Elements of ancient style guidelines exist in modern media today. Such guidelines and categorizations have withstood the test of time and are relevant to modern communication. I have chosen a Hulu commercial to illustrate some aspects used in their unusual campaign. I will dissect the monolog in chronological order.
As far as the exact language and punctuation, I cannot be sure, but have made my best guess to transcribe the monolog in the below paragraphs. Since the language is meant to be heard and not read, I would say it might be a bit looser than if it were writing, but the communication still maintains conventional correctness. Further, it doesn’t tend to run on, and I would say that it has a periodic style, because all the sentences are right to the point, and don’t continue to string on more phrases or words with commas or other punctuations.
The following is a basic summery and transcript of the commercial along with an identification of basic style elements:
We zoom in (from outer space?) to earth to a closer shot of Alec Baldwin, who says: “Hello Earth, I’m Alec Baldwin, ‘T.V Star’” (makes little finger quote hand sign).
“You know they say TV will rot your brain?” he says. Here he is using a well known figure of thought that is commonly used and associated with television watching. It does not mean that TV literally kills brain cells, but that a TV watcher doesn’t have to do much, only sit and watch and be entertained, without necessarily much thinking involved. Perhaps this saying is meant to contrast with alternatively more intellectually accepted forms of entertainment like reading a book, or attending a live performance. I think the normal connotation is that watching TV makes you stupid because you could be doing more engaging things with your time.
Then he continues: “Ha, that’s absurd: TV only softens the brain, like a ripe banana.” Here we are using simile to describe how our brains will become “like” a rotting banana. Brains and rotting bananas are not normally associated with each other but like Crowley and Hawhee describe a simile as, “two unlike things are placed together so that the attributes of one are transferred to the other” (Crowley 229). Of course the brain itself is not soft, but this provides a good “image” in the viewer’s head.
“To take it all the way, we created Hulu. Hulu beams TV directly to your portable computing devices to give you more of the cerebral gelatinizing shows that you want, anytime, anywhere, for free.” In the commercial, Baldwin looks through x-ray screen at some guy laughing at TV and Baldwin says, “Mushy, mush.” Baldwin is further playing on his earlier comment that your brain will get soft like a rotting banana.
“And the best part is, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I mean what are you going to do? Turn off your TV and your computer? Ha!” Here is a rhetorical question mean to taunt the viewer. The rhetorical question is a statement in the form of “asking” that’s not really meant to sincerely ask, it gets the point across without needing an answer (Crowley 249).Baldwin knows that we’re too plugged in to unplug. This fact is taken to be so obvious that he doesn’t even have to say it, he can simply challenge us with a question that he doesn’t need us to answer: he just laughs at our pitiful helpless state.
“Once your brain is reduced to a cottage cheese like mush we’ll scoop them up with a melon baller and gobble them right on up!” We are using simile again here, “cottage cheese like.”
“Opps, I think I’m drooling a little. Because we’re aliens, and that how we roll.” Baldwin is using a colloquial “that’s how we roll,” a phrase considered current slang for Hulu’s target audience, meaning — that’s how we do things, get used to it. Colloquial words change with generations, although some tend to hang around longer than others (Crowley 232). This is probably done to “connect” with the audience more.
Then there is a different unseen speaker to announce the tag line. The voice-over says, “Hulu. An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy.”
The whole time the commercial is really saying the opposite of what it is literally saying, Hulu isn’t really trying to communicate that TV will rot your brain, thus you ought to stay away. They are communicating exactly the opposite, they want you to watch more TV, and are providing you an additional tool to watch TV when you normally can’t watch TV. The irony of the whole contradiction is supposed to be funny, and self-mocking. It’s almost as if they are trying to take the guilt you might feel at watching more TV, by ‘putting it out there’ already, and then making light of it. Hulu is not unique, as Crowley and Hawhee point out as one of their examples that “ABC Television Network’s 1997 promotional campaign turned the focus back on itself—television as a medium—and embraced the commonplace that television is harmful to the mind. The one-line ads mad ironic claims such as ‘Don’t worry, you’ve got billions of brain cells’” (Crowley 253). It’s seems as though Hulu chose to follow suit with a similar ad a decade later.
The commercial has another running theme, most of which is expressed visually, but also verbally. At the beginning of the commercial, Baldwin states that he’s himself, but in quotation marks. Also, at the end of the commercial Baldwin admits that he’s actually an alien, and a tentacle slips out from his normal wardrobe. Further, throughout the commercial, there are various background scenes that lend itself to implication that Baldwin is in some kind of alien lab where they study the liquefaction of human brains via TV watching. Then there is also the comment that Baldwin, and the other aliens plan on eating our mushy brains. This is an example of hyperbole. Baldwin exaggerates and builds on the premise that ‘TV rots your brain’ and takes it on a far out tangent that your brain literally becomes useless and then, of course, that is a master plan conspiracy put together by aliens (presumably so they can take over the planet?). The exaggeration is done for humor, and to poke fun at the stereotype, and maybe even at the company, and the TV viewers alike (Crowley 258).
We have dissected a current example in mainstream media that directly applied to ancient style principles and elements. We identified elements of irony, simile, periodic style, rhetorical question, and colloquial words, The media example was a television commercial, rather than the spoken or written word, but the style applies to communication in many forms.
Works Cited
Crowley, Sharon and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. Second Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.
