Visual Rhetoric

Forbidden planet. (1956). [Web]. Retrieved from http://hotcov.com/archives/2022

This is a still from the 1956 Science Fiction movie Forbidden Planet.  When I found this picture online I thought it was a perfect representative for my thesis of “how Science Fiction can reveal universal truths.”  The picture is of a robot helping a lady put on a pair of shoes, which if you think about it, says a lot about humanity. 

For one thing it says how humans prefer to have things done for them, it makes us feel superior or even like royalty.  See how the lady in the photo is sitting high on a ladder and the robot is bowing ever so slightly.  This gives us the impression that the lady is practically royalty and has a servant for even the simplest task as putting on a shoe. 

It also shows how technology has been thought of even back in the 1950’s.  This robot was made to make her life easier, and that’s all technology has ever really been used for is to make life easier for us.  Instead thinking about new technology that may be used for shoes, the director thought about how technology could make putting on shoes easier.  Sometimes humanity forgets how to create new things, and rather just improve old things.

Ethos has to do with the credibility of the picture to the audience.  Credibility is one of the hardest parts of creating Science Fiction.  You have to make something that no one has ever seen before, but at the same time is believable.  The robot in this picture achieved a great balance between the two aspects.  It’s obviously futuristic, yet it has a look to it that is familiar and feasible.  Someone from the 1950’s could easily look at that robot and believe its existence in 50 or so years.

Pathos is the emotional aspect of the picture.  This picture presents uneasiness to it with a sense of calm as well.  The unknown robot presents the feeling of fear, but the woman is completely at ease with the robot passing those feelings of comfort over to the audience. 

Logos is the logical idea behind the picture.  Unfortunately logic does not always play a large role in Science Fiction.  Many times Science Fiction is trying to stay away from logic, because it is easier just to accept something that doesn’t make sense.  So this picture does not present much logic, because with the future, you have to use your own imagination.

  

Phillips, R. (Artist). (1952). Rat in the skull. [Web]. Retrieved from

http://farm2.static.flickr.com

Sometimes Science Fiction can be so “far out there” that there is no real purpose or lesson behind it.  Take for instance the picture above; the idea is to beware of people because you never know what lies behind their eyes, however the artist lost us with the use of a rat controlling the human replica robot. 

He tried to reach our pathos by making the two people in the picture very life like and showing real emotion.  You can really see the fear and confusion in the faces of these people. 

I believe by using the rat as the “controller” he was attempting to connect with a sense of ethos or credibility.  Having a creature in control of a life-like robotic puppet is something that no one has retaliated to before, so to bring it down for a sense of credibility he put a creature that we are familiar with to be the controller.  Unfortunately it didn’t work.  When you have something that is completely unbelievable, sometimes the only way to make it believable is if you push it past our own understanding of this world, and create something believable of another world.  That is what some Science Fiction does; it takes something so far beyond believable that we simply accept its existence.  In this picture the rat, pushes the down the uncommon sense with something common, and in the end just makes the picture ridiculous.

By examining the inside of the rat’s puppet machine, the artist is presenting the audience with his logos.  If the audience can see the inner workings of the puppet robot then our logic takes over and says, yes I suppose this is feasible now that I have seen how it works.  The great detail of the “control center” really helps present the logical side of the picture.