This comment is written by the English comedian / actor / musician / entertainer, Russel Brand, who is especially famous for his many movies such as “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. The comment was posted on the English website “The Guardian” in the summer of 2011. Russell Brand currently lives in Los Angeles, USA, but feels the need to state his opinion towards the London Riots, since he has a very strong connection to his native country. This comment is clearly directed towards the media and the politicians of England.
The London riots took place in 2011, and were mainly a reaction by the youth of England, who probably felt they were being neglected, overlooked and treated like outcasts in the English society. In Russell Brands opinion, the whole English community, and especially the media, has to stop pointing out all the things the rioters do wrong, like trashing local shops and burning down other government institutions like kindergartens. In Russell Brands comment, he describes the very core of the situation seen from his perspective. He has done this, using quite a lot of sarcasm and irony. He is wondering why the media presents these troublemakers with words like “mindless” and their behavior like “unacceptable”, when the media should be focusing on telling the citizens why the troublesome youth is acting the way they are, instead of stating the obvious. When he says: “Wow! Thanks guys! What a wonderful use of planet’s fast-depleting oxygen resources” it is clearly directed at the media and the politicians who are publically speaking about the rioters behavior. His tone is of course very sarcastic, so when you read it you have absolutely no doubt that he is not being serious. His sarcasm becomes very clear in his next sentence where he jokingly says “Now that’s been dealt with, can we move on to more taxing matters such as whether or not Jack The Ripper was a ladies’ man”. Basically Russell Brand means that we should blame society, for what is happening in the streets of London and that we have to “Work out why so many people feel utterly disconnected from the cities they live in”. Russell Brand clearly has a lot of sympathy for the rioters, and the reason for this could be because he was once a rioter himself. The reason for his prior rioting is that he felt some sort of void or an empty space inside himself, like he was missing something in his life. This is his appeal to pathos because he gives the story a tiny bit of a personal angle, and on the same time he makes it appeal to logos since he comes with a logical explanation as to why the young rioters are acting the way they are. So seen from the point of view of Russell Brand, he understands the rioters and he means that for the riots to stop, the society has to make some changes which are in favor of the youth who are on the margins of society. The comment is to some extent build up like a speech would be structured. On many occasions, Russell Brand starts 3 sentences in a row with I… like on page 9 line 62-66. Since it is a quite subjective comment, as comments usually are, Russell Brand needs to come up with some solid arguments to get his message out. Some examples that he states is that the youth riot because they lack education and possibilities for taking one, they have a weak family unit and they have money or a possibility to get it, since there are no available jobs in their neighborhood. As mentioned earlier, he has sympathy for the young rioters, but he doesn’t have any sympathy for the football-hooligans who joins the riots on the sole purpose of ruining and setting fire to stuff. He does write the comment with a tone that makes you feel compassion towards the rioters. This is of course pathos appeal. The tone is also quite harsh and explicit since he uses the word “fucking” twice. The first occasion is when he is talking about the society and its problems with consumerism. He says “No wonder they have their fucking hoods up.” And on the other occasion he says “few fucking pairs of trainers.” Which is really not that relevant to the message Russell is trying to spread? Aside from these two swear words, the overall tone is definitely negative against the media and the politicians, and as a large portion of stand-up comedians do, they mock them either by sarcasm or saying ironic quotes just like Russell Brand does. Russell Brands language is relatively well even though he sometimes mixes American spelling with the English spellings, for example flavor/flavour. He has a very broad vocabulary and he uses it in phrases like “political idealism or rationalism”. He also uses old English slang like for example “Old Bill” which oddly enough means the police. This is possibly done deliberately for comical purposes or to sound more academic.
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