Ellen Page's Coming Out

I would like to use the Neo-Aristotelian Criticism that I learned in class to analyze the rhetorical impact of a speech which really moved me (I recommend you to watch it there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hlCEIUATzg). So here is the rhetorical situation: The speaker is the 27 years old actress Ellen Page, known for her roles in Juno, X-Men or Inception. She gave her speech on the 14^th of February 2014 during an LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexual, transsexual) youth conference in Las Vegas. So most of her audience that day was young homosexuals, or gay-friendly. But Ellen Page also knew that her speech was recorded and was going to be broadcasted on TV and on the internet, so her audience is much larger than only young gay people. The exigence for this speech was for Ellen to come out as a gay woman, to share her experience and to influence the audience by giving them the strength to do the same that she did. The constraints were of course to put herself in a dangerous position since she revealed some very personal information about her in front of an audience and cameras. 

That day, Ellen Page made the announcement that she is gay in a very moving and personal speech. "I'm here today because I am gay, and because maybe I can make a difference, to help others have an easier and more hopeful time” she said, “I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission”. She stood for struggling against the heterocentrist hegemony that we are living in and to fight against all the norms that the society imposes to us. In that way she seems like a round character because she breaks the socially accepted rules and she even criticizes the industry she is part of.

What we can retain from this speech is the sincerity, and the empathy of the actress. Indeed, even if she tells about her own story, she always includes the others by using “you” and “us”. This is her way to say that every young gay people have to go through the same obstacles and pains. But even then, she still talks about her personal story (storytelling) in order to give some legitimacy to her “advocacy”, and to prove people that she is just like them. Besides, she talks as part of the group, thanks to “us” and “our” and raises some pride to be part of this community: she positions herself as one voice of the suffering gay youth.

Moreover, in order to be coherent she admits that she has integrated the consumer society’s norms and standards (being pretty every day for example) and by saying that, she conveys that struggling against these norms is really difficult and that she may have failed to do so. She also admits that she is making her coming out for a selfish reason: She is tired to have to hide and to suffer from it. That’s a way for her to play the honesty card, as an imperfect woman who can have some weaknesses, whom everybody can relate to, and it makes her a believable speaker.

Her way to deliver her message is, in my opinion, the most effective factor of her speech. We can hear in her voice all the emotions she is going through, and because she doesn’t read any notes it really gives the feeling that she really means what she is saying.

Finally, I think that the overall impact is really effective because her story is moving, and because her speech matches the fidelity factor since she shares the same values than the audience. She conveys a moral which is to accept who you really are and to be proud of it. She puts herself as an example for the youth LGBT community and encourages the others to follow her lead.