) preparing for television appearances. Moore also named James R. Bath, George H. W. Bush, Prince Bandar, and a variety of other people directly involved with the Carlyle Group and business relations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although this multitude of names is provided in Fahrenheit 9/11, one person rose above all others as the central figure. That person was George W. Bush. By establishing a connection between Bush and all the other people in relevant industry and politics, Moore illustrated the web of power that was at Bush’s disposal, attempting to convince the audience that this political Goliath was capable of anything.

From the start, Moore painted an unflattering portrayal of Bush. To begin, the director positioned Bush as a mere simpleton who should not have been in office at all, but progressed to illustrate the power of the Bush family and how Bush could have, but did not, prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11. Moore portrayed Bush’s incompetence and irresponsibility as a leader with a notorious quotation from Bush: “We have an old saying in Texas, ‘fool me once, shame on you . . . .fool me twice, [pause] you aren’t going to fool me again” (M. Moore, 2004). Here, Bush’s inability to articulate a common phrase was supposed to indicate the probability that Bush had other, more serious, faults. Although Moore emphasized Bush’s greed, ineptitude, and unethical connections, Bush would not be an agent capable of this kind of counter-productivity without a key, the key to the White House.

Agency. The primary means by which Bush was able to conduct such dubious activity was the power of the presidency. This office implied the trust of the US American people, and it delivered on that implication. Moore explained that the aforementioned fearful environment that allowed Bush to declare war on Iraq was created by the government, Bush’s government.

It was also Bush’s government that established a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, although no factual link existed. To illustrate this, Moore edited speeches of Rice, Cheney, Rumsfield, Powell, and Bush to emphasize with what frequency these people mentioned Iraq and Al Qaeda together. Finally, Moore included a quotation from Bush epitomizing his position; Bush stated, “I’m a war president; I make decisions, here in the Oval Office, with war on my mind” (M. Moore, 2004). By including this quote, Moore claimed that Bush and his administration did not exhaust all the means of negotiation preceding the war because from the start Bush wanted to get the United States into a conflict.

Sub-agencies also exist within this film. Some of the sub-agencies, Moore contended, provided the means by which Bush was elected. Moore indicated using interviews with Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, that two significant sources of power are the wealth of the Bush family and money from supporters in corporations and the business dealings with the Saudis; all of these function as powerful capital. The money from these elite sources enabled Bush in many ways. However, I assert that these agencies did not afford Bush the opportunity to serve his purpose by cultivating a sense of fear among US publics like the office of the president did. Furthermore, while this money served as a partial means to an end, more money was an end itself.

Purpose. Moore’s major argument was that attacking Iraq was illogical from even a purely reactionary perspective; attacking Afghanistan, where more Al Qaeda members resided, would make more sense. Moore stressed this point by including an interview with Richard Clarke, the head of counter-terrorism at the time. In this interview, Clarke explained the problems he encountered at the meeting he attended on September 12, 2001 to discuss a response strategy; he commented, “Well, Donald Rumsfield said, when we talked about bombing the Al Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan, he said there were no good targets in Afghanistan, let’s bomb Iraq. And we said that Iraq had nothing to do with this and that didn’t make much difference” on Rumsfield’s decision (qtd. in M. Moore, 2004). The rationale provided by Rumsfield, that “there were no good targets in Afghanistan,” was a poor excuse to bomb Iraq. This implied that some other motive for bombing Iraq must have existed.

In a voice-over, Moore explained that the US taxpayers pay Bush’s salary as president, a modest sum when compared to how much the Saudis have invested in companies like the Carlyle Group (on whose board George H. W. Bush sat), Halliburton (the company Dick Cheney ran before becoming the vice president), and Enron (the company that was run by Kenneth Lay, Bush’s most prominent financial supporter in his campaign). Moore estimated that the Saudis have invested $1.4 million over a period of thirty years. Therefore, when every other flight in the United States was grounded, twenty-four members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave the country on September 13, 2001. The filmmaker linked the investment amounts with the privileged flights when he commented that “$1.4 million doesn’t just buy a lot of flights out of the country, it buys a lot of love” (M. Moore, 2004). In other words, Moore insinuated that Bush’s loyalty does not lie with the people of the US because the Saudis have so much more to offer. For that reason, prominent members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to fly out of the country while average Arab-Americans were detained without charge or familial notification.

To accentuate his point further, Moore cited the investment money as the explanation of why Bush did not attack Saudi Arabia and why the Saudi Arabian embassy is the most heavily guarded one in Washington D.C. With Congressional support six weeks after September 11, a company called United Defense made a one-day profit of $237 million after the government awarded them a contract to supply the artillery for the war. United Defense is one of the companies that the Carlyle Group owns. At that time, George H. W. Bush as well as Shafe Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother, sat on the Carlyle Group’s board and both stood to gain substantial sums of money from this government contract as long as the war continued. By illuminating the connections between Bush and Bin Laden, Moore suggested that the president would rather pursue a large-scale war to ensure a constant flow of money for himself and his family than capture the primary criminal architect behind terrorist attacks.

Moore speculated that this greed was the purpose behind refraining from bombing Afghanistan. Many major corporations in the energy field wanted to build a pipeline that would go from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan and transport natural gas. When the US invaded Afghanistan and appointed Hamed Karzai, who served as an advisor to Unocal, as an interim president, Unocal built the pipeline and both Halliburton and Enron benefited. Finally, Moore depicted these themes visually with maps of Afghanistan and a series of montages that humorously highlight the connections between people. For example, he superimposed the faces of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Tony Blair over footage of old western characters. These montages offered a twofold purpose: first, they link all the right people together so that the audience will be able to recognize who exactly is involved and second, they provide a kind of mnemonic device so that the audience will remember what they have seen.

Ratios. In this pentad the dominant term as construed by Moore is the purpose—greed. This is contrary to the representation that Bush (2003) (as well as members of the Bush administration) maintained. Despite the power the president wields, he successfully used his addresses to Congress and the nation to privilege scene in his justification for beginning the war in Iraq (e.g., Bush, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c). Specifically, Bush adopted the materialistic perspective and positioned himself as without agency, making the war the only choice he had to respond to the scene. Tonn, Endress, and Diamond (1993) explained that agents who operate within the materialist philosophical school are “seriously constrained by scenic elements” (p. 166). However, in Moore’s telling, Bush is not seriously constrained, but rather compelled by a higher purpose to act. Scholars have critiqued instances of people in power assuming a materialist perspective in order to absolve themselves of wrongdoing. Ling (1970) and Birdsell (1987) both articulated instances in which the rhetor (Edward Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, respectively) adopted a materialist perspective and positioned himself as the victim of the scene in order to avoid blame. Moore challenged this strategy as Bush used it throughout his term.

It is clear that Moore explicitly countered Bush’s description of facts by depicting Bush as driven by a purpose rooted in greed. Therefore, within this pentad, Moore adopted the mystic philosophy, which is illustrated by emphases on Bush’s choice and Bush’s strategic construction of the post-September 11 scene. First, Moore explained how the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq in spite of the lack of rationale. By presenting the invasion as one option of many, Moore reinforced his point that a war in Iraq was Bush’s choice from the beginning. Furthermore, Moore emphasized the calculated choice that Bush made. In other words, in Moore’s depiction, Bush did not invade Iraq simply to demonstrate his power—or for any other agent-driven reason—but rather he chose Iraq for the potential gain in wealth for him and people like him. This defies the rationale supplied by Bush, which consistently pointed to the scene as the cause of the attacks. Second, Moore’s account emphasized how Bush created the scene after the attacks of September 11, 2001 to position an attack of retaliation as a logical act. In cultivating a sense of fear, Bush positioned the country as in need of a solution. Therefore, when he presented one, many of the citizens were ready to accept it. In deliberately confusing and terrifying citizens, Bush was able to control not only the scene, but also the future action that the government took—both functions of the agency, the office of the presidency. With this control, he was able to serve his purpose and accomplish his goal.

In addition to positioning wealth as the purpose behind Bush’s actions, Moore also depicted the Bush family’s wealth as means to gain the White House. In Fahrenheit 9/11, the Bush family’s political influence and wealth, not the votes of the public, facilitated Bush’s rise to power. Moore argued that Bush obtained the office of the president by manipulating the public. Indeed, he opened his film by detailing the dubious start of Bush’s presidency. Even after the troubling election results, Bush gained access to an office that would allow him to make lots of money. This, according to Moore, was the purpose of Bush’s actions. Moore advanced this theory by showing Bush catering to corporate elites and the linkages between the Bush family and the corporations that benefited from the attack on Iraq. Finally, Moore demonstrated that Bush was willing to go to any length to serve his purpose. As Foss (2004) explained, when purpose is the dominant term—as in Moore’s representation of Bush’s motivations—it takes precedence over everything else. Bush’s desire to maintain his wealth overpowered any sense of obligation to the public and soldiers.

This use of the mystic philosophical school framed Bush’s motivations as rooted in his privilege and others’ suffering. Interestingly, Moore adopted the mystic perspective in the second pentad as well. Moore juxtaposed these two pentads by featuring purpose as the dominant term for both, but illustrating that the purpose was not the same for these agents. Moreover, the director overlapped the act and the scene. Whereas the agents of the first pentad declared and cultivated these elements, the agents of the second pentad had to negotiate them. Therefore, although these stories mingle and meet, they end differently.

The Soldiers’ Pentad

Fahrenheit 9/11 provided multiple narratives interacting with one another simultaneously and overlapping to create layers of meaning. All of the stories in Fahrenheit 9/11 contributed to Moore’s thesis, which was that wealthy people with political power waged this war to further oppress poor people and maintain power structures. In highlighting this system and depicting the desperate scene in which soldiers’ families lived, Moore accentuated the power that a sense of duty can hold over people. As opposed to Bush’s pentad, Moore’s featuring of purpose in the soldiers’ case played out quite differently. I identify the features of the second pentad as follows: The act (joining the military) The scene (poverty-stricken Flint, Michigan in a time of war) The agents (poor people) The agency (Marine recruiters) The purpose (combination of patriotic duty and familial obligation)

Act. Moore shifted the focus in the film from Bush and other elites to the people on the ground. The tone of the film changed from mocking to disturbing when the audience was exposed to injured and dead people, explosions, and other bloody footage. To establish the act as joining the military—and not fighting a war or killing people—Moore showed the naïveté of some of the young soldiers and the chaos of the war situation. He depicted a facet of war not shown on military recruitment commercials; he attempted to characterize the killing as atrocious without condemning the people performing it. He did this by taking the audience back to where many of the soldiers come from—in a broad sense, places with high poverty and unemployment rates, but strong family values, places like Flint, Michigan. By resituating the narrative, Moore effectively invited the audience to empathize with people who lived in Flint and joined the military. This act made sense in this context.

Scene. Moore focused his construction of this scene on Flint, Michigan. The filmmaker emphasized the dilapidation of the area by including an interview in which one man explained the similarities between pictures of Iraq on TV and what he sees in Flint. Shots of decrepit houses along with interviews with groups of high school students who all knew someone in Iraq characterized the town. Connecting the lack of jobs in the area and the number of people who join the military supported Moore’s thesis. In addition to the outside scenes, Moore also included elements that communicated families’ commitments to the military. One mother in particular enumerated the members of her family in the military and was shown carefully hanging her American flag outside, a ritual she performed each morning. Interviews and footage like this contextualized the decisions to serve.

The agents from the first pentad (Bush and other elite members of society) deliberately exploit and maintain this type of scene by constructing a metaphysical scene of “a time of war.” Moore presented the Bush pentad first and framed the way the audience viewed the soldiers’ pentad. In doing so, Moore built his pentads so that they depended on one another. In Moore’s depiction, Bush exploited the scene of poverty in that he benefited from the social conditions that oppress other people and maintained it by perpetuating the myth that joining the military is part of some families’ patriotic duty. Therefore, Bush served his purpose by creating a higher purpose for those people who do not have many options to gain community respect. Moreover, Moore claimed that the construction of a metaphysical scene, that is the cultural mindset at the time, contributed to the sense of duty that families felt. He accomplished this by including people like Lila Lipscomb. Her son was killed in Iraq, and she symbolized “common people” in the film. Moore portrayed her as dedicated to the country despite her loss. In explaining her family as a military family, she characterized the metaphysical scene, which was in conversation with the Bush pentad. The members of her family and families like hers are the agents in this pentad.

Agents. Moore cast the people of this pentad as agents with power for a specific purpose. He interviewed the soldiers and their families in their homes where the audience could see the banality of their lives. This contrasted with the Bush pentad because Moore utilized archived footage to characterize the wealthy, powerful people of that story. Also, the interviews Moore conducted with senators, for example, were usually on the street. The interviewees’ desire to get away from Moore served to distance them from the audience as well. As a result, the audience was invited to identify with the families of Flint rather than political elites. Telling the individual service members’ stories played a lead role in this film and in this pentad.

During an interview with Abdul Henderson of the USMC, Moore highlighted the Marine’s experience of his tour in Iraq. Henderson addressed explicitly the classist nature of the war when he insisted adamantly that he would not go back to Iraq even if it meant breaking the law; he stated, “I will not let anyone send me back over there to kill other poor people” (M. Moore, 2004). In this quotation, Henderson positioned himself as a poor person, and implicitly claimed that the wealthy people made decisions about the war while the poor people carried out those decisions. Showing people taking a stand, as in this case, Moore sought to unmask the myth that perpetuates the glorification of military service. Uniquely, he cast impoverished people and took care to demonstrate their patriotism, but then showed their dissent from popular opinion as well. By utilizing such quotations from the soldiers, Moore included evidence from a source traditionally thought of as conservative and attempted to challenge the expectations of the audience and increase his credibility. Curiously, while the filmmaker relied on some of the soldiers to provide their perspectives, he also cast other soldiers as facilitators of the negative situation many citizens who live in poverty face.

Agency. The audience viewed Marine recruiters in Flint, at the mall, vying for the signatures of new people, countering any statement of refusal with a promotion of the financial and personal benefits the Marines can offer. The financial benefits are of particular interest. Here, Moore constructed the motives not only for the wealthy, Bush, and the poor, people of Flint, but also for the recruiters themselves. Moore noted the recruiters were not going to the upscale mall in town; these recruiters were deliberately targeting low-income people for military service. They used the financial benefits as leverage to boost membership and continued to make the military look good and the war appear just. Thus, the Marine recruiters served as a bridge between poverty-stricken residents and military careers. They also reminded the audience of the purpose emphasized in the Bush pentad. For Moore, the money the Marine recruiters offered echoed the motivations of Bush. However, the sum of the military signing bonus is just a pittance compared to the profits made by the investors in the Bush pentad.

Moore implicitly contended that this “pittance” made all the difference to these poor families in Flint. He emphasized the selectivity of the Marines’ actions by showing them concentrating on people who have little access to education and job opportunities. Although no one is forced to join the military, some people are more likely to volunteer when confronted with diminished choices. Furthermore, the Marine recruiters are portrayed as somewhat mindless pawns. Their enthusiasm for signing up new recruits appeared crass when juxtaposed against the death with which families must cope. However, the classist society that exalts militarism in which these recruiters live made their enthusiasm seem natural and the choice to join the military logical.

Purpose. Moore offered the lack of career opportunities as a reason for why more people in poverty join the military, but he also tied in the sense of duty these people feel. In the face of mounting debt, refusing to join the military might eliminate the opportunity to alleviate financial problems. From a practical perspective, fighting for the military seems to be a viable option when no other money is available. Moore illustrated this by connecting poverty and military service through interviews and footage. When people cannot afford to meet their basic needs, they must make a choice to survive and when joining the military will allow them to feed their families, they accept the signing bonus.

In addition to the financial need, people join the military to fulfill the traditions already in place. This country frames military service as the duty of heroes. The pervasive rhetoric in the United States lauds the service of military members, but does not necessarily follow through with financial support. Both the poverty and the sense of duty that people in these families encounter contribute to the desire to join the military. The filmmaker shows the lineage of military service with interviews in people’s houses. Frequently, they recall numerous family members who are serving, have served, will serve, and have died in the service of the United States. In this way, military service becomes a family tradition, and when family members are killed (or injured and unable to work) in the line of duty, the cycle persists.

Including soldiers’ stories showed that these folks had served their purpose by serving their country. This earned them the respect of their fellow community members and also allowed them to justifiably critique the war, by Moore’s reasoning. In the construction of their motives, Moore attempted to demonstrate the concern for doing-the-right-thing that these people felt. For them, in this time of war, joining the military and continuing a family tradition were the right things. In this way, Moore presented this guiding purpose as one nobler than that in Bush’s pentad. Furthermore, Moore implied that if the government was also doing-the-right-thing, these soldiers’ purpose would be fitting.

Ratios. I contend that this second pentad in conjunction with the first advanced Moore’s thesis, but also functioned with its focus on the specific element of purpose and the mystic school. Although trying to survive is certainly a clear purpose, Moore also offered another complex layer to this decision. He illustrated how military service tends to run in families in these communities. Even while Moore sharply criticized the government’s (Bush’s) position and role, he showed respect and admiration for the duty that soldiers perform.

In pairing purpose with act, it is apparent that Moore conceived of the act as a product of the purpose. He claimed that joining the military involved little choice for the people who did it; their position left them with few, if any, other options. Gaining success in these communities meant fulfilling a duty and fighting for the country. In fact, the purpose constituted the scene itself. These people were complacent with the scene because questioning it would imply dissent with the national government. The sense of duty people felt (the family structure and general push for patriotic actions, in this case) necessitated that family members participate and even facilitate the scene. When whole families fight in wars, the career options available become limited and access to education erodes. These conditions shape the people that live in them. Additionally, Moore demonstrated how the purpose of serving one’s country and family developed into community values, and thus controlled the agents. If a higher purpose was guiding the actions of a person, the agency—or means by which the act is done—matters little. However, Moore took care to illustrate how the agency adopted a form that would be respected and perhaps even deferred to in this community. The military recruiters thus became the means by which people began their service, the agency.

By featuring the purpose as the dominant term in this pentad, Moore accomplished two important tasks. First, he essentially excused the actions of the poor people in Flint (and all soldiers implicitly). This is particularly interesting because in the first pentad, focusing on the purpose does not excuse Bush, but rather reinforces the negativity surrounding this president. The nature of the purpose then is significant in Moore’s construction of the agents’ motives. While he viewed the war as wrong, he framed the action of joining the military as a product of unquestioned obedience to community and national values. However, he also showed people who had started to challenge this purpose and the new actions they took. This leads to the second task, which was to motivate the masses with a new purpose. In his juxtaposed critique of Bush and reverence for the soldiers, Moore strategically represented these motives as decidedly different with the goal of inciting audiences to demand a new government. He pointed out the classism that fueled the Bush presidency, but did not question the purpose that guides the poor people in Flint. Moore instead wanted to personalize the abuse of the people’s trust and then encourage them to redirect their loyalty to a better form of government, one that protects and values its citizens. That is why Moore was careful to focus on Bush and not on the broader governmental system.

Although Moore could have depicted the soldiers as victims, he did not. My analysis demonstrates the care Moore took in strategically placing the soldiers and their families as decision-makers. In other words, Moore worked to portray the citizens of Flint as a moral force against the corrupt elite. While they maintained their dedication to the country and the abstract ideals of the country (i.e., freedom, democracy, etc.), they recognized the faults of the governing body. Instead of condemning the soldiers for fighting the war or pitying them for their lack of choice, he encouraged audience members to look to them for inspiration. Such an elevation in status is unique particularly when coupled with Moore’s excusing them of wrong action. Although he illustrated that the agents of both pentads were guided by higher purposes, he did so in complementary and contrasting ways. Moore did not place this pentad in direct opposition to Bush’s pentad, but rather used each to strengthen the argument of the other.

Perspective by Incongruity

Burke’s (1954) concept of perspective by incongruity offers a unique insight into Moore’s framing of different people’s motivations in Fahrenheit 9/11. As my articulation of two salient pentads illustrates, Moore viewed the actors of each pentad as driven by their individual purposes, but depicted them with different complementing terms and thus constructed their motives as different; one had control to carry out a greedy purpose and the other was controlled by a noble yet misguided purpose. Although these pentads are each unique, they are not oppositional. Moore used this incongruous pairing of pentads along with two other acts of incongruity to call attention to the exigence he perceived.

Rhetors use perspective by incongruity to persuade and educate (Blankenship, Murphy, & Rosenwasser, 1974). Whedbee (2001) clarified, “‘Perspective by incongruity’ is a violation of our common sense assumptions about what properly ought to go with what, and it reveals hitherto unsuspected linkages and relationships which our customary language has ignored” (p. 48). When things do not seem to match, people gain a new perspective. Moore practiced perspective by incongruity in three ways to garner his audiences’ attention. First, Moore approached his subject from a humorous angle, which is not a customary strategy for those who discuss politics in general and the Iraq War in particular. As in political cartoons, which arguably could be considered an early print form of political entertainment, Moore utilized the opportunity for humor in the film format to catch his audience off guard. Shultz and Germeroth (1998) argued that much humor is based in contradiction and therefore using humor to make political claims—whether about disability or politics—employs perspective by incongruity. Bostdorff (1987) examined political cartoons using Burke’s perspective by incongruity for that precise reason. The seemingly contradictory mixture of humor and politics creates a powerful message.

Second, Moore relied on the assumptions people have about the government’s role in their lives; that is, they assume that the government will take care of them. United States citizens are supposed to trust the government and believe that the people who run the government have citizens’ best interests in mind, which is why the purpose of serving the government was not the issue that Moore addressed. Moore confronted these presumptions through what Burke (1989) would call “planned incongruity” (274). In showing footage of political leaders preparing to go on camera, Moore attempted to show the wizard behind the curtain. He challenged the audience to view those leaders as real people who are capable of making mistakes both small (e.g., using spit to smooth one’s hair) and large (e.g., going to war for the wrong reasons). While Bush used his cowboy image to cultivate a rough, down-to-business persona and show that he could be a victim of the scene, Moore exploited it to persuade the audience to see members of the Bush administration and Tony Blair as silly spaghetti western characters in full control of the scene itself in the interest of serving a higher purpose (money) at any cost (e.g., human lives).

Additionally, the hegemony of this culture encourages people to adopt an individualist mentality, meaning that if someone is in a bad financial situation, it is her/his own fault. Frequently, films and television programs, particularly news programs, highlight the crimes that poor people commit. Moore countered this common representation by showing the patriotism and sense of duty that the families in Flint had. In contrast, he aligned Bush and those close to him with financial contacts in the Middle East, emphasizing their problematic and unpatriotic interests. Defying audience expectations helped Moore engender two pentads that challenged suppositions of the groups they each featured as the agent, Bush and people in poverty.

Finally, by juxtaposing these two pentads, Moore confronted the audience again about commonly held assumptions that the United States is a country in which everyone has an equal chance to succeed. Moore’s careful construction of the motivations of two contrasting groups of people served to expose the class differences that exist in the US and inspire audiences to action that would yield a government that had concern for its citizens. Formulating others’ motivations to his own end, Moore showed that financial elites perpetuate and exploit class differences and the consequences those differences have for people in poverty. He also showed that ordinary people with a purpose have significant power that is meaningless when in the service of corrupt government officials. Since the purpose of the soldiers was predicated on trust of the government and faith in its ideals, their ability to make change was compromised. However, in holding on to those beliefs but challenging the oppressive structures, they could effect change, Moore argued. Therefore, he attempted to motivate his audience to demand a better, more honest government. After September 11, 2001, Bush—and members of his administration—lobbied for unification. Yet, as my analysis illustrates, Moore would contend that such unification is not possible because of class barriers. Furthermore, Bush, as Moore depicted him, desired a superficial unification to allow him to gloss over the classist nature of war and abuse the trust of the people.

Although the two pentads are decidedly different, they are not antithetical. By framing both with the mystic perspective, Moore contended implicitly that the purpose of an agent’s actions is immensely important. The audience sees this in both of the pentads. However, Moore also pairs the purpose with another term in each pentad to produce a dominant ratio. This strategy emphasized the incongruity of the pentads and made them appear antithetical. In Bush’s pentad, Moore privileged the purpose-agent ratio, and in the soldiers’ pentad, the audience saw the purpose-scene ratio. Although nothing about Bush in particular motivates him to want to go to war, Moore’s representation did stress the importance of Bush as a figurehead for the wealthy class. It was his family and access to the office of president as well as his corporate connections, specifically with energy production, that made him a necessary character. The purpose was the driving influence behind his actions in Moore’s construction.

In contrast, the scene and metaphysical scene of the soldiers’ pentad justified the soldiers’ purpose, and in turn, the purpose further perpetuated the scene and enabled the metaphysical scene. The poverty in Flint provided a rationale for joining the military as a means to gain community respect. Additionally, the metaphysical scene—the time of war—reinforced feelings of duty. The purpose, this sense of duty, allowed the scene, Flint in poverty, to continue because the people were not skilled or educated except in military matters. This familial obligation, the purpose, provided bodies to go to war, facilitating the time of war, the metaphysical scene. Thus, it is the incongruence of the dominant ratios that affords the interplay of pentads instead of a purely oppositional relationship.

Burke (1952) explained that the struggle for dominance between the agent and the scene is one of placing blame. In the case of the scene, it goes to the uncontrollable environment, and in the case of the agent, it goes to a human, capable of change and decision-making. With purpose dominating, the agent is in the service of the purpose and constructs reality with this purpose in mind. Contrarily, the scene remains partially uncontrolled by the agents, but is implicated or necessitated by the purpose of those agents. By this reasoning, the purpose drives the agent, of which the agent is aware, but it also drives the scene, of which the agent is unaware. This allows for the dual constraints of purpose and scene, both of which contribute to a particular sense of unity, that guides the agents’ choices.

These two purposes work together to keep some people in power and others out of it. Moore waited until very close to the end to come around to this point and supplied the audience with some answers to their questions by quoting George Orwell’s 1984, the novel that tells the frightening story of life under the rule of an omnipotent government. Moore spoke over panning shots of poverty-stricken Flint juxtaposed with shots of Bush and his administration:

It is not a matter of whether the war is not real or if it is. Victory is not possible, the war is not meant to be won; it is meant to be continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This is the new version of the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact. (M. Moore, 2004)

Moore inserted this quotation to illustrate the purpose of each of the pentads. The war financed Bush’s lifestyle because he and his family have money invested in companies that manufacture war machines. Furthermore, poor people volunteering for the military functioned as hierarchy insurance by keeping them in cyclical poverty. Their actions were the result of the pervasive value of patriotism, which produced a sense of a higher purpose. However, because of their service, they create a scene that is problematic for them financially. They sign up for the military as a means to honor their duty; then they are altered in the war (physically or mentally) and cannot work and ultimately produce children in the same situation. This cycle allows Bush and the rest of the ruling class to continue to rule.

After displaying the desolation in parts of Flint, Moore furthered his point by including quotations from many people who comment on the amount of money they expect to make in rebuilding Iraq and benefiting from the Iraqi oil reserves. Youssef Sleiman, a speaker from Iraq Initiative/Harris Corporation, at the Rebuilding Iraq conference declared, “the good news is, whatever the cost, the government will pay you,” in regard to the need for contracted services in Iraq (M. Moore, 2004). Moore featured Bush, the epitome of the wealthy, obviously dressed for a black-tie affair, telling an audience, “Some people call you ‘the elite,’ I call you ‘my base’” (M. Moore, 2004). These quotations invoked the more intentional, classist themes that Moore tried to emphasize.

Moore challenged his audience by using perspective by incongruity within the film and between the pentads. Devising two primary pentads and constructing the motives of others within these pentads gave audience members an opportunity to see the situation, and indeed the United States, as flawed and founded on false assumptions. Moore wanted to connect with the audience through humor and encourage them to question US values. Through the strategic construction of Bush’s and the soldiers’ motivations, Moore demonstrated not only the character of this film, but also the capabilities of political entertainment.

Conclusion

Political entertainment does more than merely inform or entertain, as Baym (2005) asserted. It depends on the combination of both of these to generate a more sophisticated strategy than either a purely informative or an entertaining program could do on its own. As more producers realize the potential of this genre, we can expect to see more programs like Comedy Central’s Lil’ Bush. Many of these programs appear to want to inform not only about political situations, but also about definitions of political savvy. In order to understand the jokes, the audience must understand current political situations. Political entertainment thus constructs the motivations of politicians in specific (sometimes humorous) ways to use perspective by incongruity to critique social institutions, ideologies, and, of course, people’s actions (and perceived motivations). In the same vein, political cartoons have a long history and have enjoyed success over the years (Editors of the Foreign Policy Association, 1975). Contemporary examples of political entertainment serve as an extension of these cartoons. What may have begun as single-panel comical critiques of politics has evolved to complex commentaries that come in a variety of forms. Therefore, studies of the effects of political entertainment, while productive for gauging the political media climate, do not contribute solely to understanding the appeals of political entertainment because such appeals are increasingly more complicated and rhetorically effective. The combination of pentadic analysis and perspective by incongruity works especially well for examples of political entertainment because they allow the critic to interrogate the nuanced relationships between representations of different groups of people in political entertainment. Research indicates that political entertainment is effective at least on a surface level (e.g., Holbert, 2005; Hollander, 2005; Young, 2004). Just as media programs, even if they are fictionalized or satirical characterizations, function to shape our perceptions of gender, race, and class, they also contribute to our understanding of political figures, political ideology, and political acts. In depicting politicians’ motives as well as the motives of the common people, like soldiers, creators of political entertainment frame the way we view future actions as well as current ones and act as powerful rhetorical tools. Indeed, Rountree (2001) calls for more work with pentadic analysis that enables critics to understand how such constructions influence readings of future constructions. Attending to these complex texts is a necessary step because political entertainment can function as activism, a society’s collective emotional release, a retaliation, or a troublesome (or valid yet alternative) source of information. Each of these functions would encourage an audience to engage in different behaviors. For example, Moore is goading his audiences to act toward governmental reform, but a more comical, less socially aware program may encourage complacency since audience members feel satisfied poking fun at incompetent government officials. Ignoring the representations of motivations in political entertainment texts eliminates researchers’ opportunity to understand the why of the effect political entertainment has on populations. A combination of the pentad and perspective by incongruity lends itself to more complete critiques of political entertainment that identify the textual elements comprising an effective piece of rhetoric.

Although Fox’s satirical program, The Half Hour News Hour, has decidedly oppositional (with respect to Moore’s film) political leanings, an analysis focused on perspective by incongruity would produce interesting results given that Fox is a news channel, not a comedy channel or an independent film production company. Examining the characterizations of the motivations of liberals from the conservative creators’ perspective would provide an interesting critique that could be contrasted with Moore’s representations. It would be worthwhile to consider the strategic elements employed to create a conservative answer to liberal efforts to discredit the government by means of comedy. The perspective by incongruity strategy on this show might function quite differently from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, or Fahrenheit 9/11, yet the strategy itself might be a customary practice in political entertainment.

Moreover, the medium of the piece of political entertainment will certainly add to its overall meaning. That Moore chose a “documentary” as the form for his exposé is significant. Burke (1952) noted that “the concept of the ‘documentary’ as the historiographer’s ideal” is a problematic one because the rhetor may construe facts in many different ways (p. 282). Until Fahrenheit 9/11, many people would have considered the documentary the equivalent of a history book. The pentad, in this case in particular, assists in uncovering the perspective of the rhetor. Therefore, applying the pentad to a source typically considered unbiased has potential to challenge commonly held assumptions about such sources. The Half Hour News Hour again would produce a unique case study since it is featured on a news channel.

My analysis demonstrates that rhetors can create quite different situations and lenses for viewing these situations even when multiple pentads adopt the same philosophical approach. Moore represented this in his film by offering the audience a number of stories. The two I have analyzed here emphasize Moore’s construction of others’ motives as well as the classist dimensions of war, specifically the Iraq War. The filmmaker also encouraged audience members to act on their own behalf. By featuring two sets of people both guided by purposes, Moore offered two examples of how commitment to such purposes, even in the face of sacrifice, can lead to problematic circumstances. Moore achieved his agenda by confronting the assumptions of his audience using perspective by incongruity. I would extend the value of perspective by incongruity beyond Fahrenheit 9/11 to most political entertainment since comedy and contradiction undergird this unique amalgamation of information about politics and entertainment. Fahrenheit 9/11 effectively combined comedy and facts to weave a story that revealed Moore’s penchant for exposing classism in the United States.

Notes

*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 77th Annual Western States Communication Association Convention on February 19, 2006. The ten minute presentation was part of a panel entitled "Representation and Politics" hosted by the Media Studies Interest Group. Additionally, the author would like to thank Carl Burgchardt, Brian Ott, Danielle Endres, Joseph Richards, Clarke Rountree, Sonja Foss and any anonymous reviewers for their guidance and sugggestions.

1.In the second publishing of A Grammar of Motive (1952), Burke added attitude to the pentad. This refers to the quality of the action, not just the purpose or the act itself. However, scholars continue to refer to the pentad and not the hexad (Rountree, 1998) and generally address the attitude of the rhetor in other pentadic elements.

2.The first hullabaloo started when Michael Eisner, CEO of the Walt Disney Co., announced in May that the corporation would not release the film Fahrenheit 9/11 “because of its incendiary tone and content” (qtd. in Waxman, 2004). It ended when Harvey and Bob Weinstein, two movie executives for Miramax, bought the film and released it through Lion’s Gate and IFC Films. On May 24, 2004, the second controversy surfaced when the Cannes Film Festival “end[ed] in controversy” because Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme d’Or, or Golden Palm, the top prize of the festival (Stratton, 2004). By June 10, 2004, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, had publicly expressed his discontent with Moore for not asking permission to adopt his title and change the numbers to 9/11 and spurred controversy number three. With no legal recourse, Moore’s “homage” title remained (Keck, 2004). Finally, shortly after the film’s release, Citizens United, a primarily Republican organization, filed a complaint with the FEC, claiming that, due to the highly political nature of the film, its television advertisements would incriminate Moore and the film’s distributors for using “corporate money to broadcast attack ads about a presidential candidate within 30 days of his party's national convention” (Getter, 2004). Moore countered the grievance with comedy: I am deeply concerned about whether or not the FEC will think I paid Citizens United to raise these issues regarding Fahrenheit 9/11. How else can you explain the millions of dollars of free publicity this right-wing group has given the movie? (Getter, 2004)

3. Establishing such a connection was important for the Bush administration to do because the government determined that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks of September 11. Without the link, attacking Iraq would seem illogical.

4. Unocal was contracted to build the pipeline to carry natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Afghanistan and Halliburton won the contract to drill.

5. This is a point that Moore also emphasized in his most recent film, Sicko (2007).

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Composing a Gourmet Experience: Using Kenneth Burke’s Theory of Rhetorical Form

Hans Lindquist, Lund University (Sweden)

Introduction

Kenneth Burke’s theory of rhetorical form has been applied to a variety of objects and areas. Beside analyses of texts, including Hamlet and Othello (Burke, Counter-Statement and Othello), it has been applied to the movie Jaws (Kimberling), the television miniseries Shogun (Kimberling), political debates on television (Conrad), newscasts (Gronbeck), and music (Bostdorff and Tompkins). These applications of Burke’s theory of rhetorical form have a focus on one or two of our senses, either sight and/or hearing. In this article I will demonstrate the relevance of Burke’s theory to an area which focuses on two other senses, taste and smell, although it includes all five senses: gourmet cooking or fine dining.

In this article I will first present Kenneth Burke’s theory of rhetorical form. Then I will demonstrate its relevance for understanding the creation of gourmet experiences by the Swedish chef Mathias Dahlgren. Dahlgren was the only Swedish gold medal-winner at the (unofficial) World Championship Bocuse d’Or, named after the French chef Paul Bocuse from Lyon. He has also been chosen “Chef of the chefs” four times during the last ten years. Mathias Dahlgren’s former restaurant Bon Lloc––which is Spanish for “good place”––was a top restaurant in Stockholm with a star in Guide Rouge for a decade. His new restaurant at Grand Hotel—the hotel where the Nobel Prize-winners stay—already is famous.

Kenneth Burke’s Theory of Rhetorical Form

Kenneth Burke’s theory of aesthetics and rhetorical form was first published in 1925 in two articles, “Psychology and Form” and “The Poetic Process,” which later became chapters in Counter-Statement. Burke defines literature as “written or spoken words” that can appeal to the audience either because of its information (content or subject-matter) or its form, or a combination of both(Counter-Statement 123). Burke did not want to separate form and information, only to emphasize form as a “Counter-Statement” to discussions about aesthetics that were so strongly influenced by science and journalism, “the movement of almost pure information” (Heath 62).

In some “literature” the information is, Burke writes, intrinsically interesting, as can be the case with backyard gossip and news (Counter-Statement 33). We might buy a newspaper so we can read the latest news about soccer’s World Cup, the trial of a celebrity or something else. But once we have read through it, the item loses its appeal and aesthetic value, much the same way as a detective story can be enthralling and entertaining, but when at the end we get to know who the murderer is we do not want to re-read it, at least not in order to find out who the murderer is, or how the murder was accomplished. According to Burke, the major devices for maintaining interest “most natural to the psychology of information (as it is applied to works of pure art) are surprise and suspenseeCounter-Statement 37; emphasis added). The latter, Burke writes, “is the concern over the possible outcome of some specific detail of plot rather than for general qualities. Thus, ‘Will A marry B or C?’ is suspense” (Counter-Statement 38).

Besides the interest in information and possible outcomes, literature can appeal because of its form, which Burke defines as “the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite” (Counter-Statement 31). Thus, the focus is on the process of reading a text, which is a temporal, dialectical and rhetorical process, where the meaning is created. In order for the text to be appealing, the audience must have some experience which matches the text. Burke argues that literary forms, like crescendo and rhythm, correspond to human experiences outside the literary work of art. Even though no “crescendos” exist in nature, there are multiplicities of individual phenomena—the cycle of a storm, the ripening of crops, the sunrise and sunset, the spread of an epidemic, etc.—where growth is not a linear progression, but rather a fruition. Because of such natural processes, we can, according to Burke, “think” and experience a crescendo when reading a novel, watching a movie and seeing a theatrical play (Counter-Statement 45).

A person who has less experience and knowledge may need more obvious ramifications to be affected, whereas a person who has more experience and knowledge may find many such obvious ramifications too blunt. “Contrast talk between two experts with talk between an expert and a layman. In talking with a layman, the expert will necessarily stress some of the very points which he would be most likely to omit in talking with another expert” (Counter-Statement 173).

According to Burke the notion of “appetite” involves desires and expectations, which can be understood from other ways of defining the concept of form: “Form in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence” (Counter-Statement 124); “Form in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of expectations” (Counter-Statement 217).

Burke identified four types of form defined as four ways of arousing and satisfying appetites, desires and expectations: “progressive form (subdivided into syllogistic progression and qualitative progression), repetitive form, conventional form, and minor or incidental forms” (Counter-Statement 124). These forms, which are presented below, are interrelated and “necessarily overlap” (Counter-Statement 128).

Progressive form deals with development, for example, “the use of situations” which lead “the audience to anticipate or desire certain developments” rather than others (“Dramatic Form” 54). Syllogistic progression, the first variant, is “the form of a perfectly conducted argument, advancing step by step” (Counter-Statement 124). It is the form of a mystery story or love story, where everything falls together in the end. Burke calls it syllogistic because,

given certain things, certain things must follow, the premises forcing the conclusion. In so far as the audience, from its acquaintance with the premises, feels the rightness of the conclusion, the work is formal. The arrows of audience desire are turned in a certain direction, and the plot follows the direction of the arrows. (Counter-Statement 124)

Qualitative progression, the second type of progressive form, is subtler. Instead of one incident in the plot preparing the audience for other possible incidents (as when a murder “requires” revenge), the presence of one quality prepares the audience for the introduction of another quality (as when the calmness of one situation prepares the audience for the acts of violence that that will follow). “Such progressions are,” Burke writes, “qualitative rather than syllogistic as they lack the pronounced anticipatory nature of the syllogistic progression. We are prepared less to demand a certain qualitative progression than to recognize its rightness after the event. We are put into a state of mind which another state of mind can appropriately follow” (Counter-Statement 125).

Repetitive form, Burke explains, is “the consistent maintaining of a principle under new guises. It is restatement of the same thing in different ways. So far as each detail of Gulliver's life among the Lilliputians is a new exemplification of the discrepancy in size between Gulliver and the Lilliputians, Swift is using repetitive form” (Counter-Statement 125). Or if a character is a hero, each heroic act contributes to the idea of the character as a hero.

Conventional form, the last major type of form, constitutes “the appeal of form as form” and involves what Burke calls “categorical expectancy” (Counter-Statement 126). Any form or genre—may it be a Greek tragedy, a mystery story or a limerick—can become conventional, and be sought for itself. “That is, whereas the anticipations and gratifications of progressive and repetitive form arise during the process of reading, the expectations of conventional form may be anterior to the reading” (Counter-Statement 126-127). Categorical expectations and conventional form are, according to Burke, “the kinds of expectations which an audience brings to the theatre as an established institution” (“Dramatic Form” 55).

Minor or incidental forms come in many varieties. When analyzing a work, Burke explains, we may “find it bristling with minor or incidental forms—such as metaphor, paradox, disclosure, reversal, contraction, expansion.…—which can be discussed as formal events in themselves. Their effect partially depends upon their function in the whole, yet they manifest sufficient evidences of episodic distinctness to bear consideration apart from their context” (Counter-Statement 127). These forms may be looked upon as

minor divisions of the two major “forms,” unity and diversity. In any case, both unity and diversity will be found intermingling in any example of such forms. Contrast, for instance, is the use of elements which conflict in themselves but are both allied to a broader unity (as laughter on one page, tears on the next, but each involving an incident which furthers the growth of the plot). (Counter-Statement 46)

Rhythm is another important aspect of importance for the form of a literary work, just as it is for music: “A rhythm is a promise which the poet makes to the reader—and in proportion as the reader comes to rely upon this promise, he falls into a state of general surrender which makes him more likely to accept without resistance the rest of the poet's material” (Counter-Statement 140-141). However, rhythm can be explained within the different types of forms discussed above, namely, repetitive form, progressive form, minor forms like constancy and variation (Counter-Statement 130-135).

As noted above, the major devices of maintaining the reader’s interest in the information are surprise and suspense. Burke notes:

In the classic drama, where the psychology of form is emphasized, we have not surprise but disclosure (the surprise being a surprise not to the audience, but to the characters); and likewise suspense here is not based upon our ignorance of the forthcoming scenes.… It is the suspense of a rubber band which we see being tautened, we know that it will be snapped—there is thus no ignorance of the outcome; our satisfaction arises from our participation in the process, from the fact that the beginnings of the dialogue lead us to feel the logic of its close. (Counter-Statement 145)

The fifth stanza in a limerick, for example, is thus more a disclosure followed by affirmation rather than suspense followed by surprise—and that is why we can read a limerick over again, and still enjoy it.

Composing a Gourmet Experience

The chef and owner at the restaurant Bon Lloc and Grand Hotel, Mathias Dahlgren, has not read Kenneth Burke’s Counter-Statement. There are, however, many similarities between Dahlgren’s philosophy of gourmet cooking, as he presents it in his book Bon Lloc and Burke’s theory of aesthetic and rhetorical form. Bon Lloc is a cook book that includes both a philosophy of gourmet cooking and recipes. Dahlgren introduces his philosophy in the following way (all quotations in this section are my translations from Swedish):

My idea when composing a longer menu is that I will give the guest an experience as complete as possible of what the restaurant can offer. Composing a longer menu is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. One should not repeat oneself. It should be a variation of ingredients, involving, of course, elements of the season. There should be a spectrum of ingredients from different price ranges, varying techniques of cooking and forms of presentation. At the same time one should bear in mind that the different tastes ought to be intensified. And the size of the portions should be varied as well. No course should be grotesquely large and none awkwardly small. In order to demonstrate progress in the area of gastronomy some features of the menu should show signs of novelty. (Dahlgren 14-16)

Using the metaphor “Composing a longer menu is like doing a jigsaw puzzle,” Dahlgren starts by emphasising the importance of unity, that different courses in a long menu together should constitute an entity, “an experience as complete as possible.” Immediately thereafter he lays an emphasis on the importance of variation: “not repeat oneself,” “a variation of,” “a spectrum of,” “varying” and “novelty.” And as a principle for arranging the many courses he argues for the progressive form, “tastes ought to be intensified.” I will come back to the arrangement of the long menu, but first I will illustrate how the enjoyment of separate courses can be analyzed using Burke’s theory.

Mathias Dahlgren makes a distinction between “ladder of tastes” and “chain of tastes,” which is an example of Burke’s distinction between the two variants of progressive form, syllogistic progression and qualitative progression. A ladder of tastes means, according to Dahlgren, “going from mild flavors to intense flavors to the most intense. This way of thinking is useful when serving different kinds of cheese” (Dahlgren 25). In the same way as syllogistic progression, this proceeds step by step, that is, the flavor that follows “must” be stronger.

A chain of tastes is, in a way, the opposite to a ladder of tastes, according to Dahlgren: “A chain of tastes, to me, does not mean that everything ought to be sweeter and sweeter, saltier and saltier and saltier, more and more. Instead it means that one goes on and on” and that the “flavors are in harmony,” not more and more intense (Dahlgren 25). He gives the following illustration of this pattern: Mango tastes good with ginger Ginger tastes good with toffee Toffee tastes good with chocolate Chocolate tastes good with coffee Coffee tastes good with sweet sherry (Dahlgren 25)

By means of these six flavors and the relations between them, Dahlgren composes a course that consists of six different spoons, graphically presented in a row on a rectangular plate. Spoon 1: Thai-mango, natural and cut in cubes Spoon 2: Sabayon [a sauce made from whipped egg yolks and wine] with ginger Spoon 3: Dulche the leche [toffee with milk from South America] Spoon 4: Crème of chocolate Spoon 5: Syrup of coffee Spoon 6: PX Pedor Ximenz 1972 [sweet sherry from Spain] (Dahlgren 25)

This is an example of Burke’s qualitative progression; the presence of one quality (flavor) prepares the guests for the introduction of another quality (flavor). Furthermore, the guests are less likely to “demand” a certain flavor than to recognize its rightness after tasting another spoon. Moreover, the guests have no possibility—until tasting all six spoons—of realizing that this course, by itself, constituted a complete dessert including coffee and liqueur!

Dahlgren’s book also provides three illustrations of Burke’s repetitive form, where the same principle appears under different guises. One concept in Mathias Dahlgren’s philosophy, as well as in the world of gastronomy, that emphasizes the importance of repetition is reconstruction. Reconstruction means giving a new form to existing content. “The starting point is an existing dish…which is deconstructed into the basic ingredients and reconstructed with a new technique. The form of presentation should be different compared to the original, but the taste should be the same” (Dahlgren 22). At Bon Lloc, for example, the classic Croquet Monsieur ingredients are served basked in a gratin-dish for snails: “Changing the presentation can change the experience. When did you last eat a Croquet Monsieur with a teaspoon?” (Dahlgren 237). For a reconstruction to work, it depends on the guest’s being familiar with the original: “A fully successful reconstruction is dependent on the guests knowing the original and being able to relate to it and understand it” (Dahlgren 22). This notion is parallel to Burke’s point that, for a text to be appealing, the audience must have some prior experience with a text which matches its form.

Another example of repetitive form is found in the desserts. The sweet-salty chocolate-toffee wrapped up in greaseproof paper and the dulce de leche (with dark chocolate and sweetened milk) the guests are drinking from schnapps glasses, Dahlgren notes, are “exactly the same thing, but in different forms” (58).

A third and final illustration of the repetitive form, modified by qualitative progression, is that the guests do the same thing (eating) using different techniques: “eating the snacks with the fingers, drinking the soup, the main course with knife and fork, in between licking the iced-lollipop made of blood orange, and using a spoon at dessert” (Dahlgren 90).

In the same way as Burke sees unity and diversity as fundamental for aesthetic and artistic experiences, Mathias Dahlgren sees harmony and contrast as essential when composing gourmet experiences. When it comes to different senses of taste (saltiness, sweetness, acidity and bitterness) and the combination of food and wine, Dahlgren says: “Simply put, one can choose the principle of harmony or the principle of contrast. Fat food can be combined with a ‘fat’ wine, for instance a ‘buttery’ chardonnay that has matured in a barrel. When serving a creamy mushroom soup, a wine with much acidity would be suitable” (Dahlgren 110).

Rhythm is another essential principle when arranging a longer gourmet menu:

The rhythm of the meal is vital. … It is important to identify what the guest wants, if the guest wants a shorter or longer performance. That is something the waiter has to decide from the signals [s]he receives from the guest. The couple who have just fallen in love want it to go on for ever. But the group of businessmen, who have witnessed the performance over and over again, three times just this week, maybe want to cut the process short.” (Dahlgren 17

In order to create a good rhythm in a performance at Bon Lloc, be it long or short, and as a way of creating surprises, one treats the guests with “little pieces” having the size of a mouthful, for instance an “amuse bouche” before the first course. “We use these little pieces to create a good rhythm during the dinner. They are served before, during and after courses, partly as surprises, partly in order to make something happen at the table.... The little pieces are also time killers, giving the kitchen staff the minute extra they need for making the food perfect” (Dahlgren 22, 16). Experienced guests at gourmet restaurants, however, expect an “amuse bouche” before the first course, and in that sense it is a part of the conventional form of gourmet restaurants.

When composing a longer menu, the crescendo—a type of syllogistic progression—is crucial. “Metaphors from the world of music are very often used when talking about combinations of food and beverage; composing a course, the rhythm and amplification during the meal, and then (babaamm!!!) the main course as the showpiece of the play, that should make the taste buds burst into a crazy dance” (Dahlgren 108).

The crescendo is used in a review of Bon Lloc as well, and here the emphasis is on what happens after the climax, as one restaurant guide notes:

The sophistication reaches its turning point with a grilled pigeon, which has been brushed with ashes from leek seasoned with truffles, and presented on a bed of puy lentils and pine nuts, together with potato purée seasoned with foie gras. It is a crescendo in thrilling tastes, and you need help to land. A sorbet of apples is Dahlgren’s way of solving the problem, but maybe the senses are stunned because its taste is vapid and flat. However, an arroz con leche is heavenly mild and the sorbet of orange has exactly the acid one need. (Gourmet 199 Bord 60)

The sorbet of apples being “vapid and flat” while the sorbet of orange has “exactly the acid one needs” is an illustration of how a progression works—the taste of one course depends on and is related to the previous course.

Concluding Remarks

In this article I have shown the relevance of Kenneth Burke’s theory of rhetorical form for the artistic composition of a gourmet dinner—a composition that focuses on taste and smell rather than sight and/or hearing (though the metaphor “reading a gourmet experience,” of course, can be applied). Professor Inga-Britt Gustafsson of the Department of Restaurant and Culinary Art at Orebro University commented, upon reading an earlier draft of this essay, that such formal concerns reflect “precisely how our chefs reason when they create their menus.”

References

Bostdorff, Denise M., and Phillip K. Tompkins (1985), “Musical Form and Rhetorical Form: Kenneth Burke’s Dial Reviews as Counterpart to Counter Statement,” Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, Fall/Winter, pp. 235-52.

Burke, Kenneth (1931/1968), Counter-Statement, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Burke, Kenneth (1966), “Dramatic Form—and: Tracking Down Implications”, The Tulane Drama Review, Summer, pp. 54-63.

Burke, Kenneth (2007), “Othello: An Essay to Illustrate a Method,” in Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives 1950-1955 (selected, arranged, and edited by William H. Rueckert), Parlor Press. West Lafayette, IN.

Conrad, Charles P. (1993), “Political Debates as Televisual Form”, Argumentation and Advocacy, vol. 30, Fall, pp. 62-76.

Dahlgren, Mathias (2003), Bon Lloc, Bokförlaget Prisma, Stockholm.

Gronbeck, Bruce E. (1997), “Tradition and Technology in Local Newscasts: The Social Psychology of Form,” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 38, Spring, pp. 361-74.

Gourmet 199 bord 2004. Sveriges bästa restauranger 2004 [Sweden’s Best Restaurants 2004] Gourmet International Products, Stockholm.

Heath, Robert L. (1986), Realism and Relativism: A Perspective on Kenneth Burke, Mercer University press, Macon, Ga.

Kimberling, C. Ronald (1982), Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism and the Study of the Popular Arts. Bowling Green University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio

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Composing a Gourmet Experience: Using Kenneth Burke’s Theory of Rhetorical Form by Hans Lindquist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.kbjournal.org.

Publish and Perish?: My Fundamentalist Education from the Inside Out

Camille K. Lewis, Independent Scholar

Abstract: When I published my 2001 dissertation through Baylor University Press, I had no idea that my then-employer Bob Jones University would consider it a threat. They would tolerate the book Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism as long as I dropped the final chapter. In that chapter I argued that while Burke's Augustine and BJU privilege a tragic mortification of the flesh, Scripture can express a robust, comic alternative. Their final ultimatum nonetheless forced my hand, and that chapter, too menacing to be published within the BJU cloister, is now available publicly.

IMAGINE THAT YOU ENTER A PARLOR. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.¹ Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form

Sometimes, nonetheless, “putting in your oar” is risky. You listen, brood, answer, argue, defend, and align following the rules you inferred from preceding discussions, only to be told, however courteously, to shut up or get out. That, in a nutshell, is my story of publishing Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism. But I’ll give you the longer version too.

In 1999 while I was a Ph.D. student in Communication and Culture at Indiana University, I heard an audio recording of my alma mater and then-employer Bob Jones University’s Faculty In-service. A little phrase stuck out in Dean of Students Jim Berg’s talk: “we want to make them want what we have.” I was scrambling to come up with a metaphor to describe religious sectarian rhetoric, and that phrase explained it all as hinging on desire, not reason or even faith. So the metaphor of sectarian romance grew from there, ending with my dissertation defense in 2001.

To summarize my argument, I took Burke’s notions of tragedy and comedy very seriously, imagined their practical possibilities, and, then offered an additional term, foreshadowed but unimagined in Burke, in the vocabulary of romance. From the Federalist Papers to contemporary political theory, liberal democracy has always looked askance at religious zealotry. Political theory and religious histories provide few new vocabularies to theorize the religious separatists as part of the public sphere. Crafting a new vocabulary is essential since restricting our vision of public discourse by excluding sectarians would hinder democracy’s goals. Limiting one voice, no matter how annoying, opens the possibility to contain other defiant views. As critical scholars, we must craft ways to stretch our frames of acceptance to include even the most annoying voices. And Kenneth Burke’s notions of tragedy and comedy productively offer a meta-narrative for understanding this impulse to expunge the undesirable and for creating a critical alternative.

Burke’s notions of tragedy and comedy persist throughout his writing. While tragedy reaches for a beautiful ideal, comedy lampoons the ideal. While tragedy feels guilty for falling short of perfection, comedy juggles the cultural books so that a loss is translated into a win. While tragedy blames a scapegoat for cultural sin, comedy finds that sin in every human being. The Other in tragedy is irreconcilably evil, but in comedy the Other is simply mistaken.

Burke opens the door for theorists to include the sectarian in their discourse, but his tragedy and comedy dichotomy fails to adequately describe the religious sectarian. They seem to stand outside his vocabulary, acting neither tragically nor comically. Unlike tragedy, they are not goaded by the cultural ideals but embody them. They do not tragically offer themselves up as a sacrifice for the culture’s purification, but they use themselves as an example for the culture to follow.

Thus, I am arguing for a third frame of acceptance—romance. When “cornered,” as Burke described, the sectarian separates from the dominant culture, and that separation forces an entirely new rhetoric. The separation is never complete or permanent. They leave but never too far so that they guarantee the dominant culture’s attention. Neither tragically purifying nor comically correcting, the sectarian unequivocally and unalterably woos its Other. When tragedy kills and comedy critiques, the suitor charms. The evil enemy, which the comic transforms into a mistaken adversary, becomes a Beloved in the romantic’s sight. The cultural ideal that goads the tragic and tickles the comic, personifies the romantic. Romantic sectarians identify not through victimage or criticism but through wooing— irresistible beauty coupled with its Other outside the dominant frame.

To prove my case, I chose to analyze the texts in Bob Jones University’s histories, their art collection, their community outreaches, and their response within Campaign 2000. In their remembering, collecting, helping, and defending, Bob Jones University fully talks within a romantic motive. By separating, they have removed themselves from the dominant tragic cycle, and in the process have lost opportunity for impious comedy. In forming that argument, I always knew that my criticism both described how fundamentalists interacted with the secular world and prescribed a better, more comic way for them to act. For fundamentalists, separation is the primary doctrine (though unstated in their creeds), and surgically removing sectarianism from their ideology is impossible. So I tried to imagine a more strategic, even impious separation.

In 2001, my leave of absence ended, and I returned to my full-time position on the BJU Rhetoric and Public Address faculty. As is typical, no one beyond my committee and perhaps my immediate family actually read the dissertation and, to my knowledge, no one on the BJU administration or faculty.

When Marty Medhurst posted a call for manuscripts under Baylor University’s Studies in Rhetoric and Religion in 2005, the opportunity was irresistible. Few BJU faculty members publish outside the BJU’s own press, and even fewer publish book-length manuscripts in peer-reviewed academic venues. In the five years since my dissertation defense, however, much had changed in the fundamentalist landscape. Hardly any conservative evangelicals, if any, described themselves as “fundamentalists” anymore. That label was gone from local Greenville, South Carolina pulpits and even the BJU chapel platform. Bob Jones III even called for a new moniker and proposed “biblical preservationists” (which gained little traction). Virtually none of my students wanted anything to do with the “doctrine of separation” that had defined this micro-culture of conservative evangelicals for almost a century. From my vantage point, something had changed, and I didn’t think I could publish my 2001 dissertation without exploring that rhetorical shift.

The texts I included in my original analysis had to be (1) public and (2) focused on the external constituency. But after the media firestorm of Campaign 2000, BJU was silent. Yes, of course, they still had the same history presentations as before, and the Museum and Gallery still displayed its “finest collection of sacred art outside of the Vatican.” But community outreaches did diminish and political involvement on a national scale was forsaken. What had happened?

In my search for a new text that was public and external, I came up with only one—When Trouble Comes by the Dean of Students Jim Berg, the same speaker that had initially inspired me. Published through Bob Jones University Press, Berg had written the little gift book to comfort the survivors of 9/11.

It’s a strange book—far from comforting, full of contradictions, and not at all the Berg I thought I knew. Ironically, no one outside the BJU enclave would find any resonance in the text whatsoever. It is not at all “attractive” and certainly not even as potentially “romantic” as other public BJU texts.

When in 2000 I first proposed critiquing BJU rhetoric to my dissertation advisor, Robert Ivie, he chuckled and said, “Well, that’s grabbing the tiger by the tail, isn’t it?” If Ivie was right—if I was indeed grabbing the BJU tiger by the tail with the dissertation—in this final chapter I was reaching past the tail and right for his ruff in critiquing Jim Berg. I had no idea the stir the still-in-the-rough-draft-stage chapter would cause. I naively assumed that BJU’s pursuit of accreditation would mean that the faculty would be encouraged to publish and participate in the Academy. I honestly believed that when my former student Stephen Jones took the presidency after his more rancorous father Bob Jones III resigned, the school was entering a “kinder and gentler” stage of fundamentalism.

I was wrong.

When rumors of the chapter moved up the organizational chart, I was “strongly encouraged” in October 2006 to “reconsider” any publication pursuits. Knowing that publishing would be good for all concerned, I ignored what seemed to be ambiguous threats, and that December I signed the contract with Baylor. By the next February, the threats were a little less ambiguous, and I asked my fellow Ph.D. in rhetoric and BJU Executive Vice-President Gary Weier to read the whole manuscript. That was as high up the organization’s ladder as I could plead, and Gary was more than moderately familiar with rhetorical criticism and with Kenneth Burke.

He offered some helpful feedback about the document as a whole. But he said in no uncertain terms that if the final chapter about When Trouble Comes were published, I would be fired. “We can’t have faculty members critiquing an administrator’s theology.” But I wasn’t critiquing his theology, I responded; I was critiquing his rhetoric. “No one will see the difference.” So there it was—publish and perish.

Baylor University Press graciously accommodated my worried request to drop that chapter. We cobbled together a new conclusion, and the book went ahead nearly identical to the original 2001 dissertation version. I thought that I was done with the scrutiny and the stress and that my position was no longer in jeopardy.

But once again, I was wrong. Expunging the chapter from publication wasn’t enough. After a long series of meetings and document exchanges, on July 13, 2007, both my husband and I received an ultimatum from President Stephen Jones and Vice-President Gary Weier: “If you cannot hold your [theological] position without openly promoting it in spoken or written communication to colleagues, students, or others at a distance from the University, we would have to come to a parting of ways.”

The directive gave us two choices: capitulation or termination. We chose to resign. To be silent would be anti-intellectual and unethical. And what follows here is the chapter that was evidently too threatening to be published while still within the Bob Jones University cloister.

If I were to use the theory of romantic separatist rhetoric to describe this forced resignation, I would say that I was the friend who dared to talk about the debutante’s beauty treatments. The henna rinses, the tummy tucks, the tattooed eyeliner—things that were not natural but were desperate attempts to prop up a fading beauty. It is in retreating from the public sphere that these sectarians sound the most tragic. They made themselves and their own most-committed apologists into scapegoats.

In all those caffeinated and animated graduate school conversations—those that most resemble the Burkean parlor—we junior scholars would each wrangle with the inside-versus-outside personas. In other words, is critique best accomplished while inside the court by whispering in the king’s ear or outside the palace by bellowing to the world at large? Is Christine de Pisan more effective than Laura Cereta? Did Martin Luther King, Jr. win the day or Malcolm X (or did Malcolm perhaps make Martin more palatable)? In sum, should we be more sagacious than prophetic?

I always privileged the quiet insider critique of the Sage. But I now realize that the prescription I attempted in my dissertation was too subtle for romantic fundamentalists caught up in their own beauty. From my perspective, there was no difference between my voice in the initial five chapters and in this expunged chapter to follow. While I wrote the first part while away from my BJU “home” and the last chapter while working alongside my then-fellow fundamentalists, the central message was the same: we have to do this better.

Yet these religious sectarians misheard my critical whispers as sweet-nothings. While I was trying to alert them to the decaying chips in their front teeth, they only heard me saying how beautiful their smile was. When I got more pointed and prophet-like in the last chapter, they did finally begin to understand; but rather than change or even retort, they told me to shut up or get out. I was the one ruining their beautiful image, they assumed, not realizing that their visage was already marred.

BJU has so resisted criticism from inside and out for so long that they simply perceive private rebukes as compliments and public critiques as embittered jealousy. Any change they make is only pretense. So afraid of being vulnerable, their frames of acceptance have hardened and are chipping away. I would never say that comedy is impossible in the fundamentalist micro-culture, but their best chance to participate in, critique, or woo the culture they fetishize will remain outside their rhetorical piety as long as their frame is so recalcitrant as to exclude even sympathetic critique.

Fundamentalism has so narrowed and “splintered” (to use Burke’s description of Protestantism) that it cannot endure. I had a front-row seat for the passing of the mantle to the next generation—my generation—and observed that the movement’s founders did not provide the rhetorical flexibility necessary for healthy growth. The very same peers that told us that BJU needed us because we were “different” were the ones who showed us the door. Yet the parlor conversation continues still, and now with an outsider's perspective, I can more clearly imagine a productive criticism for sectarian rhetoric and religion.

Chapter 6

Just Two Choices on the Shelf—Growing Grace or Killing Self

“Just two choices on the shelf—pleasing God and pleasing self.”²

Quoted in Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

When the romantic is repeatedly thwarted and even publicly shunned, turning inward becomes natural. Grand galas, moonlight walks, and ambiguous flirtations no longer draw the attention. A new wardrobe, a change in hair color, teeth-whitening, and even plastic surgery are crucial. While the sectarian, like Burke’s euphemistic mystic, broods and retreats, the problem becomes not external, but fully internal. The scapegoat is now the self which must be completely and even extremely remodeled.

Much has changed at Bob Jones University since Campaign 2000. After years of resisting the external validation of accreditation, BJU is now accredited through the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. A new president and a new administration are at the helm. Now its students can apply for Title IV Federal Student Aid.

But the sectarian talk has changed too. BJU sounds less like a flirtatious romantic and more like an abandoned wallflower. While the presidential candidate that scorned them is now sounding and acting more like a Fundamentalist in his policies,³ these romantic sectarians sound less amorous. As a result, they leave the romantic rhetoric behind and internalize the tragedy. They take the co