The Audience and Film

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and according to Aristotle, rhetoric is built upon enthymemes. Enthymemes are persuasive arguments. When the art of rhetoric is being used, the rhetorician, whether it is an author, speaker, politician, artist, or producer, must keep in mind the audience. The kind of audience a rhetorician has is important in how enthymemes are formed and utilized. For Aristotle the audience has two dimensions: factual and fictional. The factual audience comprises of those who are actually reading, or listening to the rhetorician, they are involved in the situation. The fictional audience comprises of those who are what the rhetorician imagines and projects through his discourse. For the rhetorician to be successful he must project an image that the factual audience can identify with.

The documentary film on Indian cuisine is a form of contemporary rhetorical art. The director’s purpose in creating the film is to show how religion, history and culture influence Indian cuisine. When making the film the director had to consider who the audience is. The director imagined the audience as being non-Indian or people unfamiliar with Indian cuisine because it was assumed that Indians knew about the uniqueness of their own food. Because this is the director’s fictional audience the film is not produced with too much depth on religion and regional differences. The possible factual audience watching the documentary could be Indians, especially those that have been raised outside of India. They, perhaps, were never taught Indian culture, history or religion as in depth as Indians in India. The factual audience could also be Indians who are somewhat familiar with their culture, history and religion, and watched the film to see someone else’s opinion on the matter. In this case, they may feel unsatisfied due to the surface level information because in the director’s mind his audience was those who had very little knowledge of religion, history or culture in India. For the director to be persuasive to all audiences the director must add something in the movie that was appealing to the different audiences. The enthymeme that the use of the same spices unites India’s regions together despite all the historical, religious and cultural differences was a unique argument. This particular enthymeme appealed to all audiences. This provided insight to those unfamiliar with Indian cuisine, and gave those who were familiar with Indian cuisine a new perspective on how important and different Indian cuisine is compared to other foods around the world.

This example of the documentary film shows the consideration of the audience and an enthymeme seen in the film that effectively appealed to all audience types. Documentary film is a relatively recent discovery of a way rhetoric can be projected. Every rhetorician must consider who the audience is going to be. The development of the fictional audience allows for the development of stronger and more effective enthymemes. The rhetorician hopes the factual audience is the same as the imagined audience of the rhetorician, if not then the rhetorician has a lesser chance of being effective because the rhetorician’s enthymemes were directed toward the fictional audience.