Genre: Parody; Humor
Audience: Anyone who is familiar with the George Foreman Grill, knows about Mike Tyson's controversial past, and has seen the commercials for the grill. Also, it is aimed at a teen to young adult crowd for the type of humor it uses.
Purpose: Revealing how ridiculous some of the "Made for TV" appliance commercials and the people who act in it are. Also, the goal is to be humorous in parodying the commercials.
Stance: The stance is to show how ridiculous some of the "Made for TV" appliance commercials can be and how low celebrities and athletes will stoop to in their careers when they need money. It does this by making the grill a beat down contraption and having Tyson paired with a random TV extra. It also hints at the idea that the creators of the commercials are naive to think that people will actually believe the celebrities and athletes actually use the product. Instead it shows that their motives are generally to resurrect themselves and make money. In this case, Tyson is attempting to clear his name from the rape charges he had at the time.
Effectiveness?: I think the video was definetely effective in providing humor through its parody of the Foreman Grill. In terms of the stance, it did a better job of revealing how ridiculous the celebrities who are brought in to sell the item are. I still felt it was effective in parodying the actual use of the item but it did a better job at mocking the people selling it.
Pathos: The clip utilizes the emotional appeal of comedy quite heavily. Since it is a parody, it relies on the absurdity of Mike Tyson selling a grill that looks like a piece of junk. It further adds to this emotion by having him engage in inappropriate side talk with his co-host while attempting to demonstrate how the junky grill works. One of the best examples of appealing to comedy comes at the 3:09 mark when the actress calls out Tyson's selling of the grill and he retaliates by demeaning her lack of a TV career to which she responds by biting off his ear, parodying the infamous Mike Tyson fight where he did the same thing to Evander Holyfield. Being that the clip is from MadTV, you are able to hear their studio audience laughter in the background, which further reinforces the notion that the clip is humorous since others are laughing with you.
ReplyDeleteLogos: The logos behind this clip can be seen at the 1:52 and 2:45 mark where they parody Tyson's motives for selling the grill by having him disguised as "random" every day people saying how he didn't commit the rape charges that he was facing at the time. This reveals logic because the overall message of the clip was to show that athletes and celebrities that go on TV to sell these products have no sense of sincerity to a product that is clearly a piece of junk and that they have ulterior motives.
Ethos: There is not much ethos in this clip seeing as how the focus is more intent on a pathos based appeal to promote their message. However, the strongest form of ethos stems from the fact that the clip is from MadTV. As previously discussed, the studio audience adds to the authority that one should find the clip humorous since they are laughing at it. This lends credence to the pathos based appeal and since MadTV is considered a big program it lends authority to their argument that celebrity informercials are insincere and can be parodied.