Rhetorical Artifacts

             From rags to riches. We've all heard about the astonishing stories of self-made entrepreneurs who built business empires out of nothing. We all have also listened to the incredibly motivational quotes of successful businessmen and women telling us that as long as we don't give up, someday, we'll become successful; we just have to believe in ourselves. However, what they don't tell you is that millions of young entrepreneurs have to file for bankruptcy every year. So much so, that according to Debt.org, "The number of bankruptcies in the United States has steadily increased over the last century," hitting an all-time high in 2005.    Filing for bankruptcy will have some severe effects on an individual's life. They could lose their property and have negative information on their credit card report ten years after the filing date (Experian). Yet, according to Babson College (the #1 ranked College for entrepreneurship in the nation), 62% of adults believe entrepreneurship is a good career. Also, shockingly 40% of respondents of a survey think it's easy to start a business, "and 49% believe they have what it takes to do it" (Dragomir). In reality, entrepreneurship is not easy; it takes many sacrifices and hours of work. Entrepreneurs risk losing the balance between their regular and work-life and making little to no money for a prolonged period in order to sustain their business. Yet, according to the statistics, 49% of people still think entrepreneurship is an "easy" job. Because of this, we see many uneducated, and unprepared individuals leap into entrepreneurship, only for their dreams of wealth and success to come burning down. According to Gretchen Smith, the most frequent reason businesses fail is because of cash flow problems, a problem that can quickly arise from a lack of education on how to properly run a business. But where does the preconception that entrepreneurship is an easy job come from? 

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Entrepreneurship is presented in vastly different perspectives between different genres. For example, in movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, entrepreneurship is presented as this lively, fun, almost fail-proof career. Throughout this movie, they use various rhetorical devices such as quick-paced scenes, characterization, and asides, where Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DeCaprio) talks to the audience directly telling them how luxurious and extravagant his life is. On the other hand, you have entrepreneurship presented through the genre of books. In this essay, I'll be analyzing The Founder's Dilemma by Noam Wasserman. In this book, Wasserman uses rhetorical strategies such as rhetorical appeals, negative language, and the median to present entrepreneurship in a more formal and realistic manner. In this essay, I will be carefully analyzing the most important rhetorical strategies used in both of these artifacts to evaluate how they construct meaning and attempt to accomplish their respective purposes.

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               To begin with, the primary purpose of The Wolf of Wall Street, as a comedy/crime movie, is to entertain its audience. They aim to present the audience with an amusing and captivating film that they would be willing to pay for. Because this movie solely focuses on an exaggerated image of entrepreneurial success, this movie can give the audience usually high expectations of entrepreneurship, potentially motivating people to act impulsively on starting a business. In this analysis, I will mostly focus on how they achieve this in the scenes between the time frame of 31 to 50 minutes into the movie.

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             Starting with the rhetorical strategy of genre conventions, the conventional role that Jordan Belfort plays in the movie is a significant factor in why the movie can cause individuals to act impulsively on starting a business. Jordan Belfort is characterized as this go-getter, alpha male, that lives an extravagant life. He is a business-savvy and respected man, with devoted workers who love him no matter the cost. However, he is also a slick criminal who manages to avoid the police for most of the movie. This characterization could strike an emotional connection with the audience who could potentially be attracted to live a similar lifestyle and look up to Jordan Belfort as a role model. Even though he is a criminal, Jordan Belfort is an embodiment of hard work and success. Throughout the movie, the audience watches Jordan Belfort's character transform from a fired employee to a multimillionaire CEO. Nevertheless, throughout the movie, the audience seldom sees Jordan suffer any setbacks (apart from being arrested at the end); it is just success after success. Because this movie was "based on true events," the constant theme of success plays a role in why the movie can give the audience absurdly high expectations of entrepreneurship.

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               Furthermore, because this is a movie, this artifact heavily relies on the use of visuals, but how they go about utilizing the visuals in these scenes is very important. Through these scenes, there is a very quick pace to the action, constantly jumping from scene to scene. This creates an energetic and chaotic feeling to the movie, almost as if to say that "in the life of an entrepreneur, there is never a boring day." For example, in the movie, within the span of about eight seconds, the company Stratton Oakmont expanded from operating inside of an industrial garage, only employing about ten brokers, to all of a sudden being located inside of a large office building with about 100 employees. These quick-paced changes in the business, portray a false narrative that businesses can be expanded into multi-million dollar companies within a short period of time. This helps construct the meaning behind the movie because it presents the audience with an eye captivating and almost picture-perfect example of a business. These scenes could resonate with the audience, inspiring them to start their own business, with the hopes of imitating what they saw in the movie.

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             In addition, I would also like to note that a critical rhetorical strategy used throughout the whole movie, not just in the time frame in question, was the use of pathos in the asides throughout the movie. Asides are instances where the main character breaks the barrier between the movie and the audience and speaks to them directly. These asides help the audience emotionally connect with the main character and gives them insight into what the main character (Jordan Belfort) is thinking. Throughout the movie, these asides are used in a variety of ways. For example, on one occasion, Jordan Belfort told the audience, "what if I could teach them (inexperienced stockbrokers) how to sell to people with money… real money, so I decided to reinvent the company," and on another occasion, he says, "just like that, I made two grand, the other guys looked at me like I just discovered fire... I was making cash hand over fist". Here the audience can see what is going inside his head. It allows people to become more immersed in the movie and begin to feel the first-person point of view, almost as if they were the main characters in the movie. These quotes can appeal to the greedy and power-hungry emotions of the audience because they demonstrate Jordan Belfort putting in a small amount of work and achieving large amounts of success.   

 

            On the other hand, the primary purpose of the book, The Founder's Dilemma, by Noam Wasserman, is to educate entrepreneurs on how to properly run a start-up business, not to entertain them with a captivating story. Unlike the movie, this book solely focuses on the problems of entrepreneurship. This book informs the reader of almost every possible way their business can fail, causing the reader to have very low expectations of entrepreneurship or completely pushing them away from the career path. The audience for this book, for the most part, are educated individuals who are looking to expand their knowledge on how to become successful business owners. In this book, I will be focusing my analysis on the second chapter, where he talks about the career dilemmas in starting a business.

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            To begin with, one important rhetorical strategy worth pointing out is the median through which the information is delivered to the audience. The use of a book allows Wasserman to provide the reader with very detailed information about entrepreneurship. This is an advantage compared to the movie median because movies have been known to cut corners when recreating books into movies, for the sake of saving time. The book gives Wasserman the flexibility to be as detailed as he sees fit. Following this, because reading a book, especially a business book, requires a lot of time and focus, the use of this median allows Wasserman to more accurately target his audience of educated individuals who are serious about starting a business. Business

books are not considered “fun” reads, meaning that only those who are truly interested will pick it up and read it, eliminating a lot of indolent young teenagers and adults.

 

            Throughout this chapter, one of the most prominent rhetorical strategies is the use of rhetorical appeals, mostly utilizing logos and ethos. Wasserman does this by overloading the reader with various statistics and studies regarding the entrepreneurial field. For example, early on in the chapter, Wasserman informs the reader that all the information presented in this book comes from "a unique database." A database that he created, by analyzing "nearly 10,000 founders in the technology and life science industry." Here he uses both the logos and ethos rhetorical appeals by trying to present himself as a credible source - because he did all the research himself - and  trying to appeal to the reader's logical side. Similarly, he once again uses these appeals on page 59, when he states that entrepreneurs with high optimism make 20% less money revenue and experience 25% less employment growth than their peers. In this example, he uses logos by providing the specific statistics of 20 and 25 percent, which helps build his argument by adding both important context and credibility to his argument.  However, by providing the reader with discouraging statistics, he appeals to the reader's logical side, trying to warn/reason with them about the dangers of entrepreneurship.

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            Lastly, the most essential rhetorical strategy used throughout this book is the language used. Through the book, the author uses very pessimistic words. A prime example of this is in the title, "The Founder's Dilemma." The use of the word “dilemma” creates a worrying mood and also informs the reader that this book is solely going to focus on all the bad aspects of entrepreneurship. This helps construct the purpose of the book because it acts as a warning sign to all future founders; entrepreneurship is not as easy they may think. Six out of the nine chapters have the word "dilemma" in their title and those that do not have some other negative connotations. For example, chapter four is called "Flocking Together and Playing with Fire" The use of "playing with fire" implies something dangerous that could harm the founder. Overall the language used throughout the book creates a very pessimistic feeling to the book, which may cause people to think twice before starting a business.

 

           Overall, the main difference between these two artifacts is how they use their rhetorical strategies to depict entrepreneurship. In the movie genre, they use various strategies such as genre conventions, quick-paced actions, and asides to create an astounding film that demonstrates entrepreneurship as an alluring job opportunity. What this ultimately does is set the entrepreneurial expectations very high for the watchers. The movie genre fills the watcher with false hopes and expectations that will most likely never materialize. In contrast, the book genre serves to educate individuals who are serious about starting their own business and provide them with accredited information. This book solely focuses on the dilemmas, which can give the reader meager expectations of entrepreneurship and may push individuals away from this career path completely. This book provides the reader with a very depressive outlook into entrepreneurship by solely focusing on every possible way a business can fail. The movie genre causes individuals to act impulsively on entrepreneurship while the books warn individuals, making them doublethink before starting their own business.