Dramatic Pentad: Wealth on Film

Film is our window into the world of the wealthy. Through film, we have unlimited access into the inner workings of rich people's lives. Perhaps that is why so many popular films feature them. Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad offers us a useful tool for deciphering the motivations in film scenes, including those depicting the rich's interactions with money. Below you will find scenes from eight films. You will use the Dramatistic Pentad to identify specific rhetorical elements in three of those scenes illustrating the ways the wealthy engage with their money.

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:

1. "I Do Love Our Adventures" from Downton Abbey (2019)

2. "He's like the Asian Bachelor" from Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

3. "There is No Nobility in Poverty" from The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

4. "It's Not Too Much, is It?" from Marie Antoinette (2006)

5. "Why on Earth Would You Pick Me to be Your Princess?" from The Princes Diaries (2001)

6. "Are You of the Boston Dawsons?" from Titanic (1997)

7. "I Actually Have a Way Normal Life for a Teenage Girl" from Clueless (1995)

8. "Really Offensive" from Pretty Woman (1990)


Required:

• MLA Style
• Approximately 250 words

 Due: Wed 4.8