Cory Castrejon

Dr. Erin McLaughlin

Writing and Rhetoric 1330
2/27/15
Sounds and Scenes of Selma: A Call to Action
Martin Luther King Jr. led many protests during the Civil Rights movement. His policy of
nonviolence and peaceful protest allowed him to gain support from many people around the
country. Dr. Kings method of fighting for African Americans rights caused the name Martin
Luther King to become a famous part of history. Results from his protests were varied but he did
make a lot of progress in the area of Civil Rights. Eventually, the issue of blacks getting the right
to vote came into the forefront. Dr. King approached President Lyndon B. Johnson about the
ways in which the south was preventing African Americans from exercising the right to vote. In
the film, Selma, President Johnson is portrayed as sympathetic to Kings cause but unwilling to
take the necessary steps to resolve the issue. After Martin Luther King Jr. finishes his meeting
with the President, he tells his colleagues that the march at Selma will happen. The march was a
back-up plan if the President did not agree to help them. Dr. King and his colleagues were going
to attempt to change the country with or without the Presidents help. King knew what he had to
do in order to be remembered for standing up for peoples rights. The film Selma addresses the
idea that hindsight has perfect vision and it is easy to critique the past. Selma issues a call to
action through its sound, visual framework, and editing.
Sound is used in the film in order to increase the emotion felt by the audience as well as
forcing the audience to connect certain scenes together. Dialogue was used to create intersections

between different scenes so the characters could be seen developing as well as the themes could
be discussed. Martin Luther King Jr. asks President Johnson who he wants to be remembered
with when he is dead and people are looking at his lifes work. Later in the film, President
Johnson uses a similar quote on Governor George Wallace. The President can be seen as
developing into someone who is willing to fight for the rights of the oppressed. He is able to see
the problems with the South when he has his meeting with the governor. Johnson realizes that he
does not want to be remembered with someone like Wallace. Johnson had to interact with the
extreme of racism in order to see that the voting restrictions had to stop. The film calls the
audience to go through a similar type of transformation. The viewer sees the extremes of racism
during the motion picture and they hopefully realize that they do not want to be remembered as a
person that did not stand up against wrongdoing. The evil that African Americans experienced in
the south is easy to see and todays generation may believe that they would have acted differently
in the same situation. The modern generation was raised in a culture that did not accept the
blatant cruelty shown in the film. However, the audience is called to ask what future generations
will see as unacceptable in todays society. Dialogue connects different scenes of the film
together almost by itself. However, dialogue along with the films soundtrack connects the film
to modern society.
The emotion that the soundtrack of the film Selma, exudes is immense, forcing the
audience to feel guilt as well as a motivation to change the world around them. The final song
that is used in the motion picture is incredibly moving due to the lyrics as well as the scene that
the song is complementing. The last song of the soundtrack called Yesterday Was Hard on All
of Us by Fink is played during the final march scene. The March scene is at the end of the film
and therefore, seems like the battle is over. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of his supporters seem

to have won the support of most of the United States. However, the song that is playing off the
soundtrack does not reflect the notion that the battle is over and has been won. Instead, the
opening lyrics state Where do we go from here? (Fink). The battle for Civil rights and equality
had not been won. The audience is not called or supposed to feel satisfied with the ending. The
battle for racial equality is not over when the films credits begin to roll. The viewer is called to
feel motivated to change todays society in the same way that Dr. King did. The audience should
be asking, Where do we go from here? All of the viewers had some kind of knowledge of the
Civil Rights movement. Therefore, they knew how the film was going to end and the purpose of
the film was not to inform the audience about the historical event. Rhetorical works belong to
the class of things which obtain their character from the circumstances of the historic context in
which they occur (Bitzer 3). Selma is part of a context that is familiar to most Americans. The
Civil Rights movement evokes strong emotions from people and therefore, the film uses these
emotions to its advantage. The director knows that the audience will be motivated to try and
change the problems with society so DuVernay focuses these emotions into a call to action that
surfaces during the final scene, especially through the soundtrack.
Police brutality is a main theme and plot point in the film; however, the auditory aspects
of the scenes are just as important as the visual aspects of the violence. The police forces in the
South played a major role in the resistance that Civil Rights activists felt. Policemen looked for
reasons to subdue African American protestors and the officers subdued the protestors with
excessive force. Policemen were portrayed in the film as unwilling to reason with African
Americans and demonstrating barbaric actions in their control tactics. The filmmakers used
extreme examples of the police brutality in order to create more empathy from the audience. In
hindsight, the police brutality can be seen as very negative. However, there are aspects of modern

society that will be looked at in the same negative manner. Sound was an important tool that the
director used to express the brutality. During all the violent scenes, the noise of the protestors
being beaten could be heard. The lack of music and the sound of pain that was heard made the
scene seem more realistic. The noises and sound effects used in the scenes were an aesthetic
aspect of rhetoric. Writers, speakers, composers, or other sources typically wish to present
arguments and appeals in a manner that is attractive, memorable, or perhaps even shocking to the
intended audience (Herrick 14). The filmmakers wanted to shock the audience into action by
using the sound effects in the way that they did. For example, when the priest from Boston was
beaten to death, a sound effect was used in order to convey the life leaving his body. The director
used this effect to make the actions of those in the South seem more extreme. The actions of the
southerners were presented in way that was terrifying and heart wrenching. The audience is not
supposed to feel a connection to these characters. The viewer is called to not be remembered in
the same way that those southerners will be remembered. In the violent scenes, sound plays an
important role but sometimes the lack of sound has an even greater impact.
Background images are used to connect the historical knowledge that the audience brings
to the film and the film itself. For example, in a scene between Dr. King and President Johnson, a
painting of George Washington can be seen in the background. The director used the shot with
the painting in order to draw comparisons between George Washington and the two men. At the
time, the impact that George Washington would have was unknown. However, in hindsight,
Washington had an enormous impact on the development of the United States of America.
Washington led a revolution against oppressors much like Martin Luther King Jr. was doing at
the time of the film. The comparison between George Washington and President Johnson is
foreshadowing. President Johnson is not someone who was willing to fight for what he believes

believed was right. However, he eventually realized that he wants to be remembered along with
people like Washington rather than people like Governor George Wallace. According to Sturken
and Cartwright, Clearly our interpretation of images often depends upon historical context and
the cultural knowledge we bring to them (30). For many Americans, George Washington is the
symbol of the American Revolution. If the audience did not have the historical context about
Washington, the comparison between the men in the scene and the First President would not be
able to be made. The camera angle allowed the viewer to see the painting of Washington as well
as feel more connected to many scenes.
The camera work during the violent scenes brings the audience closer to the violence.
The viewer sees a shaky scene as a result of the use of a shaky camera technique. This technique
allows the violence to feel more real. The filmmakers made the choice to have the violent scenes
be as realistic as possible in order to increase the influence they had. In fact, Mobile framing
makes viewer symbolic enactors of the very act they would condemn as inhuman (Lancioni
111). In todays society, the brutality that was shown is obviously cruel and wrong. However, the
director makes the scene feel real so that the audience compares the violence to their own lives.
In future generations, people could react in a similar way to actions that todays generation
performs. The camera shots themselves express complex messages but the manner in which the
shots were edited together to add another level of complexity.
DuVernay and the editors of the film edited the motion picture in a way that was able to
separate the historical event from the theatrical event. The films march is a march for modern
generations. The music played during the final march creates the atmosphere for todays march.
However, the true separating factor is the images of the real Selma March that were edited into
the film. These images show the differences between the real life and films march. The images

allow the audience to feel that the real march was in the past and that they need to march for
themselves. The pictures of the actual event also keep in line with the theme of hindsight that is
present within the motion picture. The importance of the march is easy to see now that time has
passed and the changes it caused have occurred. The audience needs to find its own issue to fight
for in order to change the world for the better.
Some people may wonder why the director and other filmmakers chose to use the Selma
March instead of a more recent event. While events such as the protests in Ferguson could be
used in order to issue the same call to action, these events would not be nearly as effective.
Enough time has passed that very few people believe that the march from Selma was unjustified.
Most people could not imagine not allowing African Americans to vote. Therefore, the premise
of the film is a more extreme representation of racism. People in modern society can look back
on the time when the Selma march occurred and they can see that the Southern whites were in
the wrong. They can look into the past and say that they would have acted in a different manner.
However, the film brings up the idea that the past is easy to judge negatively. Todays generation
is asked to think about how they will be represented in the future.
Filmmaking is a complex and intensive process. There are many different aspects that are
involved go into each shot. Each scene is a collection of takes that are the final result of months
of writing and planning. However, filmmaking with a purpose can make the process even more
complicated. When the director is putting the motion picture together, they have to make sure
that the film contradicts the main point of the work as a little as possible. Selma does a beautiful
job of using each scene in order to make its point about hindsight. The film is necessary in order
to cause the generation today to act. The issue of racial inequality is not resolved and there are
other problems in modern society. Todays generation needs to fight in the same way that Martin

Luther King Jr. fought. Those people that are oppressed need to fight along with others that are
willing to fight for them. The film uses editing, framing of the scene, and sound in order to
emphasize the idea that critiquing the past is simple but how will todays society look in the eyes
of the future.

Works Cited
Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy & Rhetoric. Vol. 1. N.p.: Penn State UP, n.d. N.
pag. Print.
Herrick, James A. "An Overview of Rhetoric." The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction.
Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2005. N. pag. Print.
Lancioni, Judith. "The Rhetoric of the Frame Revisioning Archival Photographs in." Western Journal
of Communication 60.4 (1996): 397-414. Web.
Selma. Dir. Ava DuVernay. Perf. David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo. 2014. Film.
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2001. Print.