Essay Revised

RIP Essay: Conclusion Sample

In the Fyre Festival documentary, there is a moment when one investor says that the festival was existing somewhere in the “realm of believability.” This phrase is a telling one; it shows that what is believable often occupies a space that is difficult to define, a ‘realm,’ and the props that hold up this believability are easily imitated. One example of such a prop would be the festival bracelets and how they looked exactly like others from reputable events like Coachella, but were little more than a fake set piece made up as if for a fake play. In my documentary film review, I wrote that “the only guy in the documentary who questioned these props like the bracelets skated out scot free with no harm done- he escaped the con before it happened to him. What became a problem for others was a non-event for him. His distrust lead to the truth.” I was trying to show my audience through his example that distrust can sometimes be positive, even though distrust in perception and belief is often seen as negative, just as it is for Father Karras in The Exorcist who is plagued with disbelief in his own senses, in God, and in his own goodness. At a moment when Karras has resolved to seek permission for the exorcism and is clutching at an unexplainable symptom as proof of possession, he begins perusing the doctors’ reports with “hopeful anticipation” that they will lack an explanation for at least one of the phenomena he has witnessed, but as he reads their ‘reasonable’ clarifications, he slips into “disappointment and defeat” (Blatty 273). This disappointment is rooted in how the information he sees contradicts what he wants to believe in the moment so he can proceed with the exorcism, and his reaction to this disappointment is to reject the information; he insists the doctors might be wrong, and there is “room for doubt” and “interpretation” (Blatty 273). This space of doubt allows him to reignite his hopes, and Blatty adeptly shows this tug of war between the information we see in the world and our distrust of both that information itself as well as our perception of it.

As my project evolved, I wanted to use my film review not just to comment on the Fyre Festival itself, but to persuade my audience that cultivating doubt can be a productive way to see information around us more clearly. Ultimately this message not only applies to the audience I analyzed above, but to many possible rhetorical contexts and their respective audiences. One such unintended audience would be college students, and this message of distrust can be applied to how d oubting your major might lead to productive research on why to stick with it and what career preparation is the most helpful. Whether we are thinking in terms of significant issues like careers and relationships or smaller issues like something we might buy, the gulf between expectation and reality is best closed by an honest interpretation of the information at hand. Easier said than done. But it can be done and the gulf can be closed when we cultivate healthy doubt and loosen our grip on an outcome we’re hoping for, even while keeping hope in the back pocket as a constant attitude through which to approach the world rather than an attachment to a certain result.