rhetorical analysis of “eat the rich: the gamestop saga”

In episode one, “I Like the Stock,” of “Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga,” the speakers use informal language to communicate with the audience more effectively and help the watcher understand more complicated topics easily. Peter Sasaki, the co-founder of Odeon Capital Advisors, explains the concept of hedge funds in easy to understand language, stating: “So, the idea behind hedge funds was you’ll have an investment portfolio that is less subject to market swings and should outperform the market.” This one sentence sets the audience up with information that will be crucial to understanding the rest of the documentary in an easy to digest fashion, motivating the audience to keep watching. The show continues to use this format throughout the runtime. Jason Mudrick, founder of Mudrick Capital Management, explains short selling similarly, saying, “Short selling is a bet that a security is going to go down.” Although he has to make some clarifications later, his method of explaining a complex idea is simple enough to fit into a single sentence composed of common, mostly one-syllable words. An audience’s ability to understand a piece of media directly correlates to whether or not they spend the time to consume the whole piece, and “Eat the Rich” follows this rule well, ensuring maximum viewership.

“Eat the Rich: The Gamestop Saga” also implements ethos to appeal to the audience. As many documentaries do, the show brings on different speakers to narrate the storyline. Many of these speakers are highly qualified professionals directly connected to the events covered in the documentary. For example, the show brings on Alexis Goldstein, the Director of Financial Policy at Open Markets Institute. Goldstein recounts a personal anecdote about working at a hedge fund connected to the 2008 housing crisis, explaining the company’s reactions to the events of the recession. Although Goldstein doesn’t present specific data, she is viewed as trustworthy due to her title and experiences, providing a pathway for the documentary to promote certain narratives. The documentary also interviews Dr. Vicki Bogan, a professor of economics at Cornell. The documentary has Bogan present information as if she was explaining a concept to a lecture hall full of students, which comes with an inherent feeling of trust. However, the information they have her explain is biased — directly blaming the suffering of American households during the mortgage crisis on large hedge funds. Although this is a commonly held belief, it is not fact. By having a professor from a renowned university explain the concept, the documentary gains more credibility. “Eat the Rich” employs the appearances of respected professionals to influence the audience’s opinions and come off as more fact-based than it actually is.