Dr. Pfister
COMM 189H
September 20th
Reason and Emotion
The video that team pathos was to critic was the video "Reason and Emotion". Reason and Emotion was a film created for the general public of America in 1943. War was raging in Europe at the time and news was flooding back to America about the progress of the war. In the face of all the news and hearsay, Walt Disney wanted to produce this film to tell Americans to not listen to their emotion regarding the matter, but to reasonable thoughts. The film goes through multiple stages, and is formatted to show that letting emotion take the free reign in your life is a terrible idea, but letting reason take the driver's seat is the best way to go.
Part number one in the video starts out with a narrator showing what goes on in the head of a toddler. The video depicts Junior being 100% emotion and 0% reason. Right from the beginning of the video, an adult would not want to be considered to be letting their emotion take charge, because that is what babies do. Already, the video paints a negative picture of emotion. The next part of the video helps to increase the negative view already put on emotion up to that point. Junior is now grown in the second part of the video and is "an average adult male". Adult Junior is walking down the sidewalk and sees a good-looking woman standing there. Reason just wants to keep on walking by the woman and being on his way, but emotion wants to "get acquainted with the number". Reason is in the driver's seat still and so Junior walks past the woman, but emotion takes a large club and beats reason in the head. Emotion takes Junior back towards the woman and tries a pick-up line. Emotion ends up getting slapped in the face, which again is the video trying to put down letting emotion take the driver's seat.
At this point, the video makes a transition into the head of the woman that just slapped Junior in the face. Emotion decides that she is hungry and wants to go and get some food. Reason, who is also the driver to start out, says that tea and toast would be suitable for them since they are on a diet. Emotion once again takes charge, rambling off quite an extensive list of food items that she wants to consume. The video has a dramatic representation of what happens to the woman and her weight, if emotion is allowed to stay in the driver's seat. The video transitions to the third section where John Dokes, who is an average american male, tries to keep up with the news. His emotions begin to take reign when all he hears is bad news. He becomes extremely frazzled and disheveled. The narrator then makes a parallel to what Hitler is doing to the German people and their emotions. He shows how Hitler prayed on the emotions of the Germans and was able to make their reasoning sides take a backseat.
Throughout the entire video up to this point, the narrator is painting a picture of how emotion is this terrible thing that has to be kept in check and cannot be let to lead a person's life. He is showing, through all of his examples, how letting emotion be the driving force for decisions will always end up terribly wrong. The end of the video is full of patriotism and american pride and the like. This may seem completely normal, except when you exam it compared to the rest of what the narrator talks about. Music affects emotion greatly, which is why it is so popular and such an expensive industry. The end of the video is an incredible play on the emotions of the viewers. The entire video talks about how we must not let emotion take the driver's seat, but emotion is the driving force for the end of the video, which is the part of video's people remember best. Walt Disney made a video to show that emotional decisions are not good, but even he realized the power that emotion has to get people to act and to believe in a cause, even if that cause to be anti-emotional.
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