Dramatistic Pentad

As a medium, film is tremendously influential in teaching filmgoers about religions and how to interact with them. A film might be a moviegoer's first peek inside a Christian church or a Muslim home; it might even be the first time one meets a Jew or an atheist. Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad offers us a useful tool for deciphering the motivations in film scenes, including those depicting interactions with spirituality. Below, you will find scenes from a number of films. You will use the Dramatistic Pentad to first identify specific rhetorical elements in three scenes illustrating the intersection of people and spirituality. Secondly, you will analyze how a specific ratio functions in all three scenes.

Directions:

1. Choose three scenes from below.
2. Using the Dramatistic Pentad, identify what you believe to be each of the five elements (agent, agency, etc.) for each of the three scenes (or “artifacts”)—see model below.
3. Choose one "ratio" to examine all three scenes—for example, scene-agent or act-purpose.
4. In one full page, examine how your chosen ratio functions in each of the three scenes. For example, what is revealed by examining the scenes through this specific ratio? Are there similarities? What are the differences? You might also consider how this particular ratio informs us versus another.
   

Example:
Commercial: “Start the Day 'Write'” from Kellogg’s
Artifact Description: A boy sluggishly wakes up for school. After a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, he is more animated. Later, at school, the boy enthusiastically answers his teacher’s questions thanks to the boost he got from the cereal.

The Dramatistic Pentad:
1. Act: A boy’s morning sluggishness is only helped by eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes cereal.
2. Agency: With the goal to pep up her sleepy son, the boy’s mother purposefully serves him a sugary breakfast cereal.
3. Agent: The boy’s mother, who is motivated to wake her son up.
4. Scene: Split between his home and his classroom.
5. Purpose: The boy’s mother, needing an efficient means to ready her sleepy son for school, feeds him a bowl of sugary cereal.

***

Choose three scenes from the following for your analysis:

"Has God Made You Promises?" from The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
"There is No Freedom Without the Law" from The Ten Commandments (1956)
"Can I Ask You a Question?" from Oh, God! Book II (1980)
"Every Sperm is Sacred" from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)

"Don't You Talk Like That in Here!" from Footloose (1984)
"Who's Got Time for Guilt?" from Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
"The Joke's on Us" from School Ties (1992)
"Will You be My God?" from Little Buddha (1993)
"Tell Us, Are You the Messiah?" from The Passion of the Christ (2004)
"Crisis of Faith" from Doubt (2008)

Required:

• MLA Style, plus works cited page

Submission Window: Thu 3.17 - Tue 3.22 (via Canvas)
"You're Not My Son" from The Big Sick (2017)