The Fog of War

The Fog of War and Hearts and Minds seem to use similar rhetorical techniques to stimulate the audience's emotions: a specific choice of historical footage to tie in with spoken arguments, close ups and other cinematic techniques to capture interviewee expressions, a lack of narration, etc. However, during several moments in The Fog of War, director Errol Morris managed to use raw data as an appeal to pathos.

Lesson #5 states "proportionality should be a guideline to war". In order to reinforce McNamara's argument, Morris one-by-one lists the names of major cities in the United States with respective damage percentages to illustrate the magnitude of the destruction done to Japanese cities before atomic weapons were used. As time progresses, cities, percentages and images are listed at an ever-increasing rate. At the same time, a silent yet suspenseful orchestra plays in the background.

By reading a name, humans have the capacity to create personal definitions through imagery and memory. When I read "New York 51%", many important images came to my mind. I thought of the Manhattan skyline, the construction at ground-zero, Madison Square Park, the Empire State Building. I thought of Queens and Brooklyn, large sidewalks, hot-dog vendors and crowded streets. I thought of my family, my cousins, aunts and uncles, my parents. With the relationship that I have with New York, it's difficult to imagine over half of it destroyed, let alone knowing that many people suffered those difficulties as a city across the Pacific was actually destroyed in similar proportions.

Using these comparisons, Morris sought to stir the emotions of his intended audience by allowing it to create definitions, images, and memories which form the basis of America's culture and prowess. Major cities across the nation tend to form part of what we can define as the United States. For example, Detroit and Los Angeles have been constantly associated with the auto and movie industries, respectively. By allowing the viewer to make the connections between major cities and the backbone of the United States, Morris gives us a wake-up call by adding an ingredient of destruction to our definitions. It's a matter of perspective. Morris gives us a glimpse at the fate the Japanese suffered during World War II as we try to understand how we would feel if our major cities faced similar destruction and despair.

Much in the same way as Maya Lin used names in the Vietnam War Memorial as a way to bring back everything someone could remember about a person, Morris deployed a similar method as a way for his audience to remember everything they could about a particular major city. Only, Morris used McNamara's argument coupled with imagery to destroy those recollections in order for the audience to understand the emotions many people experienced when destruction was a reality. Morris also demonstrates how elements that appeal to logos, such as technical data, can be used to control the flow of emotion in his audience.