Speed Levitch on Existentialism in “Waking Life.”

                                    

In his monologue, Speed Levitch emphasizes the importance to live life in the moment without hindering oneself with the past or hardships through ethos; quoting famous writers, poets, and artists to emphasize his point, pathos; Speed Levitch uses passionate language to engage the audience, and logos; sharing philosophical ideas. The movie itself deals with very philosophical subjects on dreaming, existentialism, consciousness, love, etc. . . .  And there seems to be a need to express the confusion and haziness those subjects bring to mind (for instance, the usage of rotoscoped animation) while still wanting to be taken seriously (for instance, using scientists, or acclaimed thinkers to speak in the movie.)

Speed Levitch is engaging because of his voice, vocabulary and sentence structure. He has a passion for what he is speaking of, “the ongoing wow” that is life, and a desire to share with the audience and teach. If one is a listening audience, meaning if the audience is watching the clip, his passion can be detected through the enthusiasm in the tone of his voice and one can observe the grand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions he makes. But, if the audience is reading the monologue, the passion is not lost. Speed Levitch uses words such as “dream,” “wow,” “exuberance,” “exciting,” “flabbergasted,” “vitality,” etc. . .  which can all be considered to be synonymous with passion and awe. Through this, he is luring the audience to feel exactly how he wants them to feel about life, how he says he feels about life “[a]nd on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.” To live in an “ongoing wow.”

Federico Garcia Lorca based speech in the movie "Waking Life."

Recently, I was given as an assignment by my Rhetoric teacher to pick a piece of writing/video/lyrics/song to rhetorically analyze. As he later mentioned in class, we were going to rhetorically inception our chosen piece. And what he meant by that was this: an advertisement, comic strip, piece of writing, video and other elements of popular culture are rhetorical. And here we are, a group of college students, analyzing rhetorically the rhetoric of a rhetorical piece. On rhetoric using rhetoric right?
Anyways, "Waking Life," a mainly existential and scientific based movie has Speed Levitch take from Frederico Garcia Lorca's poem: "City Does Not Sleep." The aforementioned speech is the one I choose to analyze.

“On this bridge,” Lorca warns, “Life is not a dream. Beware. And beware. And beware.” And so many think because Then happened, Now isn’t. But didn’t I mention the ongoing “wow” is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns. This entire thing we’re involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other’s presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write 100 stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don’t forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person’s dream, that is self awareness.

Why rhetoric? Why?

Rhetoric is largely defined by audience. I feel as though, if you were to know the exact effects different word choices and word orders would have on people, you’d be able to manipulate, somewhat, the way they will respond and react to you and your ideas.

I’d say rhetoric is the lurking science behind writing and the English language. It would be, in a sense, part of creative writing but simultaneously its direct opposite. It’s writing with a purpose other than creativity while still necessitating imagination. Its purpose being well thought out, calculated writing, which would oppose the free form creative writing takes.

It makes complete sense, going along with the last two paragraphs, that as an English major I would use rhetoric, and as a writer it would be indispensable. As an anything-major it would be necessary. But what I’m mostly concerned of, outside of the writing prospect of rhetoric, is visual rhetoric. Specifically, typography and the way font, spacing, grungy, delicate, size and arrangement affects whether someone would even look at a piece of writing or not.