There’s a moment, half way through the movie, when the Goonies’ search for One-Eyed Willie’s rich stuff should've ended. They’re standing at the bottom of a wishing well and have the opportunity to ride a bucket up to safety. Now they’ve already seen several skeletons, been attacked by rabid bats, almost killed by falling boulders, and of course the gun-toting Fratellis are somewhere behind them; but after listening to a less than stirring speech delivered by an asthmatic they decide to stay in the caves. Here is Mikey’s speech:
Don’t you realize? The next time you see sky (pause) it’ll be over another town. The next time you take a test (pause) it’ll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the bestest stuff for us. But right now they gotta do what’s right for them. ‘Cause it’s their time. Their time! Up there. It’s our time. It’s our time down here. That’s all over the second we ride up Troy’s bucket (takes puff from inhaler).
According to Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, "Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is spoken as to make us think him credible... Secondly...through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions...Thirdly...through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question." We can use these three modes of persuasion as a kind of rubric for assessing Mikey’s speech.
Let us first examine the ways in which Mikey fails to establish credibility or ethos.
- Mikey says bestest which is, admittedly, kind of cute but ultimately stupid because bestest isn’t actually a word. This juvenile hyperbolizing of best should detract from his overall message and everyone listening should think him an idiot. Which he is.
- Though it could be argued that the use of an inhaler at the conclusion of the speech is a conscious attempt to place himself within a continuum of great asthmatic leaders like John F. Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson, Mikey couldn’t be more than twelve years old, so it’s highly unlikely that this is the case. The inhaler, therefore, is merely drawing attention to how weak his lungs are.
- While most orators deliver their speeches from an elevated platform, Mikey has chosen to position himself below his audience. Not only is this a subliminal indication of his shortcomings but it also forces him to tilt his head back, fully exposing his braces, and consequently adding a malocclusion to his ever-growing list of flaws.
Mikey fares slightly better in his appeal to emotion, or pathos, but still, his argument is fundamentally lacking.
- "The next time you see sky, it’ll be over another town." The sentiment here is actually quite beautiful. Unfortunately, Mikey then goes on to undermine the power of this statement by saying, "the next time you take a test, it’ll be in some other school." Mentioning "tests" and "school," two things that most children abhor, would trigger a negative subconscious response in his audience and confuse their allegiances. He’s essentially using something negative to highlight just how negative some other negative thing is. When giving a speech like this, it’s important to clearly delineate right from wrong, favorable from unfavorable. It would’ve been far more effective to say something like, "the next time you go trick-or-treating, it’ll be in a neighborhood filled with sex offenders."
- Mikey punctuates his speech with long pauses. This is presumably done to heighten drama. However, I’m not entirely convinced that the pausing isn’t just some symptom of his asthma.
I would like to shift our attention to logos, or the facts that Mikey uses to support his argument, but there aren’t any facts. Mikey’s entire argument is predicated on assumption.
So why did they follow Mikey? I have no idea. Maybe they all just looked at him and realized how super cute he was or maybe the Goonies were just really, really dumb. I don’t know. I also don’t know why not riding up that bucket elicited this response from Troy:
