Jaimie Young
ENG 101
23 January 2013
Rhetorical Analysis of an Argument
The Direct TV commercial “Don’t attend your own funeral” focuses on the quality of service, and the customer service of regular cable in comparison to Direct TV. From the beginning scene and progression of the commercial, it’s implied that cable service is bad, causing customers to need someone to come fix the service. This would trigger a chain of events, outrageously resulting in having to fake a funeral. As unbelievable and unrealistic as the claim may seem, the audience has been addressed with a sense of humor which makes the claim effective.
The commercial starts out with an “average Joe” at home sitting in front of his TV. You can tell by the scene, he lives in a small apartment, appears to be single, and is aged between 20 and 30 years old. This situation would apply to a majority of the audience/people seeing this commercial. The TV has a gray screen, and the commercial is introduced as, “When you wait forever for the cable guy, you get …show more content…
His entire appearance has changed; he looks much older, has glasses on and he has white hair, eyebrows, and a mustache. Everyone in the crowd is crying, looking down, etc. This gives the audience the emotional aspect of the evidence, connecting them to the situation. Joe is keeping his head down as the announcer says, “And when you dye your eyebrows, you attend your own funeral as a guy named Phil Shifley. Don’t attend your own funeral as a guy named Phil Shifley.” In other words, don’t go through all of this trouble in result of having regular cable, and switch to Direct TV. This same advice is given through a more straight forward approach by saying “Get rid of cable.” Another warrant would be, getting rid of cable will get rid of all these outrageous problems that cable may and will