Rhetorical Response

The music video below, “Famous in a Small Town,” makes an argument about the life in a small town and what all occurs in a rural town setting. The main appeal for this video is pathos. The song itself makes jokes about living in a small town where everyone knows about everybody else’s business. Through this appeal the audience is drawn in and if they are from a small town lightheartedly laugh and agree that this is how it is. Including the humorous pictures of the girlfriend and boyfriend in the video add more humor, creating pathos. The pictures and video clips of the town also make the appeal to pathos, this time however, the appeal is more one of a sense of community than of humor.
The video also contains two logical fallacies. The hasty generalization, this comes from assuming that every small town is like the one that she is singing about, that everybody dies famous in a small town, when there is no evidence to support that statement. The video also contains the logical fallacy of stacking the evidence. While the statement of everybody dies famous in a small town may apply to her and the town that is being sung about, it isn’t necessarily true of all small towns. Also what one person’s opinion is of their particular town, might not be the same as the next persons. In this way the video appeals to the logical fallacies. By appealing to the audiences emotions, it ensures that a wider range of people will view the viedo.