Born Into Coal

The documentary Born into Coal is a very good documentary. I really liked how research was written on the moving picture. It showed that the maker of this documentary was prepared. However, at first I wasn’t quite sure what the documentary was about. It was talking about the pageant and the miners and teenage girl a wanted to go off to college and I was a bit confused. However, once she won the pageant and stated she wanted to stay here and fight for coal, it brought the entire documentary together. I wished they would have only stuck to the first family and not brought in the second family, even though the second family expressed two everyday concerns for coal miners (explosions and black lung). This documentary used a lot of pathos by showing us the miners’ families and what they work so hard for. The argument of this documentary I believe is to consider both sides of the story. On one side, we see all the terrible things that happen in the mine (black lung, explosions, how hard they work, etc.). Then on the other side we see that this is how these miners support their families and how lost they would be without the mine.

The story board for this documentary probably consisted of the following parts: Giving the teenage girl’s opinion of her hometown before the pageant, showing her family life with a father who is a miner, showing the other family and talking about the explosion, the risk of black lung, showing the teenage girl winning the pageant, and finally showing how this opportunity made her want to stand up for coal and all the miners in her state. These senses tell the story of how you must stand up for what you believe in. Overall, this documentary was successful in relaying this message.

Two Websites

Two websites that I frequently visit are overstock.com and amazon.com. Both of these websites have similar purposes. The purposes of these websites are to offer their customers a wide variety of product (pretty much anything you can think of) at a discounted price. The audience for these webpages would really be anyone who has money. They don’t care how old you are or where you are from as long as you buy something. I guess you could narrow it down and say their audience is people who don’t want the hassle of going to the store to buy something. The audience could also be people who want a good deal on certain items or even people who don’t know exactly what they want to buy.

Overstock’s ethos I believe comes in the way the website is set up. It is very organized and has every product grouped into sections so the consumer can find what he or she is looking for.  Amazon’s ethos also comes from their presentation of their website. Amazon’s ethos also comes from a pre-existing credible name. Amazon is known as one of the best online shopping websites, but why? It’s from people who have experienced how great Amazon is telling all of their friends and then them telling their friends and so on and so forth. However, I believe that Overstock’s website has way more ethos than Amazon. Overstock’s is full of pictures with vivid colors and is very organized. Amazon’s contains lots of words which sometimes, people don’t like to read.

Overstock makes great rhetorical choices. The first thing that pops up is a collage of pictures with big writing on them, describing the sales of each. It is very colorful, yet not too bright or overbearing. As you scroll down there are pictures separated in to categories such as “recommended for you..” and “trending on overstock.” These category titles are in a red, larger font. It then shows pictures of these items and their price. I think this is a very effective way of advertising because it will lead people to buy things that they hadn’t intended to purchase.

I believe amazon didn’t make the best rhetorical choices. Amazon’s home page is rather plain. It is a white background with light orange, blue and black text. There is a picture of a little girl reading her Kindle on the couch, which is good advertisement for the amazon kindle. Amazon has similar categories to overstock as you scroll down. However, everything is just kind of blah feeling and it makes me want to go back to looking at overstock.

In conclusion, Overstock made better rhetorical choices than Amazon. Overstock’s website is more fun to look at and in general would get more of my business.