A Rhetorical Analysis Of Nina Paley's 'The Stork'

Nina Paley’s The Stork: Rhetorical Analysis

In cartoonist and activist, Nina Paley’s short film “The Stork”, she describes the devastating effects the human race is having on the Earth and the unsustainability of our current lifestyles. She succeeds in convincing her viewers that overpopulation is leading to mass extinctions, irreversible damage & pollution to our environment, and leaving fewer resources for humans to survive on. Causality, metaphors, and irony are some of the techniques that Paley uses to create a strong and effective film.

Paley begins the film with a familiar song (although we might not know it by name: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Morning Mood), we’ve all heard it at least a few times in our lifetimes. It’s
Shortly after the first stork shows up, it drops not just a cute, smiling baby, but bombs which explode into small mountains of the things that usually accompany large family life: a huge house, a SUV, clothes, toys, and electronics. “The Stork”? Or the Enola Gay? Paley uses a strong metaphor here to drive her point: soon there isn’t just one stork. There are a few more joining in every second, until the sky is swarming with storks, each carrying a bundle that explodes into a pile of babies and “stuff”. The audience no longer sees just a stork delivering a giggling baby. Those storks have suddenly become enemy war planes, dropping explosions and obliterating everything in their path. Entire forests, waterways, and the animals that resided within them are destroyed. Yes, this is also familiarity but it no longer makes us reminisce about early Saturday mornings spent with a talking mouse while sitting 5 inches from a t.v. screen and the volume way down low. The film has taken an extremely dark turn and it now shows images of wartime, havoc, and suffering instead. It’s strongly suggestive of films and documentaries of World War II. Paley has unexpectedly induced a cringe-worthy reaction each time a stork appears on the screen. The audience is left with a feeling of trepidation, fear, and hostility towards the war birds as they swoop down on the beautiful landscape below and destroy
A birth is normally a celebration of life. It is typically seen as a means to new beginnings, happiness, and love. Paley is instead equating this event to death and destruction. It at first seems a little farfetched but as the video continues, it shows that it’s not just one birth. There are so many, there isn’t a way to even begin to count them. With each baby bomb, explosions bring forth more and more “stuff” until that “stuff” takes over. New houses go up where forests once were and the animals there are destroyed with it. The waterways are polluted and the fish are destroyed as well. The irony continues with the images of smiling and happy families when each bomb goes off, even as the beautiful landscape around them is obliterated. Not one family in the film is portrayed as being concerned for the nature around them. They continue to smile perhaps because they do not understand the direness of the situation or perhaps because they simply don’t care. In either case, Paley has effectively shown that humans are conditioned to not just want what resources are needed to survive but to continue to want more. The artist seems to describe this as not just consuming more but overly consuming what can only be described as unnecessary luxuries: a huge gas guzzling car, a huge house with more rooms than actually needed, the latest in electronics and gadgets. Humans may want