The first week when we were discussing the different rhetorical perspectives, a lot came to mind when the Dramatistic perspective was explained. The concept of the God terms and Devil terms really seemed to apply to the media for me. I watch a lot of scripted drama television and it seems like every one of these shows have certain God terms that really drive the characters and shapes the viewers opinion of those characters and the show as a whole. A lot of time these God terms relate to family and doing what is right to protect the people you love.
It is for exactly this reason that so much vigilante justice exists on these shows. Because popular culture text both justify and break acceptable rules in society, we tend to forgive these characters for the rules they break if they are doing it for a good cause. You tend to feel bad or even proud of the characters that break rules in these shows because they are almost always either doing it for a greater good, asking for forgiveness afterward, standing up and taking the blame for it, or being clever and getting away with it. I'm sure many shows come to mind when you think about this concept. If you are in our Pop Culture class you are probably thinking Breaking Bad because apparently everyone in our class loves that show. Boardwalk Empire always stands out for me. Nucky is a huge gangster that kills someone almost every episode but you are still rooting for him and care about him. I also have been watching a ton of Sons of Anarchy, which essentially has vigilante justice as the title character. The Sons are almost always doing the cops' job of keeping Charming clean of drugs and rapists. And even when they are killing people for their own personal goals, we still do not blame them for their guilt because it is for the greater good and you care about those characters more than the faceless dead people.
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