Are you America? Pretty bias, totally infamous

Date

6/23/2020

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Abstract

This web based projected seeks to explore the way Sacha Baron Cohen's Show "Who is America?" disrupts our traditional understanding of performative and rhetorical practices.Through his encounters with his guests, Baron Cohen often creates anecdotal revelations that the audience can interrogate by considering why a guest reacted the way they did. This project ultimately seeks to explore how Sacha Baron Cohen’s work disrupts our traditional notions of rhetoric in relationship to anecdotes. By exploring some of the setups with his guests, putting them in anecdotal contexts, and acknowledging how Baron Cohen disrupts our traditional understanding of particular performative terms, we may discover new possibilities for exploring the roles our character and identity play in our rhetorical practices. In addition, I suggest we will find that there are many anecdotes within pop culture that we have trivialized and coded as “low-brow,” including the show Who is America?, that actually have a significant impact on how we share our own stories.

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Keywords

Anecdotes, Comedy, Sacha Baron Cohen, Rhetoric, Kenneth Burke, Judith Butler, Performance, Performativity

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