The Dramatistic Pentad: An American Abroad

As a medium, film is tremendously influential in teaching American filmgoers about the world around them. Often an American’s first trip aboard comes courtesy of a film. For example, before we’ve set foot in Paris, we’ve likely already experienced the city in a movie. Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad offers us a useful tool for deciphering the motivations film scenes, including those of Americans overseas. Below you will find scenes from ten films. You will use the Dramatistic Pentad to identify specific rhetorical elements in three of those scenes illustrating an American (or Americans) interacting with a foreign culture in another country. Additionally, you will analyze the ratio between two elements.

Directions:

1. Choose three scenes from below. Also, choose one ratio with which to examine all three scenes (e.g. purpose:agent, scene:agency).
2. Using the Dramatistic Pentad, identify what you believe to be each of the five elements (agent, agency, etc.) for each of the three scenes (or “artifacts”)—see model below.
3. In one paragraph, examine how your chosen ratio functions in each of the three scenes. For example, what is revealed by examining the scenes through this specific ratio? Are there similarities? What are the differences? You might also consider how this particular ratio informs us versus another.
   

Example:

Commercial: “Start the Day Write” from Kellogg’s

Artifact Description:
A boy sluggishly wakes up for school. After a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, he is more animated. Later, at school, the boy enthusiastically answers his teacher’s questions thanks to the boost he got from the cereal.

The Dramatistic Pentad:

1. Act: A boy’s morning sluggishness is only helped by eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes cereal.
2. Agency: In order to pep up her sleepy son, the boy’s mother purposefully serves him a sugary breakfast cereal.
3. Agent: The boy’s mother, who serves her son a sugary cereal in order to wake him up.
4. Scene: Split between his home and his classroom.
5. Purpose: The boy’s mother, needing an efficient means to ready her sleepy son for school, feeds him a bowl of sugary cereal. She succeeds in that he is very engaged soon after in school.

***

Choose three scenes from the following for your analysis:

"The Mouth of Truth" from Roman Holiday (1953)

"I'm Sally Bowles" from Cabaret (1972)

"The Slaughtered Lamb" from An American Werewolf in London (1981)

"Is this the Bus to Cartagena?" from Romancing the Stone (1984)
"I Don't Know Why People Say This Country is Civilized" from The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

"Are You Married?" from The Quiet American (2002)

"Suntory Time!" from Lost in Translation (2003)
"Dancing Queen" from Mamma Mia! (2008)

"He Got You a Suitcase?" from Leap Year (2010)

"Actually, Paris is the Most Beautiful in the Rain" from Midnight in Paris (2010)

Due: Mon 3.12 (Note Monday due date)