The Rhetoric of Fleabag
An analysis of mental health portrayal in television
Image retrieved from BBC News
// by Slidesgo
May/22
// by Emma Barnhouse
URCI / 22
// by Slidesgo
May/22
// by Emma Barnhouse
URCI / 22
Research Question
How do rhetors use television to explain mental health?
Image retrieved from BBC News
// by Slidesgo
May/22
// by Emma Barnhouse
URCI / 22
01
03
02
04
Overview
Analysis
Methodology and overview of tools used in the text.
Introduction
Plot overview and glimpse at the analysis to come
Rhetorical Situation
Description of the rhetor, audience, constraints, and exigence
Conclusion
Application of concepts learned to pop culture
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What is Fleabag?
Genre: Comedy, drama
Created: 2016, 2019
Seasons: 2
Episodes: 12
Awards: 6 Emmys
Creator: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Plot: Woman coping with grief and growth in her
early twenties.
Image retrieved from Amazon
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// by Emma Barnhouse
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What is Fleabag?
Research question: How do rhetors use television to explain mental health?
Image retrieved from Amazon
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May/22
// by Emma Barnhouse
URCI / 22
Rhetorical Situation
02
The rhetor, audience, constraints, and exigence
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Rhetorical Situation
Audience
Constraints
Exigence
Rhetor
The message was important enough to the rhetor to utilize Amazon as a streaming platform and market the story to anyone who would watch.
Waller-Bridge’s exigence illustrates that each of us are watched and spend our limited mental energy on the performance of life rather living it.
Fleabag is a satirical commentary about the pressures of society for those encountering the rawness of the human experience in full
The author—Phoebe Waller-Bridge—writes from the cynicism she felt in her 20s.
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Analysis
03
Methodology and overview of tools used in the text.
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Tools of Analysis
Rhetoric of Display
Ideograph
Terministic Screens
Plot & Presence
Abstract language that defines the rhetor’s ill-defined normative goals or values.
The verbal tool the character uses to build a believable narrative and direct attentions away from what the creator seeks to avoid.
What you see on the screen, and the part of the story that creates narrative fidelity.
This includes presence, plot, and character development, and is the essential part of building narrative coherence.
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Plot & Presence
Palczewski, Ice, & Fritch, 2016
“Because of [its] immediacy. The creation of something in front of an audience’s consciousness acts directly on our sensibility”
Baumgarten, 2007
“The chain of causation of events within a narrative [that] is critical because it relates the meaning of the events by laying out a storyline, or the arc of the story.”
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Plot
Image retrieved from Fleabag Season 1, “Episode 2”, Season 1 on Amazon, Season 2 “Episode 3” and “Episode 4”
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Telling the story
The audience learns about the grief of Fleabag, her coping mechanisms, and relationship with those around her
Brought down
Season 1 ends with the facade of truth coming down
Change and opportunity
Fleabag meets “The Priest” and begins to realize things about herself for the first time.
Beginning again
Season 2 ends with a chilling moment and the challenge of leaving the audience behind.
Presence
Image retrieved from Fleabag Season 2, “Episode 1”
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Terministic Screens
“screen[s] composed of terms through which humans perceive the world, and that direct attention away from some interpretations and towards others.”
Kenneth Burke, 1965
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Season 1, Episode 6 “Episode 6”
“How can I believe you? After what you did to Boo?”
Image retrieved from Fleabag Season 2, “Episode 3”
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Terministic Screens
Rhetoric of Display
“How a subject is filmed is an expression of ideology, and to the extent that this agency positions the viewer, the director, or even characters on screen relative to the filmic content, the film functions rhetorically as an exploitation of that subject’s ambiguity.”
Hill and Helmers, 2008
Image retrieved from Fleabag Season 2, “Episode 3”
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// by Emma Barnhouse
URCI / 22
Ideograph
“[A]n ordinary-language term found in political discourse. It is a high order abstraction representing commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill-defined normative goal.”
Michael Calvin McGee, 1980
“Love” as an ideograph.
Fleabag stops performing.
Image retrieved from Fleabag Season 2, “Episode 6”
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Conclusion
04
Why does it matter?
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—Molefi Asante, “Television and Black Consciousness”
“Turning to the future of television’s role in creating consciousness, it is clear that electronic media, with all of their contradictory assumptions, will develop as basic instruments in national socialization. But because television, like the educational system, is an institution, its rhetoric will reflect the mores and values inherent in securing the traditional”
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Final Thoughts
Image retrieved from Fleabag Season 2 on Amazon
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References
(10 Screenwriting Tips from Phoebe Waller-Bridge on How She Wrote Fleabag and Killing Eve - YouTube, n.d.;
‘Fleabag’ Is (Finally) Back. Here’s a Refresher. - The New York Times, n.d.-a;
“‘Fleabag,’” 2020; “Fleabag,” 2019; “Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge Explains Meaning of Show’s Name,” 2020; Phoebe Waller-Bridge, n.d.;
This Is Why the Lead Character in Fleabag Doesn’t Have a Name, n.d.; Asante, n.d.;
BAFTA Guru, 2020; Baxter-Wright, 2019; Bitzer, 1968;
Buck, 2020; Burke, 1965; Hattenstone, 2018;
Insider, 2020;
Jamieson, 1973;
Levine & Saunders, 1993;
Nath, n.d.; Ovenden, 2019;
Poulakos, 2007;
Saturday Night Live, 2019;
Skip Intro, 2018, 2019; Stassen & Bates, 2020;
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 2019;
Thompson, 2019, 2020; Vogue, 2019)
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