drafty proposal
Music: Soma FM: "Drone Zone"
Panel Proposal for the Bi-Annual Meeting of The Rhetoric Society of America Minneapolis, MN, 2010
The Sounds of Rhetoric
Participants:
[SNIP]
THE SOUNDS OF RHETORIC
An original screenplay
Production Draft September 13th, 2009
BLANK SCREEN: The voice of a person delivering a research paper fades into the audible range. Another voice fades up-again, someone giving an academic paper. The word "rhetoric" is heard. Voice after voice is layered onto each other until there is a din of voices delivering concurrent papers. The sound fades slightly into background noise, and then . . .
FADE IN: 30 SOUTH SEVENTH STREET, DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS
WIDE-SHOT, AERIAL: Man appears on street corner just below eye-level; strangely, he is wearing a white dress with a black corset. ZOOM. The dress appears to be German in origin owing to shoulder straps and the obvious, Germanic cut; a beaming smile appears on the man's face. ZOOM: It is now clear that the man is wearing a blonde, bob wig. ZOOM: Camera continues to focus closer and closer, and the viewer notices a ring of freshly cut daisies encircle the man. The zoom ends in a still CLOSE-UP in which the viewer can see the nametag appearing on man's chest. CLOSE-UP OF NAME TAG: It reads, "Jack Selzer."
ZOOM OUT: Camera pulls-out to swelling, orchestral music.
SELTZER: MIDDLE SHOT of JACK, he twirls in place with his arms held out, and then dramatically approaches the stationary camera. In close range, JACK begins to sing, moving his arms out away from his chest in expressive glee:
"The Twin Cities are alive with the sound of rhetoric! With words that have been said for thousands of years! The Cities fill my heart with the sound of rhetoric! My heart wants to declaim every paper it hears!"
LOUD SOUND: NEEDLE-SCRATCHING-RECORD, THE SCREEN SUDDENLY GOES BLANK. A CALM, COLLECTED, ALTOGETHER RATIONAL AND SCHOLARLY-SOUNDING VOICE SAYS:
This comical and unlikely scene serves to underscore that conferences are heard, not seen. Ironically, since the abandonment of elocution in the early twentieth century, the study of how vocalics, tone, pitch, and other elements of oral delivery has been on a steady decline. Yet, the influence of the human voice-either written or spoken-remains central to everyday suasive encounters, such as at an academic conference. The devaluation of the oral also seems to have also led to the neglect of the sonorous or aural qualities of suasive discourse, broadly construed. This panel seeks to promote more scholarly attention to the rhetorical dimensions of sound. The scholars presenting will focus on music, sound production, and political discourse, mapping the many dimensions of sound's rhetorical purchase in our contemporary culture(s).
Co-Chairs: [SNIP]
Paper One: [SNIP]
Paper Two: [SNIP]
Paper Three: [SNIP]
Paper Four: "Killing Them Loudly: Rhetorics of Sonic Torture"
Authors: Mirko Hall and Joshua Gunn Presenter: Mirko Hall
Since 2006, NYU musicologist Suzanne Cusick has published a series of articles about the development of torture techniques using recorded music. As a consequence of her scholarship, the Society for Ethnomusicology publicly condemned the U.S. military for using sonic torture techniques on Iraqi detainees at various prison facilities on ethical grounds (e.g., as "cruel" and "inhumane"). In this paper, we examine the arguments for and against sonic torture in order to tease-out the implicit and explicit theories of influence assumed by proponents and detractors. We conclude by showing how an understanding of these competing theories demands a more systematic and probing investigation of the rhetorical dimensions of sound.