viz.

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: We Shall Never Forget 9/11)

It didn’t take long for a media storm to emerge around Really Big Coloring Books new title We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids' Book of Freedom. It was quickly and roundly criticized for its heavy-handed portrayal of Muslims. In the face of these criticisms Wayne Bell, the publisher at Really Big Coloring Books, has steadfastly argued that the book only shows the truth of what happened. It’s fairly clear though that the book slips easily into the popular narrative of freedom-hating-Muslims attacking freedom-loving-Americans because they hate our freedom. We Shall Never Forget isn’t an especially smart piece of propaganda, though. The play between the large amount of text and the inconsistent images make it hard to pin down how, exactly, its message is delivered.

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

Megan's and Cate's recent posts have highlighted multiple visual representations of the current crisis in Japan.  Concurrently, there's a lot of talk these days about the future of nuclear power in the U.S.--what we should do about our existing nuclear power plants, whether nuclear energy is the way to go, what we might do in the face of a nuclear catastrophe. These issues have been rather dormant in recent years. However, as we look ahead in considering our options, it's also worth looking back at the rhetoric that made us somewhat comfortable with nuclear power.

(Public Domain Image found at Wikimedia Commons)

I came across this Russian anti-abortion poster from 1925, and thought it was pretty striking.  The text translates to:  "Abortions performed by either trained or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death."  It shows a woman talking with a midwife, then a woman in a hospital, and then a coffin being lowered into a grave with mourners looking on.  What struck me about the image is that the argument is essentially that abortions are bad because they endanger the lives of the women who get them.  The pathetic appeal depends on the viewer's sense of identification with the woman. 

Image Credit: screenshot from Target Austin, via TAMI 

H/T: Dr. Randi Cox, Stephen F. Austin State

Recently I attended the Cold War Cultures conference here at UT and had the pleasure of attending several especially provocative panels. Of particular interest was a talk by Stephen F. Austin State’s Dr. Randi Cox’s on Target Austin, a 1960 PSA film that localizes the threat of nuclear war by imagining an attack on the Texas capital.

Image Credit: Joe Wirtheim

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I have always had a soft spot for "victory gardens" and mid-century propaganda. It may be a result of the countless times I watched Bugs Bunny steal carrots from the Saturday-morning victory gardens of my childhood (how many of us were introduced to serious political concepts like shortage, rationing and military conscription through the Flatbush intonation of Mel Blanc?). It may have been the vintage singns and posters ("Loose Lips Might Sink Ships") hanging on the wallls of the local burger joint that was a favorite haunt of my grandfather. Whatever the reason, my eye is always drawn to the bold fonts, severe angles and jingoistic slogans of WWII era posters, particularly those aimed at action on the home front. This week, while trolling for vintage design and espirit d'corps, I came across "The Victory Garden of Tommorrow," Joe Wirtheim's modern day art/propaganda campaign that repurposes and reinvents the genre. More on Wirtheim's project, refurbished propaganda and mobilizing the population after the break.

Tim Turner has posted a new pedagogical article, “Visual Rhetoric and Propaganda,” in viz.’s assignments section. The article explains why rhetoric instructors should teach their students about the methods of propagandists, and outlines a course unit based on the topic. In the article, he argues that conversations about the use of visuals in propaganda

are useful because they illuminate for students a range of rhetorical possibilities, including the fact that “bad” arguments can be quite influential and that modes of persuasion cannot (and should not) be divorced from ethical considerations. From this perspective, discussions of propaganda may also be useful in that they help illuminate discussions of the fallacies of argument (in which case, “bad” is taken to mean specious, illogical, or poorly reasoned). But discussions of propaganda may also lead to discussions of the ethical dimensions of persuasion (in which case “bad” is taken to mean ethically or morally suspect).

By Tim Turner (Contact)
See also Visual Rhetoric and Violence

Contemporary introductory rhetoric classes are often (understandably) ordered around the exploration and promotion of the "common ground" model of civic discourse. Students are encouraged to look for continutities among various perspectives in order to demonstrate that they understand and can synthesize various points-of-view. Furthermore, students are encouraged in such pursuits with a particular purpose in mind: so that they might, as a kind of capstone project for any given course, produce well-written, well-reasoned arguments of their own--including fair prolepses demonstrating that they can respect the arguments of their opponents. While in a partisan society this model is both desirable and healthy, it may sometimes foster either a tendency to overlook forms and methods of persuasion that eschew such approaches altogether, or privilege the "civic/civil" discourse surrounding public controversies while ignoring other, perhaps more pervasive forms of rhetoric, such as advertising, "spin," or propaganda.

It may, however, be useful to incorporate or implement focused units around these culturally central phenomena that are sometimes marginalized in classroom discussions of rhetoric. In exploring and emphasizing these questions, it may be especially useful to incorporate units on propaganda. These units may include some classical rhetorical theory (Kenneth Burke, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle"), a historical discussion of the use of propaganda in the West in the 20th century (although its history, of course, is much older than that), film screenings of recent documentaries like Control Room or Outfoxed, and formal and informal writing assignments about examples of propaganda. Additionally, units organized to explore the use of propaganda also have the advantage of helping introduce the concepts and vocabulary of visual rhetoric into classroom discussions.

Such conversations are useful because they illuminate for students a range of rhetorical possibilities, including the fact that "bad" arguments can be quite influential and that modes of persuasion cannot (and should not) be divorced from ethical considerations. From this perspective, discussions of propaganda may also be useful in that they help illuminate discussions of the fallacies of argument (in which case, "bad" is taken to mean specious, illogical, or poorly reasoned). But discussions of propaganda may also lead to discussions of the ethical dimensions of persuasion (in which case "bad" is taken to mean ethically or morally suspect).

A unit on propaganda might have the following structure:

• Week 1: Read and discuss Burke's "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle." Accompanying assignment: study questions on the article
• Week 2: Read selections from Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (Pratkanis and Aronson, 2001)
• Week 3: Readings from the course rhetoric textbook on visual rhetoric and fallacies of argument. View and discuss in class selected historical examples of poster propaganda from WWII and beyond (click here for a PowerPoint slide show of some examples). Accompanying assignment: short paper or blog entry, rhetorical analysis of one example of a propaganda poster
• Week 4: Film screening and discussion; possibilities might include Control Room, Outfoxed, Farenheit 9/11
• Week 5: Peer review and long papers due for an extended rhetorical analysis of examples of propaganda (click here for a "compare-and-contrast" example involving the propaganda remix project)

A note about sensitivity issues: many of the historical examples of propaganda in the attached slide show include images of an offensive nature. It is extremely important to foreground their presentation with a careful discussion of the context of these images, as well as disclaimers about offensiveness and, of course, non-endorsement. At the same time, the presentation of such images is in a way precisely the point of such a presentation; however specious, these examples are modes of persuasion that were influential in their way. The point of approaching conversations about rhetoric from the margins, as this discussion of propaganda allows, it to confront the non-civil modes of persuasion that are sometimes employed in ideological contests. Part of what this approach to rhetoric assumes is that such modes of persuasion cannot and should not be ignored. As Burke puts it in his essay on Hitler's Mein Kampf,

Here is the testament of a man who has swung a great people into his wake. Let us watch it carefully; and let us watch it . . . to discover what kind of 'medicine' this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America (191).

Further resources on the web:

• Wikipedia entry on propaganda
• Propaganda Critic
• German Propaganda Archive
• World War II Propaganda, Cartoons, Film, Music, and Art
• WWII Poster Collection
• The Propaganda Remix Project

I remember when I used to live in Portland in the late 90s, and I would see these stickers of Andre the Giant in all the bus stops. I never knew what they meant, but I liked them well enough to peel one off a bus stop wall and stick it on my bike.

Dove expertly uses visual rhetoric to combat the insidious forces of ... visual rhetoric.