Roger and Me

Alex Young

Though I saw attempts at using irony as a rhetorical tactic in Roger and Me, I don’t think the effect that Michael Moore had intended it to give came across. One scene in particular stands out to me, where he is talking about how great Christmas is, and Moore is showing a scene of a family being evicted from their home. This is ‘ironic’ because normally families are giving and receiving presents, the family on camera is having their home taken away. I think he was trying to say that while the CEO of General Motors is having a jolly ol’ time over Christmas, a family in the town where the GM factory had closed down. He had spent the whole movie implying that Roger Smith was closing the factory was the sole reason for the town being in such a poor condition. Many of his uses of ‘irony’ as a rhetorical tactic, relied on the viewer buying into his claim, which didn’t work for me. Another example is earlier on in the film, where the people in the factory are celebrating the last car going through the assembly line. This is ironic, because as one person put it “I don’t see why they’re celebrating, they all just lost their jobs”. They are practically celebrating the loss of their jobs. I’m not sure why he put that scene in the film because to me, it seemed like the people maybe didn’t understand the situation. To me, it seemed like the people were probably a little bit ignorant, which, since he was claiming that he was helping the people, might have been counterproductive. I think if Moore had better established his ethos early on, then his use of irony as a rhetorical tactic, as well as other rhetorical tactics used, would have been more effective on convincing the audience to support him.