Confidence games and rhetoric in American cinema: The 'con film' as rhetorical film genre

This essay discusses the analysis of film genre as a useful intersection between film scholarship and rhetorical scholarship.;Beginning with a review of disciplinary trends and biases in the study of film genre, the essay then proposes that the field of film studies might profitably absorb five developments from contemporary rhetorical theory. These include: a renewed attention to distinctions among tropes (as based on Kenneth Burke's "Four Master Tropes"); close attention to a film genre's constructions of ethos and its strategies of legitimation; and the development of a hortatory activity for the genre scholar. On this basis, the essay proposes "rhetorical film genres" as analytic constructs that a genre critic may constitute, for the purpose of analysis, from among a wide constellation of films. Such "rhetorical film genres" can be constituted especially richly on the basis of a tropological effect (a stylistic, technical or narrative motif running through many of the films).;As illustration, the essay considers the rhetoric of confidence games and swindles in American cinema. Following a broad historical overview, it advocates for a rhetorical genre: the "con film." It proposes that an accelerating frequency of films about "long con games" since roughly The Sting (1973) recommend the long con narrative as a model of "con film" structure. The essay proceeds next to consider the prefigurative traditions that inform the characterization of the con artist. Three are considered at length in the context of American lore and cinematic traditions: the huckster, the trickster, and the mastermind. Following this, the long con's roots in melodrama, comedy, and suspense thriller are explored; each is seen to provide it with a particular formal and rhetorical device. Next, a rhetorical analysis of the long con is performed in light of the classical proofs of ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos; these provide a further set of tropical devices. The point is made that through each proof the con film emphasizes "metaleptic" felicity -- felicity that is justified only retroactively. Finally, the essay offers a rhetorical analysis of hegemonic alignments that are strengthened by the genre's rehearsal of metaleptic felicity.