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MonaLisa Moazampour

Mr. Covington

English Comp 011

21 February 2021

Test in Action

The music video “How to be a Heartbreaker” at first impression is about how to not get

your own heartbroken. The video gives four different rules about how to do this, how to be a

“player”. As the music video goes on however, there is a deeper meaning to this song and that is

that it is really about this girl who has been hurt so many times my one or multiple boys, that she

has concluded that it is better to fake her love than to take a risk on a relationship that is based on

actual emotion. The lyrics as well as the visual representation explains this whole idea

throughout the video.

The video gives these four rules as an explanation of how to not get heartbroken. The

first rule given is “you gotta have fun. But baby, when you're done, you gotta be the first to run”

(0:10). This explains how in order to become a “player” is to get with a boy, have fun with him,

but when it starts to get to the point of where emotions might start to get in the way, you have to

be the one who walks away and ends the relationship. Doing this, shows that you have the power

in the relationship and not the boy. The second rule is “just don't get attached to somebody you

could lose” (0:24). The point of this rule is showing that in the whole process of being the one in

charge of the relationship, you also need to make sure you don’t pick someone who could leave

you before you get the chance to leave them. This ties into the first rule as the girl is supposed to

be the one who leaves first before the boy gets the chance. Because if the boy leaves first, the girl
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will realize she was more attached than she thought she was, therefore leading into a heartbreak.

The third rule states “wear heart on cheek, but never on sleeve unless want to taste defeat”

(1:18). In this statement, defeat is referring to falling in love for real. The cheek versus sleeve is

references that if you wear your heart on your sleeve then that means that you are allowing

yourself to be open, allowing yourself to be more vulnerable. Therefore, you must wear it on

your cheek, keeping your emotions in and not letting them be shown. Rule number four says

“gotta be looking pure; kiss him goodbye at the door, and leave him wanting more, more” (1:30).

“Looking pure” is referencing that you don’t want the boy to suspect anything, so you must look

innocent. The next phrase of kissing him at the door and leaving shows that your intentions are

purely sexual and if the guy wants to do more, they must be the one reaching out to the girl next

time in order to see her again. The lyrics in this song is half of the show. It straight up explains

what one must do to be a heartbreaker. The other half is the video itself.

The visual representation and symbolisms in this video shows how each rule is being

taken into place. Before getting into the specific rules, notice the overall scenery. Marina is

dressed in all black, representing that she is “dark” when it comes to her emotions, not letting

them get in the way. However, the outfit she is wearing is a short skirt and a small top,

representing that she is a hot girl whom the boys are going to chase after. The next thing to

notice would be the fact that she is in front and centered while there are multiple (almost) naked

men in the background in a shower. Being in the shower is a vulnerable time no matter who you

are. This placing of the everyone represents that Marina is in power, she is invading their privacy

and they are letting her; she calls the shots and runs the relationship, and the boys are all over

her, being attracted to her no matter what.

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Now onto the visual representation of each rule. For rule one of having fun and being the

one to leave first, she is smiling indicating the run and the boys are all over her staring at her like

they won’t ever leave. For rule two, about not getting attached, this guy is kissing her neck while

she is just smiling on her phone almost ignoring him, acting as if she doesn’t really care about

him, probably texting some other guy at the same time. For rule three, about not wearing your

heart on your sleeve, she is wearing a little black heart on her cheek throughout the whole video,

showing she’s not letting herself be emotionally open, but shows the black heart as an illusion to

the boys so they think she is emotionally involved when she is not. For rule four, about kissing

him but then leaving him, she blows a kiss and then walks away, while showing the boy staring

at her walking away because he wants more, but she doesn’t even look back.

To back up her meaning of this song with lyrics and visuality, Marina shows a good

representation of ethos, pathos, and logos throughout this music video. Ethos represents the

speaker, in this case Marina. Marina expresses the power that she has by making her audience

trust what she is saying. She does this by showing her confidence throughout the video and she

never backs down; she keeps her word and shows how her rules work. Along with that, she has a

good representation of pathos which represents the audience’s emotion. By making this an

upbeat song rather than a slow love song, it shows that it should make the audience feel

confident in what Marina is expressing and that they should try it for themselves as it does

indeed work. Tying these two together gives a good representation of logos. Logos is the

message that is being portrayed with evidence. The underlying idea of this song is that Marina

has been hurt in the past, but she does not want to be no longer. While explaining how to follow

these rules, Marina shows that she is happy, there a bunch of boys in this music video that she

has tested these rules on, and it has worked with every single one of them. I believe that Marina
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does a good job at using ethos, pathos, and logos to prove her point of how to become a

heartbreaker without getting one’s own feelings hurt by providing explanation and evidence.

As stated in the text of Inquiry, the steps of analyzing a text rhetorically are as follows:

(1) to identify the situation (2) to identify the writer’s purpose (3) to identify the writer’s claims

and lastly (4) to identify the writer’s audience. In “How to be a Heartbreaker”, the reason Marina

wrote this song was because she has been heartbroken in the past by one or maybe even many

men. Marina wants her listeners to do as she says, to follow her rules and become a heartbreaker

themselves. Her main claim in her song is to prove that girls can be players just as well as guys

do, and that it can work if done so correctly. Her minor claim would be that she doesn’t want

other girls to be heartbroken as she knows the feeling and how this may affect one. Marina’s

main audience is most likely females. Her language in the way she explains how to be a

heartbreaker infers that girls often overthink things, so she makes it very clear on what to do by

stating rules one through four. Her reference’s mainly come form herself, she has tried these four

rules on boys in her life and it has worked on all of them. The structure of her song goes in order

of how a girl should process and go about a boy that they don’t want to be come emotionally

attached to.

I believe this is a successful rhetorical text. I believe in this way because Marina does a

very good job at explaining what her purpose is, why she is doing it, how to succeed with it, as

well as giving proper visual representation for an easier understanding. She avoids using

academic words that may be confusing to the general population and instead uses simpler terms

as well as giving her claims in a list-like manner. Lists are the easiest way of an understanding

and she provides each topic in her list with an explanation as well as a different visual to go

along with it. Lastly, the chorus of guys liking a little danger references that men are more likely
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than not attracted to a girl who is or may seem mysterious, ambiguous, and dangerous. If a girl

does this, the boy will fall in love with you while you will not. She gives many examples of how

this is proven throughout the video with the use of her lyrics, visuality, as well as the use of

ethos, pathos, and logos. Marina educated other females on how to not let themselves become

heartbroken.
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Works Cited

“How to be a Heartbreaker” YouTube, uploaded by Marina, 28 Sept. 2012,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKNcuTWzTVw