Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room directed by Alex Gibney

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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room directed by Alex Gibney
The underpinning objective in the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room directed by Alex Gibney is to investigate the Enron saga and exposes the various tactics employed by the management through carefully orchestrated schemes in stealing funds that finally led to the collapse of the great corporation. The film investigates the company’s transactions and official documents and reveals the real causes of the company’s collapse. The main focus of the documentary is the top level managers of the corporation in developing the story, which is characterized as a human tragedy. The film closely follows the actions of each of the corporation’s top managers, who form the film’s main characters in coming up with the tale of a human tragedy. The documentary reveals that each character employed distinct methods and strategies in developing the entire scandal. There are a wide variety of rhetoric strategies employed in the film in order to perpetuate its underpinning argument and convincing the audience. The documentary is based on the novel, The Smartest Guys in the Room: the Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron written by Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean (Gibney, 2005).
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is essentially a morality saga about America’s largest ever scandal on bankruptcy. The film reveals the manner in which human greed led to the rise and eventual downfall of Enron with numerous employees, shareholders, consumers, and other stakeholders losing out in the process. Alex Gibney’s documentary also takes sideswipes at the Bush administration, which is considered to have had close relationships with the Enron top level managers, and at free market ideology.
Rhetoric practice means engaging in the art of persuasion by using words. It could be done for ethical or unethical intentions. Mostly, people practice rhetoric for good purposes. Practicing rhetoric enhances the ability of a writer or speaker in informing, motivating or persuading certain audiences. Rhetoric has played a major part in western tradition. It is studied formally and practiced civically. The most appropriate definition was given by Aristotle who viewed it as part of both logic and politics. He described it as the faculty of watching keenly in any given situation, the possible mode of persuasion. Those practicing rhetoric mainly use logos pathos and logos. These three appeals are essential in rhetoric writing or speaking. Rhetoric practice was part of western education, especially in ancient Greece. People were trained to speak and write in a way, which will be convincing to the audience.
Rhetoric speakers or writers should understand that rhetoric is defined by its function. Some tend to think it is defined by medium used for communication, the topic or social location. It is not also restricted to writing or giving a speech. The practice of rhetoric can also happen through media and other forms of genre. For example, rhetoric practice can happen through music, architecture and theatre arts among others. Rhetoric practice can be done on any aspect of communication and not just politics and public discourse. It is not a necessity for rhetoric practice to have an external audience. Often, people persuade themselves through making decisions internally or via divine persuasion (Campbell, and Lloyd 33). Choice of words is the pillar of rhetoric because a speaker’s or writer’s diction, determines persuasion. Good choice of words creates a strong diction, which becomes noticeable to the audience. When audience pay attention, it becomes easy for the writer or speaker to communicate his or her message. On the other hand, poor choice of words will not be convincing to the audience. Therefore, they might not pay attention to the message of the speaker or writer. Rhetoric speakers and writers ought to use unique and quality language to keep their audiences listening or reading. Rhetoric involves forming an argument and presenting evidence to support it. For an argument to sound reasonable, the writer or speaker needs to use appropriate words.
Choice of words also shapes the tone or emotion in rhetoric. If the writer or speaker intends to create a certain emotion, he or she has to choose words to express the emotion. Persuasion also requires a certain tone from the speaker or author. Regardless of how strong an argument could be, lack of suitable tone will not be convincing enough. To acquire this tone, the writer or speaker has to choose the right words. Generally, the words used in rhetoric influence its effect on the audience. If the choice of words is wisely chosen, the audience will definitely be persuaded.
In terms of style, the film can be characterized as a generic documentary. However, the documentary lacks anything of significance to make it stand out other than the material presented that is an indication of the extensive research undertaken. The documentary lacks any form of distinctive personal style or sense of comedy in the approach of Michael Moore, no relaxingly refined visual appeals a la Ken Burns… and similarly, no reality-television sham hysterics. Moreover, the visuals employed are only comparable to MTV’s reality sitcoms. In terms of factual delivery, the documentary can be categorised in the genre of realisms as it is brutal to the truth and does not contain high levels of propaganda that are common in most 21st century documentaries (Campbell, and Lloyd 33). The director was especially effective in developing an introductory section with an interestingly creative edge. However, immediately after the opening credits, the film heavily relies on its factual content in order to create impact and drive its main points. Although there was significant temptation to focus the narration on the unethical practices of the company management and demonize them further, the director was objective in terms of handing the scandal. This is probably owing to the silent rule among fiction authors that states that, show, do not tell. This therefore implies that if a fiction author intends to communicate that a given character is immoral, the director should show the character engaging in immoral acts and not simply say that the character is immoral. In a similar manner, the documentary employs this technique in establishing the characters of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, the top level managers of Enron (Campbell, and Lloyd 33). The documentary shows various a significant amount of evidence where the two characters engage in epic lies. As a matter of fact, it is difficult for the audience to find a single instance where any of the two characters is telling the truth. Moreover, the documentary goes ahead to show the two characters on various occasions lying while on live recording.
Similar to most documentaries that are heavily reliant on archival video footage, the visuals of the documentary cannot be considered as effective. This is mainly because the conversion of the archival footage into high definition TV or theatrical aspect ratio ends up sectioning off people’s heads or the text at the bottom indicating the names of characters and titles. Additionally, the accompanying music employed in the documentary is also particularly effective at playing with the moods of the audience in addition to convincing them of the underpinning argument. One case in point is the song that was employed for the scene involving Lou Pai among a group of guys with spikes. The song is, Einstein on the beach, “composed and performed by Philip Glass. Lou Pai is portrayed as an individual driven mainly by money and women. The song creates a feeling of being semiconscious and in a state of daze. At first, one is able to hear a lady’s voice that seems to be telling a story followed by a group of people singing the numbers in an orderly manner while another person sings the numbers in a random manner. This song is especially effective as it makes the audience to experience the Lou’s perspective on life. In this way, the audience is able to have an objective judgement on the character in focus and consequently identify the underpinning motives behind his actions.
In conclusion, it is plausible to conclude that the rhetoric employed by the director is highly effective at convincing the audience. The director employs statistics and visual evidence in revealing the actions of the main characters and in this way, he is less reliant on the narrator in convincing the audience on the ethical issues pertaining to Enron executives. The directors are shown constantly lying while this is also supported by valid documentation. In the face of such incriminating evidence, it is rather obvious that the audience is bound to agree with the director’s position.
Works Cited
Campbell, George, and Lloyd F. Bitzer. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. Internet resource.
Gibney, Alex, Jason Kliot, Susan Motamed, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban, Joana Vicente, Peter Coyote, Kenneth L. Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew S. Fastow, William S. Lerach, Gray Davis, Maryse Alberti, Alison Ellwood, Matt Hauser, and Bethany McLean. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Los Angeles, Calif: Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2005. Film