KMT 2023 nr 1 Download PDF

The rhetoric of threats and emotions (feelings and affects) in film documentaries “A Minor Genocide” and “Salt of the Earth”

Cite: , Retoryka zagrożenia i emocji (uczuć i afektów) w dokumentach filmowych pt. „Mała Zagłada” i „Sól ziemi”, "Kultura - Media - Teologia", 2023( 53) nr 1, s. 94-109.

DOI: 10.21697/kmt.53.5

The threats analysed in this article concern two spheres – military and the sphere having the nature of a global threat of hunger. Telling a film story about people threatened with death is at the same time an attempt to view a human in the final situation. The film as an audiovisual message has its own characteristic means of expression, enabling the creator to talk about the world and man. Film means of expression and narrative methods can be used in a film in such a way that they convey messages about the world and man in a communicatively effective way. In the case of various cultural texts, the communicative effectiveness is closely related to constructing them in accordance with the principles of text rhetoric. The aim of this article is to examine the way of presenting specific threats to human life and health in two documentaries, and thus an attempt to answer the question whether we deal with the rhetoric of threat in an audiovisual text. The neo rhetorical analysis of documentary films “The Salt of the Earth” and “A Minor Genocide” confirms that in documentaries by Wim Wenders and Natalia Koryncka – Gruz we deal with the compassionate persuasion, which, together with the rhetoric of feelings and emotions can be considered as an important component of the rhetoric of threat.

About authors

Bogumiła Fiołek-Lubczyńska

Uniwersytet Łódzki

ORCID: 0000-0001-9180-7237