Katy Perry has had significant influence through her music videos, which tell stories using narrative and emotional appeal. Six of her videos are among the most viewed on YouTube. Her videos "Firework" and "Roar" use these rhetorical techniques to teach moral lessons. "Firework" encourages focusing on an internal light during distress. "Roar" shows a woman adapting to overcome challenges in the jungle. As a human resources consultant, the author would draw on these videos' themes of empowerment and resilience to encourage employees. Future research could explore qualities of effective heroes and acceptable story endings.
Erika Valdivia Rhetorical Critisism Paper - Comm 199C
1. Erika Valdivia
Professor Raman
Comm 199C
Playing with Magic: Katy Perry’s Persuasive Influence in Popular Culture
Since it’s publication in Billboard magazine in 1992, The Billboard Top 40 is a chart that
has been a significant way to measure a song’s impact on the nation. For standout popular
culture artists, breaking the top 40 has been what gained them much of their recognition as
artists. In 2008, Katy Perry entered the scene of Pop in 2008 with her Single, “I Kissed a Girl.”
Katy continued to produce chart-topping hits, and eventually made music news everywhere as
she broke the record for most hit singles in one album. Since then Katy has continued to reign at
the top of the billboards, with 11 hit singles spanning her career. But the influence of Katy’s
productions doesn’t stop at the music charts. The videos she has produced have similarly made a
mark on music history.
Six of her music videos have made it on to YouTube’s Top 100 Viewed Videos of All
Time list, more than any music artist around. Her videos are entertaining, powerful and tell a
story. Her two highest viewed videos, Roar and Firework, use similar themes of narrative using
emotional appeal to teach us a moral lesson that informs the world around us. Each story uses the
rhetorical concepts of narrative and pathos, or emotional appeal. When the stories use these
rhetorical concepts of narrative and pathos, they employ the use of rhetorical
communication research, as is part of the Foundations objectives. Katy Perry’s music videos
tell a story with no element missing. The use of aesthetics are familiar yet modern, leaving their
impression on the viewer with them.
METHODOLOGY
2. Rhetorical Criticism is a method of evaluating how popular culture influences people. If
we can persuade others to have our same understanding of what the world means, we are able to
influence other’s opinions to our own. In Barry Brummett’s book, Rhetoric in Popular Culture,
he explains that this influence, or creation of power comes from “little,” everyday experiences
(Brummett, 2011). This creation of meaning gives the power to certain people and disempowers
others. Whether we are aware of it or not, those allowed to shape the popular culture around us
are those who are in power of what kind of meaning we give to the world around us. I reached
this conclusion through analytical skills that helped me understand and evaluate
communication research studies, according to our Inquiry learning objectives. I
understood the important interpretative power of people with these music videos, knowing
that they might affect the people greatly.
Through creating these successful visual representations of her music, Katy Perry is able
to influence millions with the story she tells and the meaning she creates. Those small YouTube
videos are a part of millions of people’s little everyday experiences. In order to successfully
understand how these videos influence those that watch them, one must employ rhetorical
criticism. Two common rhetorical elements that span these three videos are narration and pathos,
an emotional appeal. I feel that examining these two concepts is an appropriate method because
the narration aspect of Katy Perry’s music is an essential element in her songs, and the emotional
appeals are her trademark. Her power is based on her ability to do these things, as the story is
what creates meaning for us. In order to evaluate the three artifacts I will look at the moral each
story teaches us, and the emotions we are called to feel as we watch the story. I will also evaluate
how male and female relationships are viewed in the narrative and how aesthetics play a part of
the emotional appeal each video makes.
3. ANALYSIS
Katy Perry’s video “Firework” begins with a direct emotional appeal to the audience,
asking them if they’ve ever felt like they have ever felt like they were “one blow from caving
in.” 1 In the video, multiple stories are told, all involving different heroes in different stages of
emotional distress. One of the stories that is told is that of a disputing house, with parents yelling
and their two kids hiding in the room next to them. One of the siblings is very young and her
older brother is covering her ears, trying to comfort her with his arms around her. Eventually
sparks start to shoot from his chest as he goes outside to confront his parents. The video tells us
that there is a spark in us that we should focus on despite our emotional state. As a Human
Resources consultant, I would use this same lessonto encourage employees in speaking up
when situations arise such as sexual harassment, aggressive behavior in conversation/a
hostile environment between leader and employees, or conflict management. The aesthetics
are theatrical and fantastical, showing fireworks bursting from hearts as they remember what’s
really important. The lyrics say to “ignite the light and let it shine”, empowering you to feel
emotions and act on them. This means that there is a light inside yourself that maybe isn’t
tangible or visible in real life like the fireworks, but that you should ignite it when your
emotional state is one of despair. She also insinuates that it is this very thing that will let you
“own the night” or be in charge of the night, and have power over it. Through this phrasing she
is empowering those who have gone through emotional distress, implying that it a part of
the very positive whole that is “owning the night”, rather than just an isolated negative
experience.
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw
4. In the music video “Roar”2, the opening scene shows Katy and a man coming out of a
plane crash onto a jungle. Katy has a helpless, worried expression on her face. As she turns to
her companion and expects to be met with similar emotions she is instead met with him taking a
selfie of them with a laugh. As night falls, a tiger jumps from the darkness and eats him. Katy
runs, and begins to explore the jungle. She looks at her reflection in the water and sees a tiger,
and decidedly tells him that he’s “gonna hear her roar”. She then becomes a sort of jungle
woman, turning her heels into a spear and taking shower under an elephant’s trunk. She emerges
from a cave clad in an animal print top and a leaf skirt, swinging from vines and communicating
with other animals by roaring. She eventually faces the tiger again, and fearless this time she
intimidates him with her roar. The closing scene shows her sitting on a throne of leaves with the
tiger by her side wearing a “Kitty Purry” necklace. The aesthetics of the video first show a city
woman who was at first defenseless in the jungle adapt to her surroundings to ultimately become
a contender to the king of the jungle. The moral of the story is that even the most unlikely
underdog can eventually adapt to their surroundings and conquer the jungle they’re faced with.
The audience is called to feel inspired as we see her resilience in every area of jungle life,
empowering those that might feel out of place or intimidated with those around them. With this
scenario in mind, I would urge the employees that I am in charge of to draw inspiration
from this video and put its wisdom into practice. This would be relevant to employees who
have come from workplaces that were less competitive or intense than the corporate world,
or for college graduates who are intimidated by the corporation’s size and demands. I
would urge them to learn to cope with their environment and adapt to it, like Katy Perry in
this video. I would maybe let them know that they probably won’t get to the point of
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CevxZvSJLk8
5. having a tiger wear their name around his neck, or any sort of adventures that are best
savedfor a safari. But that the big, intimidating things that work has for them can indeed
be conquered, with perseverance and courage to embark on a journey to a new
environment.
CONCLUSION
Katy Perry’s videos tell us that narratives with emotional appeal are able to reach masses,
as her wildly successful career is based on them. It would exceed the scope of this paper to
magnify just how many hit singles and videos use narrative and pathos as key elements in their
composition. Future research in this area could involve the qualities that a hero in a narrative
should have, to the scope of endings that are socially acceptable and pleasing to the public. In
my work as a Human Resources consultant, were I to show these videos and explain this
future research in this area, I would explain how the hero’s journey is much like the life of
an everyday person, and that we must have the hero’s qualities in our lives, and that we
should identify them, as they would help us lead the life that has been given to us. The
qualities are that of perseverance in the face of a challenging journey, and courage to go
through with what we have been destined for. Another area of research that I could dive
into is endings that are socially acceptable and pleasing to the public. I would go into
endings that are pleasing and socially acceptable, like ones where the hero doesn’t die or
isn’t defeated, like some horror movies such as the Hills Have Eyes, who have bad reviews
on the internet for having an ending where the bad guys win. I would encourage the
employees that I am in charge of to look at our company as an example of acceptable
endings and look for the happy ending in their life with us. Future research could also explore
the types of hardships a hero in a story is allowed to face that connect with the general public,
6. and what kind of hardships are more taboo, are less mentioned, or don’t strike a chord with
audiences. For example, what kind of troubles a hero is allowed to go through before he isn’t
sympathized with anymore, if there is such a level.
At the beginning of this paper, the word count was 1,230 and with edits 503 words later,
the final word count is 1734.
Reflection:
1. My inquiry courses taught me a lot about Communication theories. I learned that
almost anything can be researched and that it’s possible to prove your theories
about certain topics.
2. This Inquiry class taught me ResearchMethods and ResearchCritique. It taught
me Research Methods in looking for different ways to interpret the research I
investigated. It taught me ResearchCritique in expanding on the expanse of my
research about music videos.
3. I chose to do this paper because it was an informative and interesting piece of
research that I conducted. Something I learned is that you can’t underestimate the
power of stories on people. It’s something that I rely on when explaining the music
videos to the work audience.
