Blog #2-- Hulu Article

This advertisement for Hulu, a website allowing viewers to watch their favorite TV shows online for free, has many different sources of rhetorical analysis. First thing is first, this commercial was aired during the Superbowl this past year. (go steelers :):):)) Right there is where we find our audience--majority men. Perhaps some families all sat down together to watch; however, it is obvious that the author geared this commercial towards the humor of Men. This is also visible throughout the commercial by the different television shows that are flashed throughout--Family Guy, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, as well as the Beautiful women of the Miss America Pageant. Right at the beginning of the commercial, when Alec Baldwin is introduced, the author appeals to ethos to the viewers. Because of his presence in the commercial, the viewers have the ability to "trust" in him because he is famous, and that is, well, just what people do. Little does the audience know, that trusting the commercial is not really necessary because humor is the main theme throughout this. The author/producer of this commercial utilized humor to persuade viewers to come to this website. The words TV, mush, and brain were all used as repetitions throughout the advertisement. These words all added to the humor and stressed the main point of the joke throughout the entire advertisement. One example of an anomaly would be TV will turn your brain into a "cottage cheese-like mush." Another anomaly would be "Nothing you can do to stop it." This goes along with the humor in the sense that yes, you can turn off your TV AND your computer.
I think that all of the methods that I have mentioned all were effective. I know it was effective for me, as an individual, because I got on the website right after watching the commercial. I think that the way that the producer chose to use humor definitely made this commercial. I think had it not been focused around the dramatization that humans are being taken over by aliens in their "plot to destroy the world", along with the humor, the commercial would not have been as effective. I think that in comparison to the Cobert article, both were successful and both used humor throughout their media to persuade their audience. Because of this, I think that humor throughout a text gives the best means of persuasion.