Rhetorical Analysis Of Back To The Future

Rhetorical Response
The author Russ Rymer wrote a very interesting essay called Back to the Future: Disney Reinvents the Company Town. In this essay, Russ Rymer wrote about how Disney was attempting to create a town called Celebration, which would give a “sense of” community and place (Rymer 297). Rymer’s purpose is to inform the reader of how Disney was wasting time and money trying to create a community that was supposed to be a blast from the past even though the designers used neo-traditionalism and neo-urbanism designs. Throughout his writing he conveys a sort of arrogant tone to get his point across to the readers that no matter how hard Disney tries they cannot bring back the past. It was like taking todays now generation and expecting

them to live a life of fifty years prior, a past we do not know or live in, as the author states “Celebration was promising the restoration of the aesthetic and communal values of pre- World War II America. The town rising out of the palmetto swamp would be the Experimental Prototype Community of Yesterday.” (Rymer 296). Throughout describing the town he carried an arrogant tone as to mock Disney for trying to create the town of tomorrow when really they were creating the town of yesterday.
The author of this article seemed well informed on the topic in which he was writing about. He had interviewed many people in different aspects of building the town, from the Disney employees, to the engineers, to even the CEO of Disney. He did a good job of getting personal experiences of some of the residents in the essay. The part where he tells the Jones’s story about moving across the country to live in Celebration. In sharing their story it added an engaging aspect to the story where his reader could relate to some of their experiences.
The audience that the author is writing this essay for are people who are interested in tight knit communities, home associations, and Disney fanatics looking for a safe place to move their families to.

Through the entire essay the author, Russ Rymer inputs his own judgement into the essay expressing how they were making this town called Celebration out to be the best place on earth to live. He stated how Joel and Marlene spelled out the conceptual “cornerstones” of Celebration for him (Rymer 297). They made this community sound like it was going to be the best community and that everyone will come from all over the world to see this little community they had made. They made it sound out to be the ideal community where children can go play without any worries and “where playtime doesn’t end till mama called you in” (Rymer 298). As Rymer has stated, Celebration’s temporal compass was pointed to the past. In this community every house had to follow a set style pattern set forth by Disney known as the “Celebration Pattern Book” (Rymer 300). This pattern book dictates what every house needs to look like on the outside. As Rymer put it this book militates against a multitude of sins- moral and venial- to which modern builder are prone. All houses had to be built according to this book to be a part of the Celebration

community.
The author could have a few pursoses as to why he writing this essay.