The Gas Man Cometh

“THE GAS MAN COMETH” The documentary, “Gas Land”, by Josh Fox, is a film about the problems with contaminated groundwater due to excessive and unregulated natural gas extraction across the country. In the film, Fox travels all over to talk to many people who have rented out their land to natural gas companies, only to get contaminated water and no help from any company or organization with the problems that ensue. Fox uses many techniques in his film to get across his point that America should not be subjected into a wasteland because of poor industry ethics and unregulated polluting of our water sources. By building his appeals, especially to ethos, as well as arranging many elements of the film, Fox creates a very staunch argument. Fox plays a lot on his “average guy” mentality that portrays him as no expert with any bias, but instead, a concerned citizen who really likes nature and America the way it is right now. He creates this ethos persona in order to convince his viewers that he has no hidden agenda to push, and he is no different than them in the way he lives his life. Adding onto his relatable persona, Fox tells his life story of growing up in Pennsylvania on a small piece of land surrounded by forests – prime gas extraction land. When natural gas companies approach him and offer him 100,000 dollars to rent his twenty acres of land to them, the purpose of the documentary becomes clear: to find out why they want the land so badly, and what it truly means when he takes the money and hands over his property for drilling purposes. As mentioned above, Fox establishes a steady pattern of ethos maintenance throughout his documentary by repeatedly using the language and tone of an average American, who specifically doesn’t have any exclusive knowledge, except for what he was able to find out by his own research. This continually balances out the scare factor of the claims that Fox brings up, and puts his audience’s guard down in order for them to listen