Pretty+Little+Liars

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media type="youtube" key="KUqMJSDWPXc" width="560" height="315" =Pretty Little Liars Theme Song as a Visual =

Pretty Little Liars is a television show produced by Marlene King. The seven-season series is about a group of teenage girls who deal with the aftermath of their friend’s murder. The opening of Pretty Little Liars shows a girl being groomed: her hair is being curled, her fingernails are being painted, her make up is being done, and jewelry is being placed on her wrist. The girl’s eyes are then closed shut by someone else’s hands, and an image of an open casket appears. This scene insinuates that the show will follow up on the girl’s death.

The audience for Pretty Little Liars is mainly girls in their teens and preteens. The purpose of the show is to visualize Sara Shepherd’s books of the same title: Pretty Little Liars. The series has a dramatic tone and is in the suspenseful genre. Pretty Little Liars’s exigence, or issue, is the death of the character displayed in the opening of the television show. A constraint of the television series is that it follows Sara Shepherd’s novel closely.

The opening of the series has a dark, grunge effect. The griminess and darkness symbolize the scene of a grave being dug at a funeral. The sky is also dark and stormy, which implies to the audience that something sinister is occurring. To help the audience visualize a funeral, all the characters were dressed in black. At the end of the opening, the audience sees the four female characters standing horizontally. One character has her finger vertical to her mouth which represents shhh, a gesture of silence. This gesture also symbolizes the secrets that the characters do not want to come to light. The idea of secrets is enhanced when the four girls do not look each other in the eyes. The girls glance around nervously as though they do not want themselves to seem guilty.

Credibility is established through the way the deceased girl is meticulously groomed. Her looks also imply that she was someone of importance in her community. Pathos, or emotion, was visible in the entire opening. The funeral causes the audience to feel sympathetic towards anyone effected by the girl’s death. Another emotion caused by her death is anger. The four alive characters do not seem concerned about the girl’s death, so this implies to the audience that they were involved in some way.

The opening of the television series engages the audience by allowing the deceased girl to be the first image seen. By doing this, it keeps the audience’s interest by allowing them to continuously guess about what is going to happen next. The audience wonders: how the girl was killed, who she was killed by, and what importance does she play in the television series. The opening also engages the audience by displaying the other four main characters as well. This encourages the audience to think that the other characters know hidden information about the deceased character’s death.

The rhetorical strategies and the rhetorical appeals connects to the rhetorical situation by describing what or whom the audience is being entertained by. Rhetorical strategies describe how the image is created to engage the audience. Rhetorical appeals are used to add credibility, emotion, and logic to the series, which makes it easier for the audience to appreciate it. The rhetorical situation is what explains information about the visual. The rhetorical situation includes the tone, genre, the author, the purpose, and the intended audience. The rhetorical situation also relates back to what and whom the audience is being entertained by.

Pretty Little Liars is a seven season television series produced by Marlene King. The genre is suspenseful, or could be considered as a thriller. The opening of the series engages the audience by keeping them guessing. The opening raises many questions, one of which could be: who is the deceased girl? To further engage the audience, and to persuade them to continue to watch the series, the opening has this dark, grunge-like effect. This effect sets the mood for the series by notifying the audience that the series will be thrilling. Ethos, pathos, and logos, also play an important role in the series’s opening. They establish credibility, emotion, and logic. They also work by appealing to the audience. The rhetorical appeals, the rhetoric situation, and the rhetoric strategies work together to provide entertainment and background information about the visual to the audience. All three are important to the visual because they engage, entertain, and inform the audience.

=Work Cited=

Pretty Little Liars. Dir. Marlene B. King. Perf. Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale, Troian Bellisario, Shay Mitchell, and Sasha Pieterse. 2008. Television Show. Pretty Little Liars. ABC Family. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.