Film Analysis - Capitalism: A love Story by Micheal Moore

Film Analysis: Capitalism- A Love Story by Michael Moore Name: Course: Instructor: Introduction Ajzen A. describes persuasion as the use of verbal and nonverbal messages to mould peoples` attitude and behavior (Manfredo, 1992). The core aim is to draw peoples` heart and minds to a desired goal by effectively communicating and presenting messages. Persuasion and the guiding principles become an instrumental tool in the film industry as a sector that must remain relevant and compelling to its audiences both to the individual and social collectivity. Several concepts emerge in the determination of an effective process of persuasion including message structures, context of persuasions, attitude formation, communication approaches and reasoning. It from this concept premises that theories including cognitive model of persuasions, sublimation theory of attitude formation, social judgment and cognitive dissonance theories emerge to provide helpful generalization in the field of practice. The above concept and principles shall be discussed and later detail analysis of what the theories offer shall be presented in this paper with specific case examples from the Michael Moore: Capitalism- A love Story. Michael Moore documentary film comes during a period of political transition in the United States. It presents a satire to capitalism which criticizes as nothing less other than cooperate dominance on daily lives of poor American citizens and of course the world in general. The film, backed by strong facts about the economic situations on the ground leaves the audience with a lot to discuss outside the theater doors. The film presents persuasive and a critical show that cut across major institutions including the economy, religion and politics. The context in which persuasions occur is paramount to the process of determining successful influence in film spectatorship. Ideally, no message goes in a vacuum and the film directions must wade through predetermined feature challenges and opportunities. According to Manferdo, 1992, classical analysis presents a ‘who says what, how and to whom` format of analysis. As indicated earlier, the film is a critic to capitalism and comes at a time of its downfall and ills such as foreclosure quite evident in the society. The facts presented shows that the director conducted a wide research in the economic, social and political contexts giving a platform presentation and persuasion techniques. The film launch is in a time of world economic recession and political transitions. In a nation of learned citizens, the film presents expert viewpoints to optimize persuasion goal. The Director for instance, interviews the economist, Congress Persons and Catholic priest to address perceived contextual issues. Aware that most of religious audience who support capitalism ideas, the director interviews priest to sway the audience attitudes against capitalism. A further contrast of Jesus Christ as a capitalist is quiet influential approach to define a new context of influence. Secondly, is the message structure and the perceived effects on the target audience. Hovlands Janis and Kelley argue that message changes attitude to the extent that they ignite listeners to remember only the main concepts carried in by the message. First, factor such as source expertise, message focus and primary recency determine greatly the degree of this change. According to (Perloff, 2003), it is better to analyze both side of the arguments in a message as presenting one side of the story lacks facts and figure that may affect the initial audience reception. Persuasions formations rely on message effects which call for effective structuring. These take three lines of consideration; the message content, style of delivering the message and a focus on the message language (Perloff, 2003). Additionally a message consists of the advocated position, general arguments and specific factual evidence constructed for support (Madfrendo, 1992). The latter two segments of the message supply reason and justification for adopting the advocated position. Moore would desire curb impacts of capitalist as a menace e.g. in insurance companies and Wall Street credit swaps, and housing problems for the middle class. He build his message content through interviews as in the case with Congress representatives who agrees comments including Marcy Kaptur Ohio, a congress woman who agree that passing of 2008 bailout was a financial fraud`. Despite varying sides of the argument presented, the recipient is convinced of the films stand. Additionally the message content displays negative bias on capitalism thus arousing the greatest persuasive argument across the sectors. It is expressed as a ‘sin` and ‘evil`, which Jesus would not have participated by asking for maximized profit returns for those He cured. Effectively combined, the content, the language style and the channel constitutes the desir...