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Essay: Viola Davis #MeToo speech analysis

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  • Published: 15 November 2019*
  • Last Modified: 18 September 2024
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At the 2018 Women’s March in Los Angeles, Viola Davis brought her rhetorical talent to the table focusing on the #MeToo movement and specifically the women who remain voiceless in the movement. Beginning in 2017 we have seen the rise of the #Metoo movement from around the world. The movement was originally created in 2006 by Tarana Burke to help support survivors of sexual misconduct and assault, according to the Chicago Tribune. (Chicago Tribune, 2017) The movement did not catch the media’s attention right away, but it has been boiling under the surface throughout the last decade. However, in the last couple of years, the #Metoo movement exploded, aided by the power of social media. Women were speaking out left and right against misconduct that had been committed towards them, often by very high profile men. Ashley Judd coming out against Harvey Weinstein in the Fall of 2017 is thought by many to be the catalyst that set the recent #Metoo movement off, with other survivors following suite and telling their stories. (Chicago Tribune, 2017)

Award-winning actress Viola Davis delivers a speech about this very topic at the second annual women’s march in Los Angeles, California in front of an estimated 500,000 people. The women’s march begun in January 2017, as people gathered to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump. (Mandolinz, 2018)

Davis may live a glamourous Hollywood lifestyle now, yet her upbringing was anything but flashy. She has described her childhood  as “living in poverty and dysfunction” and says she spent much time “stealing and crawling through maggot filled bins to get food”(Greaves, 2017). On January 6, 2017, Davis was presented with the 2,597th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame by Doubt-costar Meryl Streep. Davis was also featured in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list for the second time in 2017, having graced the pages once before in 2012. (Biography.com)

Description of Artifact and Audience

The women’s march and #Metoo movement has often been criticized for its’ “lack of intersectional feminism”, according to women’s march founder Bob Bland in a 2018 interview. (The Guardian, 2018)  Davis shines a light on this problem, calling for us to recognize those who do not have the money, constitution, or representation in the media to tell their stories or get out of their situations. (Davis, 2018) She specifically focuses women of color  in the context of the #MeToo movement and the history of the civil rights movement. She starts the speech by quoting Malcolm X and and speaks of the “original #MeToos”; Fannie Lou Hamer’s, Recy Taylors, Rosa Parks, and Tarana Burkes. (Davis ,2018) Davis connects United States’ history and personal narrative, speaking of her previously mentioned testimony of her childhood. She concludes by saying that we can’t just “clap our hands and nod our heads to get things done.” (Davis, 2018) In order to never go back in history, we need to keep actively pushing forward with all the strength we have. Critics who attempt to undermine the need for more intersectionality are mistaken as the evidence shows that women of color and low-income women experience the highest rates of sexual violence. (Scott, 2017)

Davis’ immediate audience is diverse, given that she did speak in front of roughly 500,000 people.  However, for the purposes of this analysis, her target audience is going to be defined as people who are not faceless and who are represented in the media. (Davis, 2018) These people may be complacent, not necessarily by excluding less-privileged individuals from the movement on purpose, yet not pushing to be more inclusive either.

This paper will analyze her argument using Neo-Aristotelian analysis of three of the five canons of rhetoric outlined by Aristotle: invention, style, and delivery. (Hill, 1972) Within the   invention canon, this examination will focus on ethos, pathos, and logos used within the speech. Using this neo-aristotelian method of analysis this paper will show that Viola Davis is successful in mobilizing the best rhetorical methods to efficiently persuade her target audience to recognize those who are silent in the #metoo movement.

Textual Analysis-Invention

To begin, Viola Davis efficiently utilizes the rhetorical device of ethos to gain credibility. Right away, Davis gains trustworthiness as a woman of color, as her speech does center on race inclusion within the #metoo movement. She also utilizes ethos while making it clear that she did not have a childhood decorated with privilege, and captures the audience’s attention with this poignant statement, “Listen, I am always introduced as an award winning actor. But my testimony is one of poverty. My testimony is one of being sexually assaulted, and was very much seeing a childhood that was robbed from me.” (Davis, 2018) This verbalization does its’ job well to establish ethos with the target audience. She is not simply talking about these issues from an outside perspective, she has lived through them, and she knows what it’s like to not have money or media representation.

In addition, Davis uses pathos to get an emotional response from the audience. She does this by drawing on “traditional” American values. In the following quote she focuses on American ideals of equality and individual rights. (Tidwell) “Every single day, your job as an American citizen is not just to fight for your rights. It’s to fight for the right of every individual that is taking a breath, whose heart is pumping and breathing on this earth.” (Davis, 2018) In this statement she is not asking the audience, she is commanding them. It is their civic duty to do this, not something they can just think about doing. Davis pulls also pulls on another widespread stereotypically american value: you get what you work for.  “But I’m here today saying that no one and nothing can be great unless it cost you something.” (Davis, 2018) Davis is not going to let the audience get away with being lazy and complacent. This is a stereotypical American value as well: idleness brings a threat to society and hard work it to be celebrated. (Tidwell )  Her rhetoric applies enthymemes as well, given that it is not explicitly stated these are good values to have, but it is implied that these values will resonate with the target audience.

In the same vein she employs logos;  she persuades the audience using evidence, statistics and examples of her claims, therefore effectively convincing the target audience that this is serious problem that needs to be addressed immediately. She cites many disturbing statistics about sexual assault to capture the audience’s attention at the beginning of the speech. “One out of every five women will be sexually assaulted and raxxd before she reaches the age of eighteen. One out of six boys. If you are a woman of color and you are raxxd before you reach the age of eighteen, than you are 66% more likely to be sexually assaulted again.” (Davis, 2018) This information serves to shock the audience into action. Her aforementioned credibility leads the audience to believe she is telling the truth, as does the weight of the subject matter. By sharing these statistics she also stirs the audience’s emotions because the odds are it is not unlikely this could happen to them or someone they are close to.

Style & Delivery

Davis delivers an impassioned speech as she speaks about extremely painful and tense topics, yet her voice does not break once. Her tone is strong and unrelenting, leaving no doubt in the audience’s mind that she is someone with the authority to speak on the subject. She doesn’t crack a smile or pretend to have any sort of timidness in order to be more “unthreatening.” She is channeling this virtuous anger with a purpose; her audience needs to know that they cannot sit back, and be silent. This is a time to be angry and loud.

Her outrage at the injustice is also emphasized by her unwavering, tenacious eye contact with the crowd. She dares the audience to have the audacity to not take action after listening to her speak. Emphasis is intentionally placed on certain words or phrases such as gang-raxxd. This is effective because this delivery emphasizes a shocking, disturbing word to the audience, therefore making it more likely they will take action. Through the urgent sense in her tone, she conveys that the time to act is now. The speech also fits many powerful ideas into a short period of time, making it more effective because it forces the audience to pay attention to all of the speech, not just the beginning or end.

To conclude, Viola Davis’ 2018 Women’s March speech effectively mobilizes the rhetorical tools of ethos, pathos and logos to get a desired reaction from her target audience. Her target audience is upper-class white people, who tend to possess the resources and media representation within the #metoo movement. Her desired effect is to convince this audience that they must do more to help the voiceless victims of assault and harassment who do not have the means of  representation to speak out about their experience, often because of historic and systematic oppression. Davis accomplishes this by weaving together American history and her own childhood testimony as a women of color in poverty, playing to stereotypically American values, and shocking the audience with distressing statistics they may not have been aware of. She also sways her immediate audience to agree with her through the powerful style and delivery of the prose. Her unwavering eye contact, tone, and and enunciation make her delivery one the audience is entranced by, and feels obligated to listen to. Viola Davis mobilizes the most compelling possible means of rhetorical persuasion for this specific audience in this specific situation, and by the neo-aristotelian method of rhetorical criticism, her speech was a triumph.

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