Valves Rodriguez, a writer for the Los Angels Times, appeals to her reader’s emotions in a manipulative way, resulting in a convincing argument about holding the music industry responsible for violence against women. She wrote an article titled “Is Music Issuing a Call to Violence? “. According to Ms. Rodriguez, misogynistic music in pop culture is considered one of the major culprits in glorifying abuse and violence towards women. She highlights examples such as the sexual assaults that happened in Central Park and her own personal experience when a young man acted aggressive towards her on the subway reciting rap lyrics.
Racial stereotypes are brought up to explain why sexism is being shrugged off and not take seriously with her saying “l also honestly believe lots of people in the U. S. Still believe black and brown men are somehow innately more barbaric than other men, and so excuse these lyrics as artistic expression of creatures from another universe”. She cites other examples and details as well which leads to her to put the blame on the music industry. Many of the examples that she gives are red-herrings that lead her readers o think negatively about popular music without her giving any scientific proof backing her claims.
The way she manipulates her audience is through persuasive speech that appeals to their emotions such as fear, pity, sadness, and the use of strong imagery. Alias manipulates her readers in her intro using highly emotional charged words that consist of “We are stunned” and “Horrified” which exaggerates enough to make the reader more curious to see what is so “horrifying”. She also uses character-based appeal to seem more credible to her audience by mentioning an say she wrote for a magazine back in 1993 dealing with violence against women.
This helps her emotional appeal seem more factual to her readers by mentioning this along with a quote from her article saying “from increasingly common woman-hating pop music lyrics, and from music videos that routinely reduce women to punching bags, stripers and sperm receptacles” which would sound less convincing if she didn’t give her “expertise” about the subject beforehand. The use of analogies in the previous quote help perpetrate the feelings of pity for the women affected.
Without any substantial proof, Alias argues that the sexual assaults that occurred at Central Park, Freaking and Woodstock, were all linked to pop music which help stimulate fear in her readers without them even knowing if it is true or not. The assumption of pop music relating to the sexual assaults at the 3 events have already been embedded within the minds of the reader which works greatly in her favor to persuade them to put much of the blame on the music industry. She does a masterful Job of using the De-herring fallacy to invoke such emotions, like fear, anxiety, and pity all throughout her article.
For example, she goes to extremes to try and relate pop music to human rights abuses across the globe by mentioning how it is illegal for women to go to school in Afghanistan and female population control in India and China. These cases have absolutely nothing to do with sexism in popular music but since she uses them Rap Music causes violence against Women By gladdening the reader which leads him/her to think popular music is causing human rights buses in other countries around the world and to make a connection that isn’t there.
Another example of this is when she mentions honor killings and how women in certain countries are beaten for being alone in public, which does not have anything remotely to do with music influencing violence against women. Alias Valves Rodriguez doesn’t let up on manipulating her readers’ emotions throughout her article. In fact, her article is filled mostly with emotional charge rhetoric without any type of statistical or scientific proof of the music industry being responsible for the lenience against women.
There isn’t even a reference to other authors who talked about the same subject matter to boost her credibility. What she did was blame something, use general examples of violence against women that would garner pity then make a connection between the two using persuasive speech patterns and emotional charged language to make her readers believe the music industry was the blame for violence against women. Even going as far to compare sexism in music to the Holocaust. I might add, she did a brilliant Job.
