Essay Outline:

Find quotes to incorporate in paragraphs

I.

II.

III.

Introduction:
a. Brief introduction to what rhetoric and multimedia rhetorical devices
are, and their importance and effect
b. Thesis Statement: With the use of rhetorical devices, Dear White
People incites awareness on pre-conceived prejudices in the 21st
Century and by doing so calls for a reflection on the viewing audience's
moral values.
c. Brief Summary of the movie
Supporting Points of the Thesis Statement:
a. Sam's radio cast in the beginning (shows racism with music, sound,
and tone)
b. Starting scene (Lionel being bullied) (shows racism and prejudice of
blacks and gays with voicemail tone, and camera edit)
c. Troy and Sofia's relationship (shows racism with Sams voice in the
background)
d. Conversation between Coco/Helmut (shows preconceived prejudices on
groups of people such as Cocos (her disappointed face shown through
the use of refraining), and shows racism by how she denies her culture
e. Cafeteria Scene (Kurt vs. Sam) (Shows racism through the use of
refraining and dialogue)
f. Night Party Scene (shows racism with imagery: monkeys, guns,
violence, etc)
g. Last scene (TV producer talking with the University's President and
Dean) (Shows corruption with imagery and dialogue)
Conclusion:
a. Restate the thesis
b. Summarize the points
c. Wrap up the information
d. Why is this information important?
e. Give the purpose of the essay

Introduction:
Rhetoric is perhaps the most powerful technique of persuasion. It
encompasses the careful management of common meanings attached to symbols
and the structured use of symbols to bring about mutual understanding. This
means that rhetoric is not merely limited to language; rather it is limited to any
form of symbolic expression as long as it communicates meaning. Such forms of
symbolic expression include multi-media, music, objects, cinematography, signs,
words, and basically anything that conveys meaning. In the movie Dear White
People all the rhetorical devices and symbols that are employed by the filmmaker
are used to create a rhetorical discourse. Dear White People is a social satire that

depicts the day to day life of Winchester University students, in the supposedly notpost-racial America, to demonstrate that racism is only one of the multiple problems
that still prevail in the top educational programs of the United States. Herrick
proposed that a rhetorical discourse had to be planned, adapted to an audience,
shaped by human motives, responsive to a given situation, and most of all
persuasion-seeking. With the use of rhetorical devices, the filmmaker of Dear White
People creates a rhetorical discourse that incites awareness on pre-conceived
prejudices in the 21st Century and calls for a reflection on the viewing audience's
moral values.

Supporting points of the thesis statement:

The filmmaker employs the use of audio devices to incite awareness on the racial
prejudices that dominate in the Winchester University before he even starts the
opening scene. From the start, the filmmaker is bombarding the viewer with
carefully chosen audio to alert the audience of the preconceived stereotypes the
news broadcasts have of black people. The audio presented is a mix between
newscasts, reality TV, and music. The first lines of multiple news broadcasters and
reality TV channels introduce a sense of drama a racism with things like forty-year
old Garvis, you are not the father, and with a nigger form new York. Both lines, to
a certain extent, implicate racism by their despicable descriptions of black people.
Followed by this, a commentator gossips, some secrets that are feeding Shauns
crystal meth addiction, depicting yet another form of racism by the preconceived
prejudice some people have of black people being involved with drugs. To finish off,
the filmmaker puts some stereotypical music black teenagers usually listen to, and
lets us in on the daily news report, A race war has erupted at one of the nations
oldest and most prestigious universities. All these lines are presented to the
audience in the first eight seconds of the movie as a brief pre-introduction to what
the theme of the movie will be about. The filmmaker, with the audio lines he quotes,
not only foreshadows to the audience the themes that will be discussed in the
movie, but also lets us know about the current racial war going on at the Winchester
University.
In the Campus Arrival Scene, the filmmaker integrates the use of cinematography,
editing, and audio techniques to show the general pre-conceived prejudices that
dominate in the university. The Campus Arrivals Scene takes the audience back five
weeks, and focuses on the main differences between the student groups at different
schools inside the University. Through the use of mobile framing and refraining, the
filmmaker exaggerates and even ridicules the different school groups. The
filmmaker decides to focus on the main differences of between the student groups
by showing the stereotypes of the student groups that study in the Bing School of
Business, the Desmond School of History, and the School of Media. When the
filmmaker presents the Bing School of Business students in specific, he uses editing
to label them and uses both mobile framing and refraining to provide close-ups of
individuals characteristics and highlight the sense-making activity itself and oblige
us to reflect on it (Lancioni p.1). The scene also incorporates an ironic piece of
classical music to invite the audience to reflect on the satire that is being presented.

In this scene alone, the filmmaker employs the use of cinematography to make the
audience reflect on the stereotypes people have of certain schools, the editing to
link and label the images of the students being viewed to their particular schools,
and music to create an ironic atmosphere that lets us know that we are judging
people by what they study.