Jenna Marbles' Rhetorial Agency

                Carolyn Miller’s article, “What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency?” really intrigued me. I especially enjoyed how she related the entire article to a survey about the reactions to writing and speaking computer-based assessments. Most of the instructors responded with what seemed to be less than enthusiasm when it came to implementing these assessments. This article was written in 2004 and I’d be curious to see how she would write it today (even though it’s only 8 years later). Since 2004, there has been an explosion with YouTube, specifically with video bloggers. While this does not seem to be “computer” she was thinking of, it does incorporate another element. In the end, I think that these new YouTube videos support Miller's ideas.

                Her article centers on rhetorical agency and what makes up this broad concept. First, she tries to explain that “speaking…requires interaction between rhetor and audience.” (142) From understanding this idea, she points out three things that are needed for agency: performance, audience, and interaction. She begins be first explaining performance.

                Traditionally, it was seen that the subject was the “seat of rhetorical origin, seizing the kairos to instigate change.” (146) However, as ideas about ideology began to infiltrate the scholarship, this power was taken from the rhetor and given to ideology. Miller states that performance is determined by both the rhetor and the audience. And she defines agency as a kinetic energy of this performance. Rhetorical agency is then considered to be a property then of the performance itself and is situated “exactly between the agent’s capacity and the effect on an audience.” (147) In terms of the video blogs on YouTube, like Jenna Marbles, her agency is determined by 2 aspects. Her jokes are thought of as funny not only because of her skill as a comedian (capacity) but also due to her viewer’s ideology. Her agency is created in the moment and is a process of speech and reception.

                The section that I thought was most intriguing for video blogs was the idea of an audience. Many of the instructors were horrified by the idea of speaking to a camera or speaking through a camera to a computer. In this section, Miller also discusses mediated speaking which is the “rhetorical effort required to anticipate an audience.” (148) Here she also reminds us that unmediated speakers often forget their audience. So it is not a fault of a camera for speakers to forget their audience. In the end, she identifies an Other as the one thing that makes us apprehensive about speaking and, at the same time, indicates an agency. This other is one who may resist, disagree, disapprove, humiliate, approve, empathize, applaud, etc. Therefore a performance is “between two entities who will attribute agency to each other.” (149) Video bloggers speak through cameras to their listeners. They are never sure who will see their blogs and how they will respond. And their audience members do have a chance to respond instantly to what they see through the use of comments, which adds another element. I think bloggers often have to anticipate their audience even more so than others, for they really have to know their fans in order for their jokes to have meaning and be successful. However, many bloggers exist with a relatively few number of viewers. Are these bloggers simply speaking to a computer?

                The last element of rhetoric that Miller explains indicates an agency is interaction. Miller explains that many of the responses to her survey wanted the audience to be available to the speaker. Miller states that it is the speaker’s and the audience’s “interaction, through attributions they make about each other and understand each other to be making, that we constitute agency.” (150) Speaking is a social phenomenon and only another agent can give someone agency. On the other hand, our society’s tendency for ethopoeia is allowing for more and more inanimate objects to adopt humanistic characteristics. This too supports the popularity for video blogs and their rhetorical agency. YouTube allows an interaction between blogger and viewer through the use of comments, likes, dislikes, and subscribes. There is a physical and even a time gap between blogger and viewer but this does not seem to take away from Jenna Marble’s rhetorical agency. Miller’s article helps explain how though some computer based interaction is not yet accepted, other newer media forms are being granted an agency.