I recently saw the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. In fact, I've seen it twice, and I wish I could take my students on a field trip to view it. I found so compelling their strategy for responding to the recent, ongoing rumors that the moon landing was a hoax. First they showed countless interview clips with Apollo program astronauts, carefully edited and placed to present a coherent narrative about the experience. They also mixed in tons of footage of the various moon landings. They never addressed the subject of a possible hoax until the end credits, and by that time, after such a bombardment of information, the ethos of the astronauts had been built up to the point that any suggestion that they'd made everything up seemed laughably ridiculous. In fact, the astronauts responded to the allegations by laughing at them. I thought the rhetorical strategy employed was really impressive, particularly because the whole thing had this disarming, artless, folksy quality. It did not come across as attempting to prove any claim, just to present facts in a nostalgic way. In reality, of course, the movie presented several not just claims but fully developed and supported arguments, the refutation of the conspiracy theory among them. The movie has the tag line, "Remember when the whole world looked up," and also presented the argument that we used to have nobler goals as Americans. Our leaders provided more lofty inspiration and guidance, and as a people we were more willing to pay attention to the world and take risks for what we believed in. It was a very impressive film from a rhetorical standpoint, and I'm thinking of ways to incorporate it into 306 if it's out on video by next semester.