Todd Battistelli's blog

Visualizing the War on Christmas: Acknowledging the Pre-Christian Origins of Winter Festival Imagery

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 19:41:22 +0000

Image Credit: Fox News

Every holiday season conservative political activists trying to maintain Christian supremacy in the United States bemoan an alleged "War On Christmas." According to their conspiracy theories, evil secularlists lurk behind every corner, ready to pounce on any expression of the Christian Christmas tradition. For the activists, store employees who wish customers a "happy holiday" are not trying to be inclusive. Rather, these cheerless corporate-mandated greetings serve as another boot of tyranny standing on the neck of American Christendom.

Image Credit: nknh

Such bluster is par for the course when the religious right are concerned: it is as loud as it is baseless. However, the hullabaloo does contribute to the marginalization and under-appreciation of the diverse historical sources of the imagery currently associated with Christmas that originated with various European celebrations of the winter solstice.

Image Credit: Simon Phipps

Despite what certain bumper stickers and church signs might tell you, Jesus is not the reason for the season. Early Christian celebrations of Christmas appropriated preexisting winter festival traditions, such as Roman Saturnalia or the Norse celebrations that preceded Yule.

Image Credit: Aaron Jacobs

These solstice celebrations marked the return of longer days and the promise of a bountiful growing season. Evergreen trees and shrubs, such as the pine tree and holly bush, serve as a reminder that life only slumbers but does not perish in the coldest, darkest days of winter.

Image Credit: Duncan Hall

Pagan winter traditions, though, aren't all light and joy. If you think coal in a stocking would be a disappointment, just be thankful that you don't have to deal with Krampus.

Let me close by wishing all a happy holiday season, no matter what holiday you celebrate, and offer my hopes for peace on Earth and goodwill to all.

Image Credit: Seattle Atheists

We Have Sold The Future: The Uses of Future Hopes and Fears in Petroleum Industry Advertising

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 02:59:39 +0000

Image Credit: Shell

The future of Norman Bel Geddes' Futurama is optimistic. Clean architecture and efficient technology aid people as they move through the business of their day. As promised in a series of 1937 Shell advertisements in Life magazine using the words of Bel Geddes, the city of tomorrow will alleviate many commuting frustrations. Until that city emerges, however, the ads offer Shell gasoline as a way to save money and reduce wear and tear on car engines while stuck in stop-and-go traffic. This use of a hopeful future contrasts with the darker tomorrows that lurk behind many of today's petroleum advertisements, drawing attention to the double-edged sword of appeals to the future.

Image Credit: Shell

In the 1937 ads, the Shell Corporation promotes its product as a stopgap to deal with the failings of the present until the the arrival of a better future. The first ad quotes Bel Geddes promising that by 1960 stoplights will be a thing of the past, as cars use underpasses and express streets to reach their destinations. The second ad has Bel Geddes reassure us that "children won't play in the streets" and pedestrians will not impede the flow of traffic. A third ad shown below places Bel Geddes in profile next to a quote about pedestrians, express and local traffic all having their own paths.

Image Credit: Shell

Two ads contrast photographs of overcrowded and traffic-choked streets of the late 1930s with the clean, efficient cityscape sketches and models of Bel Geddes. In two of the ads, a third visual bridges the present and future: photos of smiling, happy motorists posed in their cars with Shell gasoline pumps in the background. The ad text spells out the argument: "The regular use of Super-Shell will cut the cost of your stop and go. There's a Shell dealer near you."

Image Credit: Chevron

That such hassle-free commutes failed to materialize is personally a source of disappointment (especially as I dodge vehicular traffic while walking to the bus stop each morning), but the failure of the future to live up to our highest hopes isn't terribly surprising. What does provide some measure of uncertainty, if not surprise, is the choice advertisers or any other rhetor has to make when using an appeal to the future: do we look forward with hope or trepidation? The Shell ads of 1937 presented the company's product as a bridge to a better future, but many oil ads today offer products as a bulwark against encroaching problems.

Image Credit: Chevron

The petroleum industry now wrestles with a future fraught with the threat of global climate change, industrial disasters and resource depletion, even as technological innovation also promises to open up new areas for resource extraction and create greater fuel efficiency. Chevron's website speaks to many of the issues the future brings when it comes to the petroleum industry: Energy Supply and Demand, Energy Policy, Energy Efficiency and Conservation, Emerging Energy, Environment, Climate Change, and others. The first Chevron image above acknowledges the consumer desire to "use less energy" and it promises that Chevron too will help governments and businesses to become more energy efficient. The ad does not explicitly state that people wish to use less energy to save money (let alone consider the idea that oil reserves will one day run out), and the ad uses a positive, can-do tone. Yet, the ad cannot avoid responding to troubles on the horizon.

A second Chevron image from its Supply and Demand web page acknowledges greater energy demands in the future, showing a picture of skyscrapers under construction that look much more like the buildings of today than the futurism of Bel Geddes in the Shell ads from 1937, reigning in optimism for a more realist and incremental outlook.

The kairos of the two eras influences the choices made by the ad creators—Art Deco's optimism vs. the pessimism of our millennial age. Below in a 2007 ad, Shell promises, "We invest today's profits in tomorrow's solutions," elaborating that "The challenge of the 21st century is to meet the growing need for energy in ways that are not only profitable but sustainable."

Image Credit: Shell

Even this nod to a potentially difficult future is couched in hopeful language befitting an ad promoting a company. Shell speaks of "tomorrow's solutions" and "challenges" not problems, though those problems lurk beneath the surface. Unlike the Shell of 1937 that looks to the forecasts of Bel Geddes futurism, the Shell of 2007 century takes on the task of describing and shaping the future. And, their future promises not utopian transformation but a kind of stasis, holding onto energy production that is at once sustainable, profitable, and able to meet the "growing need for energy." Another 70 years, and likely considerably less time, will tell whether such a prediction is any less utopian than a smooth rush hour commute.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of viz. blog, and are not the product of the Harry Ransom Center.

Image Database Review: NOAA Photo Library

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 02:05:11 +0000

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration traces its roots back to the oldest scientific agency in the United States: the Survey of the Coast established in 1807. Today's agency has a much broader purview, providing forecasts for the National Weather Service, maintaining orbiting satellites to monitor the Earth's climate, managing the nation's fisheries, and conducting scientific research. The database containing the photographic documentation of these varied activities provides the subject of this week's review.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The web interface for the NOAA Photo Library is presented to the user through a basic html webpage. The entry screen displays an Image of the Day. The NOAA Photo Library organizes some its holdings with a number of Collections. The Collections are linked in a frame to the left of the screen. The site also provides a simple search box that the user accesses through a link on a line of menu tabs that run below the "NOAA Photo Library" banner. The search function permits the user to input one or more terms, but it provides no advanced keyword searching, limiting or sorting functions. The search function is provided through Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce; Photo by Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Staff

The NOAA Photo Library contains many images related to oceanic and atmospheric research. Some of the Collections include "America's Coastlines," "Weather Service," "Fisheries," and "Coral Kingdom." There are also some interesting surprises among its holdings, including the "Treasures of the Library" collection which includes images from texts dating back to the 15th century relating to the study of the oceans and climate and a collection of historic prints on the "Histories and Methods of Fisheries" documenting American fisheries in the late 19th century.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

While the search function is limited, many of the photos have extensive "category" tags, and those tags can be used in the search to locate related images. Many of the Collections include sub-categories organized in albums, providing another means to navigate the extensive number of images that reside on the database.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

One valuable aspect of the NOAA collection and any collection of imagery authored by a federal agency is the lack of copyright attached to the works. According to section 105 of the Copyright Act, "Copyright protection...is not available for any work of the United States Government." Agencies often attach some limitations to the images they release. For example, NOAA suggests that their images should primarily be used for education purposes and require that their images be credited "to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce. Where a photographer is noted, please credit the photographer and his/her affiliated organization as well." Other agencies, such as NASA expressly prohibit using images in a way that suggests NASA commercially endorses a product or service. Outside of such requirements, however, images may be used freely.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Another strength of the Library is its inclusion of higher resolution images for many of the photos. In some cases, the original photos themselves were not high resolution images, so the higher resolution images provided on the website are of limited use, but for other images, such as photos of the historic book plates and more recent nature photography, the image quality is quite high.

Image Database Review: New York City Department of Records Online Image Gallery

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 15:49:22 +0000

Image Credit: Joseph Shelderfer

During November and December I'll be devoting some blog posts to reviews of image archives recently added to the viz. "Images" resource page. First up is the gallery from the New York City Department of Records released in April 2012. The archive "provides free and open research access to over 800,000 items digitized from the Municipal Archives’ collections, including photographs, maps, motion-pictures and audio recordings." It is from the research perspective that I approach this review. Alan Taylor, at The Atlantic's photography blog In Focus, included some highlights he found while browsing the archive (warning: images include evidence photography from homicide crime scenes). Browsing through the images is certainly a good way to spend some time (perhaps too much time), but the archive is also organized through a series of collections that can help the viewer sift through the nearly one million images from the Big Apple.

Image Credit: New York City Department of Records

Users access the archive through the LUNA interface, and can choose to either browse by collection or search by keyword. I'll discuss the search function after exploring the curated categories. LUNA provides embedding and linking function to help share the images users find in the archive. By signing up for an account, users can also use LUNA to create sideshow presentations. After clicking on the "Enter the Online Gallery" link, the user is presented with the LUNA interface. A sidebar on the left links to the collections, a center frame provides selected "featured" images, and a menu bar at the top of the interface links to the collections, sharing and presentation functions.

Image Credit: Jack Rosenzwieg

The collections provide a helpful point of entry into the vast database, though the collections themselves are many in number. The collections are drawn from a variety of sources: administrative departments within the city government (the Board of Education, Department of Parks and Recreation, Sanitation and Street Cleaning, etc.), political offices (various NYC mayors and Borough presidents), the District Attorney's office and Police Department. There is a collection for images from maps and atlases of the city. The archive also houses materials from the NYC Unit of the federal WPA Writers' Project.

Image Credit: New York City Department of Records

The collection names do give a general idea of their contents, but the collections hold many images that are not immediately connected to the originating office or program. For example, the political office collections unsurprisingly hold thousands of images of mayors speaking to the people of New York, glad-handing constituents and otherwise engaged in the activities of their office. But, they also include images related to larger political, cultural and historical context of the mayors' eras. For example, the LaGuardia collection includes some anti-German WWII propaganda, such as John Hawkins' photo of Dan Daniels sculpture of Hitler crushing screaming victims in his hand.

Image Credit: New York City Department of Records

Other surprises can be found in the Sanitation and Street cleaning collection, which, as you might expect, includes images related to sewers and garbage collection. However, its holdings include many older images, "contain[ing] ... 30,000 acetate (4x5), & some 8x10 glass & acetate negatives and 280 glass (5x7), and 360 lantern slides from its precursor agency the Department of Street Cleaning." Unfortunately most of these images are not available through the online interface, but those that are give a glimpse into the history of public works in New York City, such as this lantern slide of men working on a garbage barge circa the turn of the twentieth century.

Image Credit: New York City Department of Records

The collections also include a massive project undertaken in the 1980s by the Department of Finance. As described in the archive, the Department of Finance photographed every building and lot in the five NYC Boroughs for tax assessment purposes, updating photos previously taken in 1939 and 1940. These collections could help those interested in architecture, the development of the city over time, or just feeling nostalgic for 1980s movies filmed in New York.

Image Credit: New York City Department of Records

There are a couple of caveats when it comes to the research utility of the archive. First, the amount of metadata provided varies from image to image. The varying quality and quantity of metadata may be due in part to the diverse sources and range of historical eras from which the images come. It makes sense that records from, say, the New York Police Department in 1913 might be limited compared to those available from more recent sources. However, more recent sources do not always provide copious data with their images. The image of Mayor Giuliani from 13 December 1996 above, for instance, contains no information about the people surrounding the mayor or the subject of the event at which he speaks. Images with limited metadata can impede the usefulness of the search function.

Image Credit: Screenshot of LUNA zoom function

The second caveat is about the limited quality of many of the images. The Department of Records offers users the opportunity to purchase high quality prints or high quality digital images for publication purposes. Depending on the research purposes of a given user, lack of higher quality images may pose more or less of a limitation. The LUNA interface allows the user to zoom in on images, but as seen in the image above, when the image quality is low, the zoom is of limited use. Using the Giuliani example again, it is difficult to make out the faces of those standing behind the mayor.

These limits, however, should be balanced against the convenience of online access and the sheer number of artifacts available to the user.

Secret Ballot, Public Voting: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Persuasion of the "I Voted" Sticker

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:37:34 +0000

Image Credit: Kevin Lau

The image above of feline Lefty sporting an "I Voted" sticker is not, as some activists might worry, evidence of voter fraud. Rest assured, cats and other domestic animals are not posing as voters. Lefty's message is much less nefarious if vehement: "YES, I am talking to YOU! GO VOTE TODAY!" I already wore my "I Voted Early" sticker last week, thanks to the early voting available in Travis County, Texas. And I look forward to seeing fellow citizens from across the nation sporting "I Voted" stickers tomorrow regardless of their choices inside the voting booth.

Image Credit: missus manukenkun

The "I Voted" sticker offers a small but insistent and numerous reminder to fellow citizens to vote, and the stickers communicate pride in participating in the democratic process. When I wore the sticker into my class last week, I joked with my students about the sticker working to guilt them into voting. I doubt seeing the sticker does much more than remind an audience of the election and evoke whatever attitudes that audience associates with the voting, which for many is cynicism and indifference, especially for races at the federal level.

Image Credit: Tony Alter

I can't entirely disagree with that cynicism either (especially in a non-swing state), though I think it's still important to vote particularly for local races where one's vote has more influence, and I'm not alone in that decision going by those sporting "I Voted" stickers on Flickr (a selection of which is included below).

Image Credit: Tony Delgrosso

Image Credit: Tracy Apps

The Secretary of State Office in Washington State has even offered an e-sticker for your Facebook page.

Image Credit: Washington State Secretary of State

The "I Voted Early" sticker I wore here in Texas is somewhat larger than the "I Voted" stickers common in other regions. But, I have to express some envy at the huge "I Voted" stickers available to voters in Clark County, NV, such as Julie Vazquez shows off below.

Image Credit: Julie Vazquez

Selling Beer and Selling Democracy: American Bald Eagle Logos Today and Yesterday

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 16:13:37 +0000

Image Credit: Commission on Presidential Debates

Despite its vaguely governmental-sounding name, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a private, non-profit corporation funded by a handful of businesses, as described by George Farah. The Commission serves to accommodate the Republican and Democratic Parties' desire for a relatively controlled event—control which drove the League of Women Voters to withdraw from hosting the debates in 1987. One of the long-standing contributors to the Commission is the Anheuser-Busch corporation (owned since 2008 by the Brazilian and Belgian conglomerate InBev). While watching the debates, I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the eagle that hangs above the heads of the candidates and the Anheuser-Busch eagle, both of which draw on deeply set US political imagery.

Image Credit: Frank Peters

I'm not suggesting here that the debate eagle is some sort of subliminal advertising for Anhauser-Busch, though the correspondences are remarkable in terms of the eagle's posture. However, these correspondences are likely due more to the larger genre of American bald eagle imagery than an effort to associate the debates with one of America's most sold beers. In the debates the eagle serves as a sort of unofficial official seal when the presidential seal would be inappropriate (as both candidates are, supposedly, equally potential presidents even if one currently holds the office). Slate attempted to track down the origin of the eagle as used by the Commission, and while they located several historical precedents, the Commission gave Slate a rather ambiguous answer that the eagle is "an amalgam based on something they found in the Smithsonian Museum."

Image Credit: Cornell University Library

As Slate describes, the image of an eagle clutching a banner with the phrase "The Union and the Constitution Forever" can first be seen in a campaign handkerchief from the Garfield-Arthur campaign in 1880 and again in the above campaign handkerchief from the 1892 Harrison-Whitelaw campaign. Note the size differential in the juxtaposition of candidates and eagle. In the nineteenth century images, the candidates faces hold prominence over the smaller eagles, but in the twenty-first century debates, the eagle dwarfs the candidates as if to promote democratic ideals over the identities and politics of the individuals who fleetingly hold office against the background of an eternal Constitution.

Image Credit: Anheuser-Busch

Like the somewhat ambiguous origins of the debate eagle, the Anheuser-Busch logo has somewhat mysterious origins, as their website explains that "no record remains of the symbol’s original designer or its exact meaning." Anheuser-Busch makes the reasonable speculation that the A in the logo stands for Anheuser and that the eagle may bear some connection to the prominent eagle imagery in US visual rhetoric.

Image Credit: United States Government

As noted in the Slate article, the debate eagle looks away from the olive branches of peace and toward the arrows of war, whereas the eagle in official government seals and even the nineteenth century campaign materials looks toward the olive branches. The Anheuser-Busch eagle only clutches arrows in its claws, but it looks away from the arrowheads (perhaps nodding to the wisdom in refraining from the use of weapons while imbibing while still never letting said weapons out of reach). Both the beer and debate eagles stand on a shield similar to that found in the Great Seal of the United States (though in the Anheuser-Busch logo the top of the shield points at the viewer while in the debate and nineteenth century images the bottom of the shield points at the viewer). And both pose with wings spread as if swooping down from the sky to grab prey or alighting to stand watch—be it over the principles of democracy or of free enterprise.

Seeking a Universal Language of Symbols: The Noun Project's Crowd-sourced Creation of Icons for Communication Across Languages

Todd Battistelli — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 19:16:19 +0000

Image Credit: UNOCHA

How can you quickly communicate concrete concepts to an audience that includes speakers of many languages and those who can't read? The Noun Project sees an answer in symbols, and it offers a platform for people to submit icon designs that others can download and use. On its "About" page, the Noun Project describes itself as:

a platform empowering the community to build a global visual language that everyone can understand. Visual communication is incredibly powerful. Symbols have the ability to transcend cultural and language barriers and deliver concise information effortlessly and instantaneously. For the first time, this image-based system of communication is being combined with technology to create a social language that unites the world.

But do symbols "have the ability to transcend cultural and language barriers" as they suggest? In looking at the symbols on the site, I wonder whether these icons rely just as much on enculturation for understanding as any written language does. The benefits of speed of comprehension and intelligibility across languages and cultures seem to depend on a similar learning process to that any literate person goes through if, perhaps, abbreviated.

For instance, what does the icon at the top of this post, with several people standing in a V formation with a speech bubble coming out of the front-most person, represent? Take a guess and scroll down to the bottom of the post for the answer. That icon and the others I discuss here are drawn from a set submitted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. As The Noun Project says in its blog post introducing the set:

Symbols are some of the best communication tools we have to overcome many language and cultural barriers. When a disaster strikes, it is vital that the humanitarian community can gather reliable data on the locations and needs of affected people and who is best placed to assist them. This often involves the need to present complex information in a way that everyone can understand.

Image Credit: UNOCHA

There's an implicit tension in this blog post and in The Noun Project's overall mission that any effort to create universally understood symbols has to confront. The Project's "About" page talks of "transcend[ing] cultural and language barriers," but in describing the UNOCHA icons the Project discusses a narrower audience: "the humanitarian community." The humanitarian community is, of course, not a static and finite audience, as it continually changes as crises break out in different regions of the globe. However, there is more coherence within the "humanitarian community" as an audience than there is in an audience of any potential person who could come across a symbol, providing the opportunity for icons to be learned by that audience while people encountering the symbols for the first time would not have a similar opporunity.

Image Credit: UNOCHA

Even icons can't seem to get away from words entirely, as the symbol above designating a building associated with non-governmental organizations demonstrates. While English may be one of a few languages commonly used by many humanitarian organizations working with the UN, the promise of iconography is that it does not depend on knowing any one language to be understood. While professionals working within organizations may know English, it stands to reason that those working for local organizations with which the humanitarian groups are interacting may not. As seen in the screen shots below from the Wiktionary, the concept of an NGO is translated in a variety of ways, several not using the Latin alphabet.

Image Credit: Wiktionary screenshot

Image Credit: UNOCHA

Icons without letters do not necessarily communicate any more clearly to an undefined audience. Above we see a man, woman, and child holding hands standing in a house (at least a Western version of the house symbol: two walls with gable roof). The meaning of this symbol, according to the UNOCHA is "community building." I assume they mean a literal building (a structure) for community use (as opposed to the abstract concept of community building), because the Noun Project focuses on concrete concepts. Without the caption, I would think the icon represented something more along the lines of "family shelter" than "community building" because of the family image.

Image Credit: UNOCHA

The icon as a genre poses its own limitations. I'm not sure how I would represent "community," other than a dozen or more people of different ages, but a designer would be hard pressed to draw that many figures in a small building. These limitations, however, also result in some inventive use of visual design, especially in terms of conveying action. Above we see the icon for "forced recruitment," as one person pulls violently at another's arm who resists by leaning back and away from his assailant. The violence is conveyed through the use of a sharp-edged and angled bubble around the head of the person being conscripted, describing, it seems, the sharp movements associated with a struggle and/or the sudden shock of an assault.

Image Credit: UNOCHA

The nature of the violence in the "murder" and "assault" icons above is more difficult to interpret. The murder victim falls backward, their body presumably dead, but one could also be thrown backward by a non-fatal blow. Oddly, the icon for assault shows a persons standing straight up, not moving in any way, while the sharp-edged violence bubble stands at his/her side.

Given the need for audience participation in both learning to read the icons and creating icons that can be widely understood, the crowd-sourced nature of The Noun Project, such as seen in its iconathons and open submissions, seems vital to successfully designing symbols that are widely comprehended if not universal.

Concept for the first icon: "advocacy."

Children, Monsters and the Anticipation of Mayhem: Analyzing the Horror Photography of Joshua Hoffine (NSFW)

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:09:58 +0000

Image Credit: Joshua Hoffine

With Halloween on the horizon, I thought I'd take a break from the horror show of the campaign to consider some more visceral scares, and photographer Joshua Hoffine provides viscera aplenty in his works. The image above is one of Hoffine's tamer outings, though it is still disturbing. A small child stands outside before a clothes line hung with drying laundry. The sun shines behind a large white sheet, casting the shadow of a clown holding a bunch of balloons in one hand and displaying a set of menacing claws on the other. Hoffine uses children in many of his photos, contrasting the innocence and helplessness of childhood with the savage agency of monsters human and supernatural. Before we look at other photos, I suggest readers consider the images below the fold not safe for work or for those who prefer to avoid depictions of bodily violence and mutilation, death and decomposition, children in life threatening scenes, or children posed near their dead, violently murdered, parent's corpses.

Unlike many horror books and films where tension is built over time by hinting at or showing fleeting glimpses of the monster, the still photograph lacks a diachronic dimension. The image must choose one of three options: it can hint at some undepicted horror, depict some partial glimpse, or show it straight on. Hoffine's latest work, a dyptych of Jack The Ripper just before and after he kills and disembowels a woman, gestures toward a sense of elapsed time, but I don't find this work as affective as some of his other images. Readers can click through the links to see the pair, but I'm not including them here because I see such Ripper imagery as more exploitative than imaginative. I find the violence of the real world tragic and depressing and prefer the thrills and chills of zombies and ghouls. There is something about the bluntness of the evisceration that makes me read the image differently than other Hoffine works, akin to my distaste for the torture horror films of recent years contrasted with the still-horrific yet more pscyhologically-engaging-if-disturbing body horror in the style of Cronenberg, though this line of argument goes beyond the still images I want to consider in this post.

Image Credit: Joshua Hoffine

The first time you see Hoffine's more explicit images, the shock may be greater than his non-explicit works, but I find that they are not the works that stay most prominently in my memory. Sure, seeing a humanoid murderer wearing the stretched out skinned face of a mother, while her corpse lays on a table with her daughter coming around a corner in the background is shocking, but it lacks the anticipation offered in other works. And that anticipation, the waiting for the monster to act, helps embed the image in my mind, as if I'm continually expecting the action to complete itself, such as with the clown monster or the basement monster photo below.

Image Credit: Joshua Hoffine

The monster itself is quite explicit, lurking under the basement stairs, but it awaits the unsuspecting, pig-tailed little girl making her way toward its grasp, not yet confronting the terror that awaits her.

Image Credit: Joshua Hoffine

Hoffine also builds tension in some images of killers, though again, for me, with less effect. Above, we stand beyond a doorway looking into a kitchen. A young babysitter carries an infant, investigating a strange noise she heard just beyond the corner where we can see a maniacal killer waits with knife poised to strike. Below, we look through the keyhole of a door to discover the beheaded corpse of an ax murder victim, as the killer turns, ax in hand, to look back at us. For all three photos, the viewer's mind fills in what events next occur (or resists doing so), supplying a sense of impending doom that an explicit depiction of the moment of physical trauma alone (monster attack, knife attack, ax attack) would lack.

Image Credit: Joshua Hoffine

Un-imaged (and perhaps unimaginable) horror plays a central role in Hoffine's Pickman's Masterpice sequence. Hoffine explains the sequence in his behind-the-scenes blog (where he details the considerable work he, his crew and models go through). The sequence depicts a story by H.P. Lovecraft about an artist that paints realistic horrific images. In the sequence, we see the protagonist react to Pickman's masterpiece, but we do not see the painting itself, and again the viewer is left to fill in the blank.

Image Credit: Joshua Hoffine

Mitt Romney vs. Big Bird: When Enthymemes Attack

Todd Battistelli — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Image Source: Unknown

In last week's debate, one of the more memorable moments was Mitt Romney's vow to cut off government funding to public television despite his appreciation of both Big Bird and Jim Lehrer. Because he would neither raise taxes nor borrow money from China, Romney argued, he would cut programs like PBS. I suppose Romney intended the statement as a bit of red meat for his base—those who would rather their tax monies not go to PBS—and perhaps also for the putative independent/undecided voter who also distrusts such government spending. I also suppose that for such audiences the line worked. However, for other audiences, Romney's enthymeme provoked an outcry, because those audiences do not share the unstated premise in his argument that PBS does not merit continued funding. Sesame Street lovers (and Romney haters) across the web responded with a torrent of photoshopped images criticizing Romney's position.

Video Credit: PBS

Of all the PBS programming to attack (in addition to Lehrer's News Hour), Romney chose one of the most beloved children's television programs in the United States. Advocates have long grown used to defending public TV in the face of threats to cut government funding. In the video above, Fred Rogers defends PBS funding before a Senate committee considering cutting the budget for public broadcasting. The American Rhetoric website offers a transcript of his testimony, where Rogers wins the support of a Senator who was previously unfamiliar with Rogers' work.

Romney may not be familiar with the Rogers story, or he may not care. At any event, he felt confident enough to declare that Big Bird would feast no more from the giant bird feeder of government funds should he win the presidency. I suspect that if Big Bird could face down an Egyptian demon and assist a lost soul on his journey through the afterlife, Romney doesn't pose too great a challenge. And if Big Bird needs any help, he can find it in the wide-spread support being expressed on image boards and blogs.

Video Credit: Sesame Street

In the spirit of Sesame Street, I'm excluding images with graphic language or imagery, though they're out there if you want to search for them. The images cover a range of arguments, from supporting President Obama or criticizing Romney to supporting PBS, and they use a range of emotional tenors from good-hearted ribbing to sharp satire to anger and sadness.

Image Credit: John Aravosis

Much like Vice President Biden's summation of the first Obama term that bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive, the above image contrasts the different "aims" of the Obama and Romney campaigns, placing bin Laden and Big Bird behind bulls-eyes.

Image Credit: everyonedienow

Image Credit: leuqarraquel

Two Kanye West memes have been repurposed for this debate. In the first, his claim that George W. Bush doesn't care about black people has been replaced with Big Bird West saying that Romney doesn't care about Big Bird. In the second, Big Bird stands in the background as West pulls away the microphones from Willard Mitt "Taylor Swift" Romney, declaring "But Big Bird is one of the best birds of all time." (I have to admit that West's more proactive moderating style might have helped the debate stay on track better than Lehrer's tepid interjections.)

Image Source: LabCoder

Other images use Sesame Street common places. In one, Big Bird informs the viewer that today is brought to us by the letter U for unemployed. In another, using a frame from an episode, he sits sadly with two children on a Sesame Street stoop holding a sign reading "Will work for food."

Image Source: johnnyhuckleberry

Image Source: cinemascapes08

The real urban streets too provide source images with Occupy Wallstreet protesters replaced with muppets from the TV show. The #occupysesamestreet meme does predate Romney's Big Bird moment, but the images seem even more relevant now.

Image Source: Unknown

Familiar Obama campaign imagery serves as the basis for others, with Big Bird appearing in Shepard Fairey's famous "Hope" poster, standing next to the red, white and blue sunrise symbol, or picking up on the campaign's "We've Got Your Back" ad.

Image Credit: Unknown

Image Credit: davonemadisonjackson

Image Credit: perpetualfrizz

The Visual Rhetoric of Space: Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism in Astronomical Imagery

Todd Battistelli — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: NASA

With the recent passing of Neil Armstrong, the decommissioning of the space shuttles, and the release of the latest "deep field" image from the Hubble Space Telescope, the rhetoric of space imagery has been on my mind. Except for the occasional "why waste money on this?" argument, astronomical images find wide appreciation, appreciation which I certainly share. However, I also see a certain risk in the arguments made using space imagery that can be lost amidst the optimism and wonder.

The truism of an image speaking a thousand words falters before a photo like the one above where the immensity of space threatens to swallow all words. The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field is a compilation of observations of a small section of sky. As science writer Phil Plait says, even in such a small section, the telescope captures over 5000 galaxies, each with billions of stars.

The human mind cannot begin to understand such size and scope. Plait admits, "We humans, our planet, our Sun, our galaxy, are so small as to be impossible to describe on this sort of scale," yet he insists, "that's a good perspective to have." He goes on:

...we figured this out. Our curiosity led us to build bigger and better telescopes, to design computers and mathematics to analyze the images from those devices, and to better understand the Universe we live in.
And it all started with simply looking up. Always look up, every chance you get. There’s a whole Universe out there waiting to be explored.

Images somewhat closer to home more easily inspire human-scale arguments. Some see in the view of Earth from space an argument for human unity and concern for our environment, and these are common views from those who have made the trip into orbit. Such images first came to prominence during the Apollo missions, especially with "Earthrise" taken by William Anders during Apollo 8's mission to orbit the Moon.

Image Credit: NASA, William Anders

The image shows a small but vibrantly blue and white Earth set against the blackness of space and rising above the gray, rocky surface of the Moon's horizon in the foreground. Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8, remarked:

When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people. (quoted in Denis Cosgrove's Geographical Imagination and the Authority of Images p. 22)

Image Credit: NASA

The "Blue Marble" and "Blue Marble 2012" offer closer perspectives of Earth's land, sea, and air unmarked by the political divisions of national borders.

Image Credit: NASA

Seeing these images, I find the unifying argument of an astronomical perspective enticing but also risky. If humans ever move out into space in any number, I think it likely that we'll take the full range of our social baggage with us, the values and ideas that inspire both justice and injustice. The risk lies in the tendency for factional interests to disguise themselves as universals. "The people of Earth" as a concept works well in the abstract, but it can obscure the contradictions that abound within that identification. Take, for example, the plaque left on the base of Apollo 11's lander.

Image Credit: NASA

The plaque bears the signatures of the three mission astronauts: Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin. It also bears the signature of then-president Richard Nixon. (Sometimes I wonder if, in our distant future, some civilization, which has the ability to translate written English but lacks historical knowledge, might, in its exploration of the Moon, conclude that Nixon was among the first people to make the quarter million mile journey.)

The plaque speaks to American audiences and audiences the American government wished to address, though it gestures toward a global ethos by including images of the eastern and western hemispheres. The text reads, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." That stated intention of peace contrasts with the geopolitical exigencies of the Cold War that drove the space program. During this peaceful mission, when Nixon spoke to astronauts on the moon from the Oval Office, he was also ordering the bombing of Cambodia and oversaw other campaigns in the Vietnam War – itself another event tied to the Cold War. I don't mean to suggest that the Apollo program was not peaceful in itself, but it existed within a complex set of relationships between war and peace and between the peoples of the Earth that an overly optimistic perspective can obscure.

Perhaps unity, then, may not be the best argument to construct from the visual products of our space explorations. Or, at least, not unqualified and decontextualized arguments for unity. A contextualized argument can be found somewhere between the unthinkably vast scope of the deep field image and the almost familiar views of Earth from orbit.

Image Credit: NASA

The Voyager 1 probe took this "Pale Blue Dot" image of our homeworld when it was some 3.5+ billion miles from Earth in 1990. Earth appears as a barely noticeable point (0.12 pixels according to Wikipedia) in the right-most bar of sunlight set against the void. Carl Sagan had asked NASA to take the photo. In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan offered an argument that speaks to a hopeful future while it also acknowledges tragedies past and present and the considerable challenges we face even with the suasive potential of astronomical images:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Of Ponies and Patriarchy

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 19:44:59 +0000

Image Credit: Center for Inquiry's Women in Secularism 2 Conference Website

Controversies over sexism have recently embroiled the online and in-real-life spaces of the gaming, fandom, and atheist communities. The sexist behavior that has sparked controversy and the backlash facing those speaking out against harassment are too hateful and ugly to discuss at any length here. I'll link to two examples with trigger warnings for threats of sexual violence: Rebecca Watson and Anita Sarkeesian. The controversy in the organized atheist community, however, has also seen an act of resistance and some levity in the face of abject misogyny by repurposing a visual trope well known to the community.

Since the early 2000s, the "new atheism" has attained prominence in the wake of outspoken and sometimes polemical writings. The most prominent of these writers are known as the Four Horsemen of New Atheism: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.

Image Credit: Paul O'Flaherty

The Four Horsemen name alludes to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, and it attempts to play off religious beliefs that the atheists criticize and evoke the emotional fervor that all sides invest in religious debate. Images like the one above cast the four authors in an arrangement that speaks to a serious, knowing demeanor, but it also evokes a somewhat forbidding feeling as well with their faces partially obscured in shadow. The fact that all four atheists are horsemen hints at the trouble with sexism in the organized atheist community. (The presence of all-white horsemen also speaks to atheism's trouble with racial diversity, but that's an issue for another time.)

Despite the role of women in the history of freethought, as documented by Annie Laurie Gaylor, and the presence of women writers and activists working today, women remain marginalized at various levels of organized atheism. Attendance at conferences often has a gender imbalance, and the leadership of some advocacy groups resist engaging with criticisms about sexism in the community.

The visual markers of patriarchy in the atheist community are not clear to those unaware of the operation of male privilege, though a critical appraisal raises red flags. For example, artist Saejin Oh published the drawing below of famous atheists who had influenced his thinking.

Image Credit: Saejin Oh

The atheists stand on a rocky rise against a threatening sky in confident poses befitting superheroes in a panel of a comic book. They are exclusively men. Those commenting on his work remarked on the absence of women, to which he replied, "I couldn't think of one that influenced me as a person of reason, unfortunately." At the time, Jen McCreight, a prominent blogger and advocate for feminism in the atheist community, remarked that she found his explanation "sad," suggesting that this was yet another example of gender imbalance in atheism.

Image Credit: Unknown Author

Other images ostensibly serving an epidiectic function of building atheist community demonstrate similar sex biases. Both the images above and below circulated in the popular atheism subreddit. Each carries the text message "Fear not hell, for if it exists, you will find yourself in good company" embedded over or around the faces of famous people who are also atheists. While these collages do contain some women, the imbalance is still noticeable, and these images are only a small part of much larger problems in the community.

Image Credit: joebbowers

The backlash facing those standing up against sexism has been brutal. Jen McCreight recently suspended her blog due to stress from online harassment. Pteryxx, commenting on a blog entry about sexism in atheism, jokingly suggested that "Perhaps we now have our Four Horsewomen of the Feminist Apocalypse," referring to four prominent women bloggers. The commenter immediately after asked, "Is it terrible if I envision them riding out on My Little Ponies?" Soon, another commenter names embertine sketched out that vision.

Image Credit: embertine

More than four bloggers were eventually immortalized on ponies at Jason Thibeault's blog. In all the images, the bloggers bear weapons befitting an apocalyptic rider: whip, sword, daggers, mace and more. Oddly enough, in the first four images, the expressions of the riders contrast markedly with the expressions of the ponies. The riders' faces seem happy, while the ponies show grim determination and displeasure. These pictures hardly make up for the indignities the bloggers and other women in the community have faced, but they begin to push back on the sex imbalance in atheist visual rhetoric.

Reading Religious Monuments

Todd Battistelli — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:07:05 +0000

Image Credit: Department of Veterans Affairs

The religious meaning associated with the above symbol seems hard to miss. Different denominations may favor different variations, but the Latin cross is inextricably associated with Christianity. Yet, in the context of legal arguments over the separation of church and state, some suggest that the cross conveys a meaning other than an identification with the Christian religion. Oddly enough, these arguments for a non-Christian Christian cross often come from those deeply invested in preserving the presence of crosses and other ostensibly religious symbols on government property.

Image Credit: Joe Crawford

Since 1954, the Mount Soledad Easter Cross, the original name of the monument pictured above, has looked out over San Diego. Since 1989, litigants have participated in a decades-long struggle to challenge or defend the structure on state-church separation grounds. Generally speaking, government can neither inhibit nor support religion, such as by providing a city park as a site for a permanent religious display and worship. However, the question of where to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional religious displays has proven difficult both to resolve and to discuss in a productive matter.

In the Mt. Soledad case, for instance, the site had been used for Easter worship services. Once litigants filed a complaint that the religious symbol should not sit on government property, defenders of the cross' position redefined it a veterans' memorial instead of a worship site. The courts were not persuaded by this redefinition, ruling against its continued presence. At that point, defenders worked with the city to sell the land immediately surrounding the cross to a non-governmental third party in an attempt to get around state-church separation concerns.

A less prominent, more remote cross that sat on government-owned land in the middle of the desolate yet stunning Mojave desert has faced similar legal challenges and received similar support from those who try to re-define an iconic image to mean something other than its iconic meaning.

Image Credit: AP Photo/The Press-Enterprise, Carlos Puma

Unlike the Mt. Soledad cross, the Mojave cross was originally created as a war memorial in 1934, not as a worship site. The Mojave cross sat on a wild rocky rise, unlike the well groomed park at the top of Mt. Soledad, though both look out from prominent positions. The more primitive construction of the Mojave cross and its more remote location seem to enhance its iconic imagery (regardless of what meaning one reads into the icon), standing as a lone symbolic structure in nature, as opposed to the Mt. Soledad cross that stands a few minutes travel from the hustle and bustle of San Diego.

Image Credit: Stan Shebs

The early legal challenges to the Mojave cross resulted in it being encased in a plywood box. As with the Mt. Soledad case, a land-transfer was made to move the Mojave cross off government property. Litigants challenged the transfer, but the Supreme Court ruled that it was an acceptable solution to the state-church issues and sent the case back to a lower court to rule. Soon after, the cross was stolen.

Image Credit: Ken Lund

The Mojave case raises difficult questions about the meaning of symbols in a diverse society. Those who objected to the cross, saw the cross as exclusionary. For example, the Freedom From Religion Foundation said, “Sectarian symbols such as the Latin cross sanctioned by government as war memorials neglect the sacrifices of our non-Christian and non-believing veterans.” Some of those defending the cross denied the religious meaning of the cross, such as American Legion representative Mark Seavey who said, “The cross is emblematic of sacrifice, not religion.”

The Supreme Court justices were also divided on this question of whether a symbol that has religious meaning can serve as a symbol of sacrifice for all regardless of their religious beliefs.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, argued:

But a Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, noble contributions, and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this Nation and its people. Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.

Kennedy, unlike Seavey, does not dismiss the cross's religious meaning. Instead, he suggests that a meaning of sacrifice overrides the religious meaning at least for constitutional purposes. Writing in his dissent, Justice Stevens says:

I cannot agree that a bare cross such as this conveys a nonsectarian meaning simply because crosses are often used to commemorate "heroic acts, noble contributions, and patient striving" and to honor fallen soldiers. The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith.

Image Credit: Marco Chiesa

Justice Kennedy invokes images of European cemeteries from World Wars I and II, and the cumulative effect is a moving reminder of sacrifice. Though, as Justice Stevens suggests later in his dissent, remembrance does not depend on the symbols being crosses, and, indeed, crosses were not the exclusive symbol used to mark grave sites. In the above picture one Star of David marker is visible among a multitude of crosses. Nevertheless, given the normative value of Christianity for American identity in those historical eras, it isn't surprising to see nearly all graves in a given view marked with crosses.

Image Credit: Prashanth Raghavan

Unlike the cross-shaped markers in the European cemeteries that Justice Kennedy mentions in his opinion, markers provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs in the US indicate religious preference in a different way. The upright headstones or flat markers all share the same shape, though next of kin can elect to have an “emblem of belief” engraved onto the face of the stone.

Image Credit: Department of Veterans Affairs

There has been some controversy in getting the VA to accept certain symbols, but the Department currently hears applications for new emblems of belief in addition to the fifty-plus emblems already approved. In most photos, the dominant emblem remains the Christian cross, yet a wide range of other emblems bear witness to the diverse worldviews of veterans, ranging from atheism to Wicca.

Image Credit: John Hamer

Blogger John Hamer remarks on the wealth of diverse religious identifications he saw while at Arlington and Fort Leavenworth National Cemeteries. The cumulative effect of row upon row of markers that look similar from a distance yet reveal individual differences upon closer examination conveys Kennedy's message of remembrance while also evoking the American principle of e pluribus unum that a lone, large cross does not convey.

The Funny Faces of Politics: No Photoshop Required

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Reuters

As we’re in the middle of another presidential campaign, I thought I’d devote my inaugural viz. post to an aspect of visual political rhetoric: photos capturing politicians with odd facial expression or in odd poses. One of the better known examples of this phenomenon is the above photo of John McCain from the last debate in the 2008 presidential campaign. In the still image, McCain stands behind Barack Obama, seeming to lurch after him while disrespectfully sticking out his tongue and reaching out with his hands. I want to stress “seeming,” though, because viewing McCain’s movement in context offers an alternative explanation.

Video Credit: C-SPAN

McCain’s seemingly undignified lurch occurred at the end of the debate, as he, Obama and moderator Bob Schieffer stood up from the table to shake hands. As seen in C-SPAN’s video (starting at 1:29:42), McCain is uncertain of which direction to round the table. In his hesitation, he makes a funny, self-deprecating gesture to make light of his momentary confusion. Not being the most graceful person myself, I can imagine doing something similar were I in McCain’s position. Yet the lurching image soon proliferated on the web, casting McCain as a creepy, out-of-touch old man.

Photojournalists do take a great number of pictures, so their capturing the occasional odd look isn’t unexpected. What I find curious, however, is the editorial decision that goes into releasing still photos of odd expressions when other, more decorous photos are available. As with many aspects of visual culture, there’s a tumblr that collects these funny faces titled Stupid Faces of Politics, which bills itself as “a non-partisan collection of amusing faces made by politicians, both past and present.”

Image Credit: Stupid Faces of Politics

Looking through the images, you could make the argument that photojournalists capture politicians as human beings, including all their foibles, though a still photo out of context can be used to vilify as much as humanize, as the McCain example suggests. The images could also serve the function of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. The viewing public can enjoy a good chuckle at people in positions of power. Editorial policy, however, is tangential to my interests here.

More relevant to visual rhetorical analysis are questions about the use of these images and what those uses say about the production and reading of persuasive texts. My students sometimes run into trouble when they cite a source without understanding its context, but ignorance doesn’t seem to play a role in the operation (or manipulation) of context when it comes to these photos. The context of these photos is widely understood: weird expressions cross everyone’s face for fractions of a second, and sometimes they get recorded for posterity. Yet, they are not dismissed as “bad” photos. On the contrary, they serve as a important resource for rhetorical invention.

Image credit: Laura Clawson

When they appear on partisan blogs, these images are used not only for humor but also to support larger narratives about politicians and their parties. The above photo can be read as Mitt Romney desperately attempting to engage his empathy circuits, as blogger Laura Clawson suggests. Or below, President Obama seems to sport a patrician and elitist mug that looks down on common people, which is the narrative blogger Nice Deb invokes.

Image Credit: Nice Deb

In an age of photoshopping, what are the different suasive functions that these “authentic” images perform in contrast with, say, an image of Joe Biden manipulated to put a colorful lollipop in his hand and an exaggerated tongue extruding from his mouth? Do the ostensibly documentary origins of non-manipulated photos enhance their appeal?

Image Credit: Stogie

At a step removed from the bloggers who use these photos to construct arguments, I also wonder about which photos get released by which sources. Might they reveal some subtle argumentative strategy? Does the White House under Obama, for instance, release more odd photos of John Boehner than the Bush White House did of Harry Reid? This might not be the best example, though, as Boehner seems to be rather more susceptible to awkward photos than other politicians (saving perhaps Joe Biden, as photos like the one below attest).

Image credit: 500 Still Frames of Joe Biden Eating a Sandwich