Rhetorical Analysis

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A chapter from the Morreal reading this week called The Negative Ethics of Humor discusses important philosophical objections to humor and presents arguments against them. Morreal highlights 8 different objections, offers his own disagreements, and offers three of his own objections to humor. I was able to relate the proposed harmful uses of humor to the movie Zoolander, some of which I support and some of which I do not.

As discussed in my previous articles, Zoolander is a satire that sheds light on the cliche nature of the fashion industry, and more importantly addresses the issue of the use of child labor by major fashion companies. One of the eight charges against humor theorized by philosophers is the idea that humor is idle. The cusp …show more content…
The writers had a purpose in constructing the plot of Zoolander. The absurdity and ostentatious presentation of the fashion industry proved to be funny, grabbing people’s attention. Once this was achieved, audiences had the ability to further inspect the plot and realize the broader message it was communicating. Zoolander allowed humor to have a double meaning, contradicting the argument that humor is simply idle. Humor in this case became a cause for social commentary. It may have done it in a silly way, but the exaggerated sarcasm makes it evident that the writers were exploiting the fashion industry rather than praising it. It can be argued that satire as a whole has a goal in its presentation. Satire is intended to be thought provoking in its very nature because it often ridicules widely accepted industries, practices, or celebrities with the intention of provoking change. Zoolander shows the ridiculousness of the public’s perception of the fashion industry and helps change the acceptance of their use of child …show more content…
The introduction of the argument acknowledges the fact that it is also based on cognitive disengagement. The belief is that in the pleasure of humor, we are disengaged from responsibilities leading to wrongdoings and immorality. Morreall follows this up by explaining the ways in which humor can actually be psychologically responsible. He even mentions satire saying, “Since the days of Ben Jonson, satirists have justified their trade by saying that satire corrects the shortcomings being laughed at. While this is not always true, and while direct moral censure might sometimes be more effective, certainly some satirists have gotten their audiences to pay attention to incompetence, hypocrisy, and deception.” Morreall clearly does not support all satire, which I guess I could see how it can be used ineffectively, the use of satire in Zoolander is not “irresponsible” in my opinion. It helps its audience pay attention to all three of those exact elements of the fashion industry. Pretty much all of the models in Zoolander act in a way of incompetence, intending to mimic the mental density of most of America’s favorite models. Deception is at the forefront of the message of Zoolander, where it shows how the fashion industry deceives all of us by acting as if they produce products ethically while secretly maliciously exploiting children and even their models to make a quick
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