Ethos (Ethical Appeal)

Quick reminder: in language-based arguments, ethical appeals are usually made through the arguer's credentials, the knowledgability with which they present themselves, their use of credible sources, and their use of the appropriate tone. If they are delivering a speech, they should seem genuine and passionate. In more visual arguments like television commercials and print advertisements, you see ethical appeals made many ways. When trying to convince you to buy a car, advertisers may cite safety ratings and awards. They may show you pictures of mothers strapping their kids into the car to show you that this mother trusts them, and you should, too. Movies advertising by using quotes from well-known movie critics praising their movie are also using ethical appeal, calling upon the reputations of the movie critics to help convince you theirs is a quality film.

You may notice that a lot of advertising will use images of the 1950's, creating atmospheres we associate with Leave it to Beaver and Norman Rockwell paintings. There is a really good reason for this. Many people, subconsciously, associate the 50's with innocence, comfort, and stability; in their minds, whether they realize it or not, they think of this as "a better time." By using our nostalgia for this "better" time, advertisers are attempting to subtly convince us that they are trustworthy. We trust the 50's, and by invoking the 50's, they can get us to trust them, too. (Theorist Frederic Jameson talks a lot about our sense of nostalgia for a mythical better past and its role in film in The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. It's a tough read, but worth it if you are interested in this topic. It is available in book form, or online here.)

Another, more basic way that advertisers make an ethical appeal is simply by producing a quality advertisement. Think about it: you've probably seen some pretty terrible local commercials. Do you trust a company whose television commercials are horribly made, unfunny, confusing, or perhaps all three? Probably not.

In film, the most basic way you are going to trust the filmmakers is through their making a quality film. There shouldn't be major mistakes, boom mikes falling into the shots, or poorly done special effects. The acting in the movie should be appropriate and well-done. As soon as the audience is made acutely aware that they are watching a movie, the filmmaker has lost them.

Believability is an offshoot of this. Do the occurances in the film make sense in the world the filmmakers have created? Some movies are going for realism. In a movie that establishes this as its purpose, it is important that you believe everything that happens in the movie could happen in reality. One example I like to use for a failure in this department is from the movie Mission to Mars. The movie, though science fiction, tries to ground itself in reality fairly well, suggesting that this could be reality in the future. But among the many things I found to be gaping holes in believability in this film is when one of the characters looks at a holographic display of a DNA strand and remarks, "That looks like frog DNA." I'm sorry, but I don't believe that any amount of time passing is going to allow a human being to look at an unlabeled representation of a strand of DNA and know what animal it came from. Not going to happen. And the movie lost me right there.

In more fantastic movies, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, believability is not established through making it fit our reality, but just maintaining consistency about its own reality. A whole different world is created in such detail that you never sit there and go, "That couldn't happen." That world seems real, and we will accept whatever we are told can happen there. The tv series Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a musical episode during its sixth season. Most tv shows would be unable to fit into their created reality an episode where the characters all of the sudden are singing their lines instead of speaking them, but Buffy's creators had established a reality in which a force, demon, villain, or other entity can come in and cast any sort of spell it wants, and with any sort of effect. So for a singing and dancing demon to come to town and cast a spell that causes people to break out into song and dance fits right into this world and does not strike a viewer familiar with the show as disrupting its believability.

Finally, tonal consistency is important. A movie about something very serious that all of the sudden cracks jokes that seem inappropriate, or a light-hearted movie suddenly switching to a more serious tone, can make the audience uncomfortable and therefore lose them. An effective ethical appeal by a filmmaker will keep tone consistent for the audience and appropriate to the subject matter.