A Rhetorical Analysis of Tyler Gillespie's Op-Ed Response to Corey Monteith's Overdose
Beloved actor Cory Monteith passed away this past summer from a toxic combination of heroin and alcohol after battling a severe drug addiction. In response to the actor’s tragic passing, writer Tyler Gillespie took the opportunity to address societal treatment of addicts in Monteith’s wake. In his op-ed piece, “Relapse, Cory Monteith and Understanding Addiction,” Gillespie examines the social climate surrounding the issue of substance abuse in the United States through the story of the late Cory Monteith as well as his own personal experience. Gillespie’s use of kairos is flawless, and his honesty throughout the piece establishes strong ethos as well as pathos and logos.
Gillespie’s use of kairos is crucial to this piece; it was published a mere two weeks after the actor’s death. At the risk of sounding crass, Gillespie’s speed in publishing his article allowed him to reach an audience while the actor’s death was fresh not only in everyone’s mind, but also in the media. Gillespie’s ability to get to print to quickly allowed him to take advantage of a moment of krisis. Considering Monteith’s massive, almost cult-like fan base of “Gleeks,” Gillespie timing allows him to reach a larger audience of people who loved Cory Monteith but may otherwise be unconcerned with the issues surrounding addiction. Another aspect of Gillespie’s timing is the reactions he witnessed to Cory Monteith’s death. Following Gillespie’s quote about a friend’s Facebook status blaming the star for his own demise, he writes, “This comment was a reminder on how people really feel about recovering addicts like me” (Gillespie). With this statement, it appears Gillespie may also be condemning the everyday American, especially those that blame addicts for their addictions. The death of Cory Monteith marks a moment of krisis in the current discussion of addiction and substance abuse in the United States. With America’s attention on Monteith’s death, Gillespie is able to make a statement; the stereotypical image of the addict is a myth.
Cory Monteith was a beloved public figure with very strong ethos within society: His unexpected death opens a dialogue among people who may not otherwise have an interest in the issue of addiction and substance abuse. Addiction has a very negative connotation within society; at best it is seen as a disease, and at worst, a moral weakness. The stigma concerning addiction–while perhaps lessening slightly as addiction has become more understood–still remains. Monteith managed to somewhat avoid this stigma in life; he was absent from the tabloids, and the beloved star of a popular musical TV program. Gillespie references the death of singer Amy Winehouse, who was constantly in the media for her drug and alcohol fueled antics as a foil to Cory Monteith, who played wholesome Finn Hudson on ABC Network’s hit show Glee. The comparison between Monteith and other well-known celebrity addicts further boosts Monteith’s ethos as it highlights that has was merely a person with an addiction, shattering some of the negative commonplaces about celebrity addicts. As Gillespie writes, Monteith was open about his struggles with addiction and spoke often about the dangers associated with drugs. Gillespie writes, “His openness about addictions was commendable and brave. He starred on a wildly popular show about high school; he didn’t have to ever publicly address it. By doing so, he saved kids's [sic] lives because his honesty showed addiction could happen to anyone. He was working on it and he let other people know it’s OK to be working on it” (Gillespie). This selfless act strengthens Monteith’s ethos, as he could have kept his addiction private and none would be the wiser. That he chose to expose his addiction to the public in order to educate others, in hopes of saving them from the same fate illustrates significant strength of character.
One of the most powerful uses of ethos in this piece is the combined ethos of Monteith and Gillespie. Both have strong ethos to begin with, Monteith due to his wholesome public persona, and Gillespie for his history as a recovering–and currently clean–addict. The reason this piece has such strong ethos also arises from the surprising similarities in both men’s pasts. Both were the same age when they began experimenting with drugs, and again when they were sent to rehab. Both got sober; however, only one relapsed. Gillespie writes, “Like him, relapse is always a possibility” (Gillespie). What is implied here is twofold. First, that Gillespie faces the possibility of relapse any day, and if that day should come, he could very well similarly overdose and die. Second, Gillespie implies that this could have happened to any addict at any time. If relapse is always a possibility–and may happen indiscriminately to any addict– than Monteith’s death is nothing more than an unfortunate rolling of the die. While Monetith benefits posthumously from strong ethos during his life, Gillespie reaps strong ethos from facing the same odds, and for the moment, overcoming them.
Gillespie establishes strong ethos throughout the piece primarily through his own history as a recovering addict, especially as one the same age as Cory Monteith. Gillespie’s past makes him an authority on both the struggle that Corey Monteith faced in the battle with addiction as well as the social stigma that all addicts face. Gillespie’s ethos, or proof of character, is situational; that is, it is based upon the rhetor’s standing and reputation in the relevant community (Crowley & Hawhee 149). As Gillespie is not only a young person who struggles with addiction, but also one who is also clean from substances – a recovering addict – he has insight into the daily temptation and struggle of addiction, and how difficult it is to remain clean. Though it is certainly possible that Gillespie invented this persona, considering the detail to which he described his friend’s challenges with heroin and his own background, it seems very unlikely.
Gillespie’s ethos is further strengthened by how he addressed the audience. He demonstrates his intelligence and knowledge on the topic of addiction but does not overwhelm the reader with technical terminology (Crowley & Hawhee 153). Gillespie establishes himself as an authority because he “… quickly assure[s] them that he knows what he is talking about. He may do so by using language that suggests he is an insider, by sharing an anecdote that indicate he has experience, or knowledge in a particular area…” (Crowley & Hawhee 154). In considering Gillespie’s ethos and authority, however, it is important to consider that Gillespie is not an addiction expert; he has no credentials, degree or training that certify him to give an authoritative viewpoint on the topic of addiction. In this case, Gillespie’s personal experience outweighs the need for credentials. As this is an op-ed piece about the need to change how addicts and addiction are viewed in the United States from a recovering addict’s point of view, any sort of credentialed authority’s opinion would detract from the piece’s authenticity.
Gillespie fluidly uses common addiction terminology and his personal experiences with addiction to establish good will. When discussing the parallels between him and Monteith’s surprisingly similar teen years of substance abuse, one part stands out. Gillespie got sober, and became a ‘recovering addict’: “Recovering — the “ing” means a constant and evolving state. Even if I’m not still using, it’s there. It’s a mental state. Like him, relapse is always a possibility” (Gillespie). The implication is that this is where his and Monteith’s paths separate; Gillespie got clean, where Monteith did not. Due to the societal stigma against addicts, Gillespie faces a challenge in establishing good character. Depending on his audience, his background as an addict could make this incredibly difficult, as stereotypically addicts are untrustworthy. However, Gillespie’s good character comes from being a recovered addict. According to Hawhee and Crowley, Cicero suggested that rhetors “… elaborate on misfortunes or difficulties that had befallen them to strengthen their audience’s estimate of their ability to bear suffering” (Crowley & Hawhee 157). Gillespie’s honest descriptions of his struggles with addiction and abstaining from substances absolutely qualify as a significant ability to bear suffering. The most important element is that Gillespie has been able to bear this suffering; that is, Gillespie has been able to manage his addiction and remain sober. Further, Gillespie qualifies as a cultural authority because though he is not a celebrity or public figure, his intimate knowledge as a young person struggling with addiction gives him a degree of authority on this subject (Crowley & Hawhee 162). Gillespie addresses his experiences facing addiction and the associated stigma:
Addiction is a progressive disease, which means that it gets worse with time. A lot of non-addicts don’t want to talk about it that way, acknowledge it’s not as easy as “putting down the bottle.” We have to learn to deal with stuff like going to a dinner party and passing up the wine. We have to re-learn how to function in society. We have to re-program ourselves. (Gillespie)
Gillespie’s honesty about the challenges he faced in doing so establish not only a personal strength, but also good character. Gillespie is simultaneously able to acknowledge the difficulty of his constant recovery while also implying that the ignorant non-addict’s perception of an addict’s struggles is a cruel oversimplification. This use of personal experience strengthens Gillespie’s ethos and solidifies his good will with the audience, while at the same time disparaging a backwards, anti-addict commonplace.
Gillespie establishes good will with the audience by giving them enough information about the rhetorical situation to understand and follow the arguments surrounding it. More importantly, Gillespie tells the audience why they should even care in his powerful closing:
While I never met Cory Monteith, I’ve known plenty of people like him. He is in my friend…he is your former roommate, and he is someone like me. We need to examine how we address addiction, and not just assign blame to the deceased. Not every addict relapses, but some people do. Some die from it, others don’t. For those who do die from it — celebrity or not — I hope we can move toward remembering what addicts did as people and not just as their disease. (Gillespie)
Gillespie establishes good will in informing the audience why this issue is important and what they need to know about this topic (Crowley & Hawhee 161). This is only the second time he uses the word “disease,” which could possibly be for emphasis. The modern understanding of addiction as a disease is still, to a degree, unaccepted in certain circles. One weakness, however, is the vagueness of this final paragraph; particularly the line referring to how we address addiction. It is unclear Gillespie is referring to how we currently label addicts, or the need to address the larger social issue or substance abuse. The last line of this piece is powerful in how it serves to humanize addicts, celebrity and non-celebrity alike. Most importantly, Gillespie urges his audience to see beyond addiction, to see the people for more than just their addiction.
Gillespie’s subject, the untimely death of a young star, is inherently rife with pathos. An emotional, pathetic appeal is based upon a presumed communal response; in this case, it is logical that the community Gillespie is appealing to is the Glee fan base, “Gleeks” (Crowley & Hawhee 175). The emotional intensity of this issue directly correlates to proximity of the audience. In considering the audience, audiences who have a history of addiction or are fans of Glee are going to be much more open to Gillespie’s arguments than people who are not. The community of “Gleeks” especially will be open to Gillespie’s argument, as will recovering drug addicts. Recovering drug addicts, however, are likely not Gillespie’s target audience as they are the victims of the prejudicial views that Gillespie seeks to change. Gillespie is speaking broadly to the average American, and attempting to put a face to the stereotype of addiction. Gillespie specifically appeals to a pop-culture immersed audience. In considering the average viewer of Glee, it is most likely that he is appealing to a younger, teenaged crowd. Gillespie makes a number of references to social media platforms, as well as fairly recent pop culture events, such as the drug-fueled antics of Amy Winehouse, and her untimely demise. It is likely that Gillespie is in particular appealing to the TMZ watching, Perez Hilton reading, tweeting, Facebooking, Instagraming celebrity infatuated youth. It is more than likely that there is overlap between this demographic and the “Gleek” community.
Gillespie makes a number of pathetic appeals to the audience with powerful effect. One such appeal occurs when Gillespie writes, “ For me, a healthy fear of relapse helps keep me sober. Most people don’t plan their relapse – it can happen on a random Tuesday night when you go to the corner store to get Sour Patch Kids and cigarettes and end up with a jug of wine” (Gillespie). Gillespie speaks truthfully about the challenges he and other addicts face in their day-to-day lives, and does so in a colloquial and relatable manner that is accessible to the audience. His description is of going to the corner store is something everyone has experienced, while only addicts must face the challenge of avoiding their substance of choice. Gillespie transforms a mundane, universal experience into a lesson that the majority of addicts are normal people who just face different challenges. Gillespie emphasizes that addicts are first and foremost people; a large number, it seems, are normal, functional members of society with the media portrayed stereotype as outliers. In building this connection with the audience, Gillespie makes it possible for the audience to put themselves in his shoes. This functions as a broad appeal to a general audience, as an unplanned trip to a corner store is almost a universal experience. This appeal would be specifically effective on an audience member who was an alcoholic, or a person who had a loved one who was an alcoholic.
Gillespie’s strongest pathetic appeal appears in his conclusion. Gillespie writes, “While I never met Cory Monteith, I’ve known plenty of people like him. He is in my friend who talks to me about her problems on a Friday night, he is your former roommate, and he is someone like me. We need to examine how we address addiction, and not just assign blame to the deceased” (Gillespie). The most significant thing about this appeal is that it marks the first time Gillespie slips into the second person tense. He is speaking directly to the audience, urging them to consider the people in their lives who may suffer from addiction. In comparing this list of people to Cory Monetith, he is essentially asking the audience to consider that their loved ones suffering from addiction could easily overdose any day and their memory be treated the same as Moneith’s. This is an incredibly powerful appeal because to imagine one’s loved one to overdose is a particularly horrific and difficult thing. Gillespie drives his point home by noting that he could be the next overdose death that they hear of. At this point, the audience has established a connection with the rhetor, and the idea of someone known passing away in such a manner is especially disturbing. These visceral reactions to the earlier statement only intensify the impact of the next. Gillespie has perfectly set up his audience to consider how we treat addicts by urging them to think of their own loved ones overdosing, then considering how it would feel to have people make comments about those loved ones in the same manner as the comments made in the wake of Monteith’s death. While this appeal is incredibly powerful and effective, it would be unlikely to work on an audience with a staunch moral opposition to addiction, as it may be difficult for such an audience to imagine that a loved one could suffer from addiction. That being said, there is very little that could change the mind of such an audience.
Gillespie makes a number of pop culture references throughout his piece; in face, the death of Cory Monteith is primarily pop culture news, as Monteith lived and died within the sphere of Hollywood. Gillespie introduces his topic by mentioning how he learned of Monteith’s death over Facebook. This is something a large portion of his target audience will be able to relate to, as these days most news spreads fastest over social media platforms. It is likely that many in the audience also shared this experience of learning of Monteith’s death over social media. Due to the potentially hostile nature of Gillespie’s audience to the topic of social treatment of addicts in the wake of Montieth’s death, however, it is only logical that Gillespie must tread lightly around the subject. Gillespie nods again to his pop culture audience when he refers to a friend’s scathing social media status about Monteith’s death. Between Facebook, Twitter, and a myriad number of other social media platforms, micro blogging statuses such as these have become the almost notorious home for the short-sighted, oft regretted burst of emotion.
Gillespie utilizes logos to highlight his friend’s status and subtly bury his point about addiction in today’s society. Gillespie’s friend wrote about Monteith’s death, “He did it to himself…He snorted his life away” (Gillespie). This statement, on the surface, is about Cory Monteith; however, a more general level, it illustrates the commonly held views towards addicts in out society. Significantly, this is coming from Gillespie’s friend which can be taken two ways; either this friend is oblivious to Gillespie’s addiction, or he is incredibly insensitive. Monteith relates his friend’s comment to this general level, writing, “This comment was a reminder on how people really feel about recovering addicts like me” (Gillespie). This is a subtle argument that we need to stop dehumanizing addicts, blaming them for their own addictions and begin to see them as people.
Addicts are a marginalized population in our society, due in part to our failure to see addicts as people and not merely the architects of their own demise. It was necessary for Gillespie to bury this point because of its potentially hostile reception by the audience. While any death is accompanied by sadness and grief, some who ascribe to the outdated perception that addiction is a sign of moral weakness may argue that Cory Monteith is responsible for his own death. By using insinuation to bury his point, Gillespie has the opportunity to introduce his somewhat controversial views on addiction to a somewhat hostile audience (Crowley & Hawhee 232). Gillespie uses Monteith’s death as a doorway to open a conversation about a highly emotionally charged issue. While an audience may not be open to listening directly about the social treatment of addicts, they would be to a discussion about recently deceased actor Cory Monteith. Gillespie thus begins the conversation with the overdose of Monteith, where the issue is inherent in the subject matter.
Also of significance is where Gillespie chooses to bury his point. Gillespie first mentions the treatment of addicts by society nearly a third of the way into his piece. If he had, for example, opened with his insinuation about societal treatment of drug addicts, his hostile audience would likely not have continued to read his essay. By burying his point throughout the last two thirds of his piece, his audience has already committed to listening by the time Gillespie mentions his friend’s harsh social media status. Gillespie gracefully acknowledges the difference of opinion between him and his hostile audience in a notable use of insinuation and logos when he writes:
The stigma around addiction still moves the conversation toward “he did it to himself” like you can turn off addiction whenever you want. The danger in this type of thinking is that it stops dialogue surrounding healthy ways to deal with addiction. I understand the cynicism. We usually are toxic people when actively using, but the sentiment trivializes our struggle. (Gillespie)
Gillespie’s acknowledgement of the difference of opinion is veiled within the true issue of the piece: the societal treatment of addicts. While Gillespie acknowledges that addicts are generally toxic individuals when using, he qualifies his statement by implying how over-generalizing and assuming addicts are toxic people is dangerous stereotyping. Further, Gillespie notes that blaming an addict for their own addiction is a vast oversimplification that minimizes that struggle that addicts must overcome every day.
In a masterful use of logos, Gillespie never directly condemns society for its treatment of addicts. The closest he gets is in the very closing line, where he states “For those who do die from it — celebrity or not — I hope we can move toward remembering what addicts did as people and not just as their disease” (Gillespie). As this is the very last line, this is most likely what people will take away from the piece. Gillespie is able to be so open in his conclusion because presumably at this point, his audience has already been somewhat persuaded that the treatment of addicts in our society is wrong: Even if they have not, Gillespie has nothing to lose by using this last line, because his audience has already stayed long enough for him to present his case.
Logos is the most limited and weakest appeal in Gillespie’s piece. Considering the subject is that of a young man who fatally succumbed to his addiction, it stands to reason that logos is not entirely appropriate or effective. Grief is not a logical moment; it is a primal and emotional one. It would be nearly impossible for Gillespie to convince anyone that society’s treatment of addicts is to blame for Monteith’s death, even if it is in fact true. People in mourning are not thinking logically, nor are they likely to be moved by logical rhetoric. Given the highly charged nature of addiction, it is far more likely that a ethos-driven or pathetic appeal would bear more weight.
Tyler Gillespie effectively uses the rhetorical elements of pathos, logos, ethos, and kairos to convey through the death of Cory Monteith the need to change the way we view addiction and drug addicts in our society. Gillespie’s most powerful appeal is through the use of ethos. As an op-ed, this piece is dependant upon the rhetor’s ethos and Gillespie does not disappoint. He utilizes his personal struggle as a young recovering addict and relates his experiences to both Cory Monteith and addicts as a whole. Gillespie’s piece is so effective because his subject, Monteith, also has superb ethos within society and would have flopped had he chosen to write about Charlie Sheen or Amy Winehouse. Gillespie’s appeals are particularly effective because he spreads them throughout the piece as to gently submerge the audience in the issue of the treatment of addicts. He carefully tailors his appeals to his audiences–primarily the “Gleeks” and young people immersed in pop culture–with a number of celebrity and social media references. While the piece appears on the surface about the death of Cory Monteith, Gillespie uses Monteith’s death as a vehicle–a Trojan horse of sorts–to open dialogue about the treatment of addicts within our society in a number of logos-based appeals. It was Gillespie’s logos arguments that were the weakest, however, and with good cause. By utilizing the death of a young star to get across his message, Gillespie took advantage of a moment of krisis, and also grief. Grief is not a logical moment, and it is the least possible time to persuade someone with a logos based appeal. While Gillespie does masterfully bury the sharp point of his piece in subtle insinuation, the piece is effective due to Gillespie’s ethos and pathetic appeals. What appears at first read to be about the tragic death of a young star, reveals itself at a second read to be about treatment not only of celebrity addicts within society, but of Gillespie and the “Average Joe” addict as well. Gillespie effectively communicates the need for a change in the societal treatment of addicts through the humanization of addicts by society and the widespread realization that addiction is a disease, not a weakness.
Work Cited
Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th Edition. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.
Gillespie, Tyler. "Op-ed: Relapse, Cory Monteith, and Understanding Addiction."
The Advocate. Here Media Inc., July 29th, 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
* Note* This work is the product of an independent study in persuasive writing. Due to the relevant content, I have chosen to publish it on this blog
No comments:
Post a Comment