viz. - Humor

“Rueful Reluctance:” An Unwitting Cat Owner’s Search for Meaning Among Memes

james.wiedner — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 03:12:19 +0000

Image Credit: "Nyan Cat-Pop Tart Cat," by Chris Torres

Last week, my neighbor stopped by to tell me that he was moving, and that pets were not allowed at his new residence. With all due histrionics, he lamented the fact that he was going to take her to the shelter, and that “unless anybody here wants to adopt her, [insert overly dramatic sigh] I guess she’ll probably be put down.”

My manipulative neighbor was playing me like a fiddle. He knew I had a soft spot for that cat; hell, I was the one to feed her on multiple occasions when her deadbeat dad couldn't be bothered to do so. The cat liked me, too. Whenever she’d enter my apartment, she’d survey her surroundings and then proceed to scratch the side of my couch like it was her job. I’d tell her to knock it off, and she would, but not without looking at me with what I swear was a bit of amusement.

When I realized that Violet had already moved my (generally) rational thinking into the land of the Pathetic Fallacy, I tried to take solace in the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one. And while I can’t fathom ever creating cat memes myself, it would be foolish to underestimate the power that felines have had over the human photographer since there were photos to take. Aside from the comedic or cuteness factors, publishing cat memes has always been a lucrative endeavor.

Around 1900, author Osgood Grover sold millions of books, one of which was 1911’s “Kittens and Cats: A Book of Tales (hyperlink below)” The image below is just one example of the many pictures of costumed cats. Many of these pictures are even replete with “quotes” of the internal monologue of the pictured cat, just as we see in the typical meme of the digital age.

Image Credit: Dan Bloom http://dailymail.co.uk

Over 100 years later, cat books are still where the money is at. In his New York Times Op-Talk interview last month (“Confessions of A Cat Guy”), author and illustrator Peter Catapano described what is known in the publishing industry as “going cat book.” Catapano says that brilliant authors that tire of having brilliant books overlooked can get rich from publishing an identical book, except with pictures of cats throughout it, “because people will buy literally anything with a cat on it.”

So, it would appear as the cat meme was here decades before us, and there’s no reason to think that they won’t be as popular as ever after we all shuffle off this mortal coil, perhaps it’s time to do away with what Catapano calls the “rueful resignation” that accompanies “becom[ing] the sort of person you had always ridiculed- in this case, a Cat Guy?” it seems high time that even those who don’t count themselves among the “Cat People” finally accept- and even learn from- what these cats and their people are trying to tell us.

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

Panem et Circenses: The Hunger Games and Kony2012

David A. Harper — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:31:21 +0000

Image Credit: BookDrum.com

I suspect I was one of very few people thinking of the First Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, as I watched The Hunger Games with my family last weekend. In particular, I was recalling how Shaftesbury lamented in 1711 that the English theater had come to resemble the “popular circus or bear-garden.”

It is no wonder we hear such applause resounded on the victories of Almanzor, when the same parties had possibly no later than the day before bestowed their applause as freely on the victorious butcher, the hero of another stage, where amid various frays, bestial and human blood, promiscuous wounds and slaughter, [both sexes] are… pleased spectators, and sometimes not spectators only, but actors in the gladiatorian parts.[1]

I found myself watching The Hunger Games at the urgent behest of my eldest daughter, a staunch tween member of “Team Peeta.” Before the movie, we had made a bargain that I would read the entire Hunger Games series and take her to the film if she would read Golding’s Lord of the Flies. It seemed like a good deal at the time. While The Hunger Games movie didn’t put her in mind of Shaftesbury, she did direct me to the image below:

Image Credit: iFunny.mobi

Like the best jokes, this one works on several levels. Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games series, makes the Roman “bread and circuses” connection explicit in the third novel when Katniss is informed that “in the Capitol, all they’ve known is Panem et Circenses.”[2] Indeed, “Panem” is the name of the fictional nation that uses the annual Hunger Games as a strategy of control. My initial assessment after reading the series was that Shirley Jackson’s famous 1948 short story “The Lottery” had mated with Stephen King’s prescient 1982 sci-fi novel The Running Man and produced dubious offspring. But I left the movie musing that it is somehow too easy to assess The Hunger Games as a commentary on a culture obsessed with cheap, voyeuristic reality TV. In a way the books never could, the movie takes advantage of the social and visual experience of going to the movies to breathe new life into the “bread and circuses” paradigm.

In an article for Huffington Post, Greg Garrett noted that The Hunger Game’s dystopia evokes both 1930’s Depression-era America and the Roman “bread and circuses” tradition. Garrett writes, “So long as we are distracted… we may forget for a moment about our own lives, our own hunger. We may forget that we live in a nation that is less free than it was a decade ago, a nation with fewer societal safety nets, a nation with fewer opportunities for young people.”[3] Well said. But let’s face it; the majority of Americans have never known anything more than metaphorical hunger. Turning our gaze toward our own very real problems is a start, but only a start. To do only that is to become a Panem Capitol dweller who realizes she lacks freedom. Breaking free of the thralldom imposed by our own enticing bread and circuses requires we turn our gaze outward and recognize responsibilities extending beyond the borders of self, town, state, or nation.

The theater where my family viewed The Hunger Games was a trendy one that serves meals during the show. While we waited for our group to be seated, the people in front of us consumed two pitchers of the theater’s own microbrew. Once inside, we were treated to a menu mimicking foods found in the books. No, not squirrel, berries, or any other survival food found in the impoverished districts or the arena. This was high-end Capitol fare, like lamb stew with plumbs and some purple melon wrapped in prosciutto. In typical American fashion, the portions were huge. All told, my family probably spent over $100.00 to sit in stadium seats watching a decadent society watch starving children kill each other for sport.

Image Credit: People.com

That purple prosciutto melon was a tip off to what sets The Hunger Games phenomenon apart. It casts the movie audience in the role of Panem Capitol dwellers watching the games. The effect is emphasized by how rarely the movie shows Capitol citizens reacting to the action in the arena. Instead, we stand in for that audience, watching the carnage directly or through the mediation of the charismatic game show host, Caesar. The outlandish Capitol fashion (think Eighteenth-century meets Lady Gaga) may be meant to distance these people from us, even dehumanize them, but as the movie rolls on we become them.

Shaftesbury recognized that the difference between being a “spectator” or an “actor” is perhaps only one of degree. The Hunger Games has us watch colonial children kill one another while we participate in our own consumer culture of excess. God forbid you were out refilling your eight-dollar popcorn tub and missed Thresh bashing little Clove’s head in against a giant metal cornucopia.

Image Credit: Netroots Foundation

The tricky thing about a movie about bread and circuses is that it can become simply another circus, particularly if the audience remains unaware of their complicity. What are we forgetting – what are we being distracted from – by this particular circus and by the more ubiquitous barrage of media white noise? I couldn’t help but reflect that only about a week prior to the release of The Hunger Games the viral social media campaign “Kony2012” had filled our feeds and prompted anxious articles in The Atlantic,[4] The New York Times,[5] ForiegnPolicy.com,[6] and in other mainstream media outlets. The rapidity with which critiques of Kony2012 surfaced revealed a deep mistrust for new social-media fueled activism, as well hinting at even less savory reasons for lashing out at the video.

For a moment, Kony2012 brought our attention to the plight of child soldiers, real starving children who kill one another. Of particular impact is the moment nine minutes into the film, where the filmmaker attempts to explain Joseph Kony to his own five-year old son. The moment has power precisely because, in order to expose the exploitation of children, the filmmaker exploits his own son. It is uncomfortable, but it is meant to be. When we watch fictional children fight in the Hunger Games arena, however, we are partaking in an entertaining diversion, both within the framework of the fiction that makes us a Capitol citizen, and in our role as real consumers of media. A little more discomfort might be in order.

Shaftesbury wasn’t arguing for the abolishment of the theater in 1711, no more than I am denying the value of entertainment. I study Renaissance and Eighteenth-century literature for most of my day, so for me to take such a stance would be absurd. But I do think we should reflect upon what it means to be identified not with the rebellious underdogs of District 11, but with the effete, privileged citizens of the Capitol who move from one distraction to the next as children kill each other and the temperature rises.

Works Cited

[1] Anthony Ashley Cooper. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Edited by Lawrence E. Klein. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 447.

[2] Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay. (New York: Scholastic, 2010), 223.

[3] Greg Garrett, "The Hunger Games: Why It Matters"

[4] Max Fisher, "The Soft Bigotry of Kony 2012"

[5] Josh Kron and J. David Goodman, "Online, a Distant Conflict Soars to Topic No.1"

[6] Joshua Keating, "Guest Post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things)

Calendar Boys, Beefcake Girls: Photographing the Bodies We Want

Rachel Schneider — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Rion Sabean

H/T: Melanie Haupt

My favorite way to take a break from dissertation research is to visit Facebook. Some days, I’m lucky enough to be entertained by my friends, as when Melanie Haupt posted a provocative link to an article about male pin-ups.

As linked by websites like The Huffington Post, The Daily Dish, and Jezebel, photographer Rion Sabean has captured a series of men in pin-up poses similar to those captured by photographers like Alberto Vargas and models like Bettie Page. The pin-up, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a photograph or poster of a glamorous or attractive person.” However, pin-ups historically have been women, and women engaged in poses like the one below.

Image Credit: Fine Books and Collections

Sabean’s intent appears to have been to play with the gender roles here by making men adopt these kinds of poses, as he said in an interview with Jezebel:

"The imagery of showcasing the feminine/masculine ideals in one single image just struck me as something that could really work. Hilariously enough, and beyond my fascination with gender binaries and their inherent nature to be completely incomprehensible to me, I first began tinkering with the idea, because I will at any given moment strike very specific poses that would be defined as feminine by society; more specifically, the pointed toe. Haha. From there, it was completely obvious that pin-ups and all the associations with them would be the right choice in moving forward."

Comparing the images above already reveals similarities; both guy and gal have pursed lips and are posed in ways which are probably uncomfortable to hold but which highlight aspects of the physical form like the shapely leg and curvy body. The sporty paraphernalia in each scene only contrasts the deliberately inactive pointing fingers and splayed hands. Another group of images, this time in nearly the same pose, points out what Melanie acknowledged: these poses are very ridiculous and not a little degrading.

Image Credit: Acidcow.com / Rion Sabean

In these pictures again we see the juxtaposition of the masculine objects (the shovel, the military hat) and the highly feminized pose. The placement of the hands not only allows the subject to stay nearly vertical but also draws attention to the model’s assets. The reveal of undergarments (the underwear, the stockings) tantalizes the viewer. While these images serve to comically point out the problematics of the pin-up pose, I find myself as a viewer wondering if these can be read in a different way—can these men be sexy, too? Or can we find poses for women that wouldn’t be degrading?

To keep thinking about the sexualized posed body, I’d like to think about two other image collections I’ve seen this last week: the Men of the Stacks calendar and ESPN The Magazine’s just-released Body Issue.

Image Credit: The Men of the Stacks

In the case of the Men of the Stacks calendar, these gentlemen have collected together to rebrand the idea of the librarian:

"We know what people think: Dewey, glasses, shushing, books, hairbuns, Party Girl and card catalogs. Yes, we know what people think. We know that the American library profession is approximately 80% White and 72% female; and we know that tens of thousands of librarians are expected to reach age 65 in the next 5 years. We also know that this is not us.
"There is an entire population of professional librarians out there who disagree with the way the library profession is perceived in contemporary media outlets and in the historical consciousness of the American mind. Different people and different associations will use different means to try to change those perceptions. This is ours."

While not all of the photographs are as revealing as Mr. January’s, several of them use shirtless (or shirtless in aprons) men to spice up visuals of a profession whose sexualization in pornography stands in stark contrast to how it is perceived in popular culture. While the various poses—doing yoga, on a beach, cooking—attempt to make the idea of the male librarian as a lived experience palpable to the viewer, the fact that several pictures feature shirtless men makes it very similar to a straight beefcake calendar like the yearly NYFD Calendar of Heroes, which features actual New York firemen posed provocatively with hoses and other paraphernalia, or even the beefcake magazines of the 40s-60s. In other words, if the female form has frequently been sexualized by artful poses, the male has experienced the same treatment, though one with more arm-flexing.

Image Credit: ESPN The Magazine

However, if both The Men of the Stacks at Sabean’s Man-Ups are engaging in social commentary, ESPN the Magazine’s Body Issue appears to be a marketing ploy. While Ryan Kesler here is posed next to a block of ice to nod to his sport, this pose does more to show off his physique than his athletic skills. On the other side, Julie Chu's pose harkens less to the pinup and more to Greek statuary.

Image Credit: ESPN The Magazine

While this pose hints at her feminine features, it's also fairly aggressive—the eye wanders as much to her muscular arms as the breasts her pose conceals. The tensed shoulder and stomach also make it clear that what is (at least nominally) on display here is her strength. Julie Chu isn’t a pin-up, she's a warrior. However, it’s also legitimate to ask if we can see a naked female form without sexualizing it. The tagline, "Bodies We Want," can be read ambiguously either as the desire to have a muscular physique, or to have a partner so built.

As I’m thinking about these different poses together, I'm left questioning what kinds of viewers are being imagined here. ESPN the Magazine clearly offers some titillating interest for a straight male readership, but the photographs of individuals like Apolo Ohno and José Reyes are either intended for a gay male readership, or a straight female one. The audience for the Man-Ups is one that knows and has reflected on the original pin-ups that have inspired the poses; it’s an audience who gets the joke and can return the wink. However, can man-ups be as sexy as these other poses? If we understand the female body to be always sexualized, is there room for a female gaze to re-read these poses?

Of course, I don’t want to argue that women’s sexuality looks any different from men’s sexuality. I remember here the xkcd cartoon that responded to the Porn for Women book, where the female character asserts: “I wanted to clarify: in my porn, people fuck.” Women or men can be titillated by all sorts of different things, and we can’t essentialize that. Sexy is definitely in the eye—or the brain—of the beholder. Perhaps I just want to invite further discussion considering how we think or choose to think about the gendered body in photography. Theory has much to say about the power of the subject viewing the object/body—but how are the powers of the viewer limited by hegemonies? And how can we talk about bodies while allowing and acknowledging all various forms of sexuality that might approach them?

Meat America - a photographic celebration by Dominic Episcopo

Cate Blouke — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:30:16 +0000

WTF, by Dominic Episcopo, from Meat America

Dominic Episcopo wants to explain to you "the indefinable adjective that is 'American'." And as far as he's concerned, the best way to do that is with meat. The images are funny, deeply ironic, and often ambiguous given Episcopo's purported mission.

Above, packaged ground beef shaped into the letters "WTF" is surrounded by a variety of fresh vegetables - one of these things is not like the other. The meat seems to be asking questions about processed foods and meat consumption.

Last semester Megan wrote a post about viewer expectation and food art, touching on how food as a medium can move audiences through both desire and disgust. Since Mike's comment on my post about Lady Gaga's meat dress earlier this semester, I've also been thinking about the relationship between images and appetite.

Texas, by Dominic Episcopo, from Meat America

Episcopo's adventures in meat manipulation are ostensibly intended as a celebration of America. As he explains, his project "celebrates our [American's] appetite for insurmountable odds, limitless aspiration, and immeasurable success." Given that Texas holds by far the largest number of cattle (more than 13 million head of the nation's roughly 92 million total in 2011), the Texas-shaped steak makes a lot of sense. It's symbolic of a huge portion of Texas' industry and the immense pride of this state (we're a prime cut, not just ground beef). But, I can't entirely tell if Episcopo's project is meant to be read as ironic. And if meat is American, and America is meat, I'm wondering what exactly that means...

Love, by Dominic Episcopo, from Meat America

Perhaps the clues can be found in the details. In the image above, the ground beef "love" is paired with pretzels, coffee, some sort of packaged dessert bar, and placed next to a newspaper strategically folded to include only "& Death." The sticker's read "U.S.D.A. Choice Beef," and "Family Pak Buy More." Here, as in the image below, the meat industry is linked with mortality - perhaps a nod to the 400,000+ deaths each year from coronary heart disease.

Meat is Couture? - Lady Gaga's Meaty Message

Cate Blouke — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 06:38:12 +0000

Image Credit: Lady Gaga at the VMAs, Designer Franc Fernandez

I realize that I may be a bit behind the times to be addressing (ha!) Lady Gaga's fashion stunt of last fall, but meat's been on my mind this week as I'm about to embark on 30 days of eating vegetarian - largely as a result of the text we're teaching in our introductory rhetoric classes here at UT: Colin Beavan's No Impact Man. But that's another story. Gaga's appearance at the Mtv Video Music Awards sparked controversy that dissipated rather quickly, and though this may have been due to the singer's own inability to adequately (or logically) explain the reasons behind her wardrobe choice, the images left behind offer a really interesting opportunity for varying and disparate interpretations.

While I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) to discover that Jezebel didn't have much to say about the dress, my immediate reaction was to think of the outfit as a commentary on female objectification. The dress literalizes an all too familiar trope - that women are just pieces of meat - and the contrast between the female body and the hunks of beef strewn about it seemingly negates the metaphor by calling attention to it. Yet considering Gaga's videos and her ethos in general, it could also easily be argued that the outfit does just the opposite (reenforcing the trope/idea/attitude instead of negating it), especially considering the precursor to the dress - her appearance on the cover of the Japanese Men's Vogue in a meat bikini. They say we are what we eat, perhaps we are what we wear, too?

Image Credit: Vogue Hommes Japan

Now, while Gaga argued that she meant no disrespect to vegetarians, that didn't prevent a backlash from animal right's activists and environmental groups. PETA was predictably outraged by her VMA outfit, though their response was surprisingly brief. Ecouterre.com, a website devoted to sustainable fashion, instead used the dress as a conversation point, exploring the environmental impact of designer Franc Fernandez's 50 lb. creation. I'm sure both organizations would disagree with me, and perhaps this is a bit of a stretch, but I can see how one might argue that the dress is in fact an argument for vegetarianism and animal rights.

Image Credit: Designer Franc Fernandez

For one thing, looking closely at the dress certainly doesn't make me want to run out and eat a steak. But it also opens up space for an argument through analogy - how is wearing leather any different from wearing pieces of beef? Vegetarians are often critical of those who abstain from meat but still wear animal products, and the dress seems to call attention to this complaint. It also calls into question what constitutes acceptable use - if we can eat it, why can't/shouldn't/don't we wear it? And vice versa? Would the fur trade somehow be more palatable if we ate all the animals we wore?

Gaga's dress wasn't the most appetizing wardrobe choice, but it certainly got some attention. Everyone should be please to note, however, that the dress won't be going to waist - according to People Magazine, the dress is slowly turning into beef jerky that will be preserved for posterity (not eaten).

(Apologies for the rampant puns in this post, but I simply couldn't resist).

Xtranormal in the Classroom

Cate Blouke — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:55:32 +0000

Image Credit: Adriana Cervantes, created as final presentation for my RHE 306 class

Particularly in technology-based classrooms like we have here in the DWRL, instructors are always looking for new ways to teach students non-traditional forms of writing. A few weeks back, Ashley wrote a viz. post about the on-line animation program, Xtranormal, whose motto is “if you can type, you can make movies.” Her post inspired/challenged me to give it a try with my students. It's extremely user-friendly, and we were able to create animations in a single class period. Users enter text, and the program animates the dialogue for them. Above and after the jump are examples of my students' work, and I'll talk more about pedagogical value of the program.

In addition to viz., the DWRL hosts Blogging Pedagogy, a blog that each of the instructors contribute to each semester. I already blogged there about my first classroom experience with Xtranormal, and you can view that post here. It explains the premise behind the video below. To avoid repeating myself, I'd like to use this viz. post to approach the program from a more theoretical standpoint.

In his seminal work, Understanding Comics, cartoon theorist Scott McCloud posits that “cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing.” He argues that cartoons are uniquely poised to amplify arguments through simplification. He explains that the less representational the figure, the more likely we are to identify with it, and this abstraction makes viewers more receptive to the message – less apt to focus on who is saying than what is said. This can be particularly useful with students - asking them to focus more on the argument itself than the person making the argument.

Image credit: Loraine Ng and Leticia Garcia, created in class

As you've probably noticed, because Xtranormal uses mechanized and predetermined voices for the characters, the emphasis can end up on the wrong syllable, and the resulting animation often makes familiar language sound foreign. In theories of performance, intentional distancing (or alienation), prevents audiences from identifying too closely with characters, and consequently encourages more critical observation. Here, this distancing can be useful to call attention to the soundness of an argument, especially because we have to listen carefully to follow what the characters are saying.

This combination of identification and alienation produced by Xtranormal animations is often both funny and informative. As Megan pointed out in her viz. post about the TSA, Xtranormal can potentially be used to depersonalize sensitive or inflammatory issues. It also encourages students to translate arguments across media, and to think critically about the substance of arguments without focusing so closely on the players involved. And while, like Megan, I find the robotic voices particularly irritating after about 2 minutes, my students loved the exercise.

What's Eating You? Viewer Expectations and Food Art

Megan Eatman — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 02:32:36 +0000

Image (and recipe): Chow

When I discovered the true nature of the image above, which appeared to be a delicious carrot cake, I felt an unexpected disgust. Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian with a sweet tooth, so the fact that what appeared to be cake was, in fact, ground turkey was pretty gross to me. However, I imagine that someone who had been dooped might initially feel the same way, before, perhaps, shifting into delight that an entire Thanksgiving dinner had been contained in one slice, and so masterfully. My reaction, however extreme, made me think about food as a medium, the arguments it makes, and the arguments we make about it.

An interesting example is the KFC Double Down, which received criticism less because of its actual nutritional content (not as bad as you think, especially compared to other fast food sandwiches) but because of its iconic representation of American overconsumption, particularly of animal protein and fat. The Double Down, which Mark Morford labels "a horrible crapbucket of chyme," represents everything from the perverse side of low-carb dieting to the horrors of American meat production. It makes an apparently apocalyptic argument--but, also, an argument for deliciousness, at least in its professional photos. Customer action shots are sometimes less savory, at least for some audiences:

Image: Treehugger

Obviously, an argument made with or by food has appeals that function differently; an audience could be more physically moved by appeals to their hunger (or desire to taste something good) or by disgust. The Thanksgiving cake also made me think of Stephen J. Shanabrook, who uses chocolate to create representations of dead bodies, many based on actual corpses.

Image: Stephen J. Shanabrook

Shanabrook's "Waterboarding" pieces are somewhat more subtle, but potentially more haunting:

Image: Stephen J. Shanabrook, via Eat Me Daily

While Shanabrook's work is obviously at a different end of the spectrum from the Thanksgiving cake, I think it is productive to ask, in all these cases, what arguments do these foodstuffs make? Presumably, the mimicry in the Thanksgiving cake makes a definitional argument (I am a cake) and then expands the eater's expectations of what being a cake means. The Double Down reads in different ways, but it (or, rather, its creators) has often been accused of unfair persuasion, abusing for profit humans' natural inclination toward fatty foods. Shanabrook's pieces take the fragility and beauty of chocolate and shape it into the grotesque and the shameful; however, the ephemerality of chocolate seems consistent with the rapid decomposition of a corpse or the unseen impact of "clean torture" like waterboarding.

Discussion of creations like these could be useful in a classroom for expanding students' attitudes about medium. Since we have obvious expectations of what a cake, a sandwich, and a chocolate sculpture look like, all of these creations use medium to frustrate our expectations in a way that might not be immediately clear in other kinds of texts.

When Humor Hurts - Domestic Violence PSAs (part one)

Cate Blouke — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:13:36 +0000

Image credit: The OPCC via YouTube

H/T to Rachel for suggesting the topic sending me the clip

Although Halloween is behind us, and we've packed up the glam make-up and eaten all the goodies, I'd like to call your attention to an interesting use of bunny suits I recently came across. Or, perhaps "interesting" isn't quite the right word... inappropriate, insincere, ineffectual... these seem more apt. While this ridiculous domestic violence PSA has already been addressed by Irin Carmon over on Jezebel, I think there are some more fundamental issues we can tackle from a rhetorical standpoint. Ultimately, the commercial leaves me with questions about when humor actually hits the mark and when it just goes horribly wrong.

Using humor to "get your attention," the two segments of the commercial don't line up. Bunny suits and feigned infidelity, while possibly funny (though I found it rather inane), have nothing to do with the realities of domestic violence that the second half claims to concern itself with. The attention grabber, by essentially admitting to its own frivolity, undermines the potential for taking the second part seriously. So does using David Arquette to deliver the message. As pop culture spokesperson, he's woefully impossible to take seriously, despite the attempt to reclaim authority at the beginning of the commercial.

While I'm a huge proponent of using humor to make a point, here, all it does is undermine the message it attempts to deliver. In the following Australian PSA, however, the humor really hits home...

Image Credit: YouTube

Whether you laughed or cringed or both when the husband handed over the baseball bat, this commercial hits its mark. The "humor" correlates directly to its message, and makes it even more affective. Aimed not at those perpetrating violence, but people who stand by and do nothing, laughter, regardless of motivation, implicates the viewer in the scene of violence we hear behind the door. Laughing at the problem is tantamount to ignoring it, or, like the next door neighbor, handing over the bat.

Whereas the audience for the Arquette commercial is undefined at best, this commercial makes it clear that domestic violence is a concern for everyone, not just the abusers and abused. The Jezebel post I cited above includes a French commercial that is similarly aimed at "the people around abusers," and it raises interesting questions about audience which I'll pick up on in my post next week.

The Inner Life of Toys - The Art of Jason Freeny

Cate Blouke — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:18:33 +0000

Image Credit: Jason Freeny Moist Productions

Elieen's viz. post from a few weeks ago on Justine Cooper's photo-documentation of the American Museum of Natural History in New York has been bouncing around in my head ever since. It (re)kindled a long-standing interest I've had in both natural history museums and slightly morbid kinds of art. In both digital images and sculpture, artist Jason Freeny invests familiar children's toys with anatomical interiors, suggesting an inner life/death that both unsettles and intrigues.

Along the lines of natural history displays, this Mickey Mouse figure in particular speaks to an archival and archeological interior. The iconic Disney character has been a part of American culture for nearly 80 years now, and, as such, has gone through a series of evolutions and "lives." By granting Mickey an inter anatomy, replete with full-color intestines and other innards, Freeny argues for a life outside our imaginations. Mickey is a living, breathing (even though we can't see his lungs) figment of our imaginations. Animated by humans in both senses of the word, Mickey exists as an entity both different from and similar to ourselves.

Image Credit: Jason Freeny Moist Productions

Despite his three eyes, toes, and fingers, the Alien's skeleton also seems familiar. This Toy Story figurine literalizes the conceit of the film where toys come to life in the absence of humans. The 3-dimensional medium of action-figure turned sculpture adds to the "liveness" of the figure. While recent studies on Tyrannosaurus rex fossils have led scientists to conclude the dinosaur may have been cannibalistic, one wonders what this skeleton might indicate about its vessel. If we can create a fictional world for him to live in, what would this intertior tell us about that world?

Image Credit: Jason Freeny Moist Productions

Though as a child, this image of a My Little Pony might have horrified me, my adult self finds it both amusing and fascinating. The statue gives the doll an inner life that I certainly dreamed of in my youth, and might not have been surprised to discover. I remember feeling that dolls and toys could be hurt and could heal, that I had to be careful with them, and that though they may possess magical powers (like the ability to fly) they otherwise operated on the same principles as I did. Maybe that was just me.

Image Credit: Jason Freeny Moist Productions

Freeny's digital work mimics traditional anatomical charts hung in doctor's offices and classrooms. I particularly like the dissonance created by a balloon animal with a skeleton. The instructions at the bottom of the image demonstrate how to create a balloon-animal dog, and this strikes me as paralell to the evolution of a zygote. The poster suggests that we can call these creatures into being, and through their creation, invest them with life.

I wonder if the anatomical charts would be a useful tool for teaching anatomy to kids? I can't decide if they would disturb or delight. Biology never interested me much, but maybe it would have if interiors were more fictive and imaginative.

Glitter re-visited (deadly and disembodied)

Cate Blouke — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:43:55 +0000

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post

Last week on Viz I posted about glitter as an undermining agent in images of solemnity. In this commercial for Norton security software, the glitter use results in deadly (and delightful) consequences.

The commercial functions through analogy. "Your on-line bank account" is like an adorable little cartoon unicorn - friendly, harmless, and essentially insubstantial. Depicting on-line information as a mythical creature, the commercial highlights the "unreality" of computer-based data. Whereas we can (and should) shred our sensitive information when it comes in physical documents, our on-line information is much more vulnerable through its illusive, unicorn-like existence floating in the ether.

Dolf Lundgren, however, is a very "real" representation (so to speak) of all the nasty bad guys out there waiting to do horrible things to our unicorns. "Real" criminals can seriously harm our ephemeral information, as demonstrated in the alternate version of the commercial below. Criminal activity is embodied in the looming stature of Lundgren, whereas our own points of vulnerability are disembodied (cartoon) and unwittingly dreaming of rainbows.

Similarly, Lundgren's weapons are also very physically menacing (a knife, a pistol, and a flame thrower), whereas the unicorn's defenses (when bolstered with the Norton software) are just as fantastical as the unicorn itself - he/she/it defeats Lundgren with a cloud of poisonous, sparkling fairy dust.

While I still hold that the comparison between security software and fairy dust might not actually be that reassuring on closer examination, in this instance the incongruity seems intentional. The fact that the unicorn fights off an automatic weapon with a cloud of smoke shot out of its horn (complete with tinkly fairy noise), causing Lundgren's head to explode into a cloud of glitter, is hilarious. The seemingly innocuous dust has deadly effects which are made festive and amusing through sparkle.

Overall, I find the embodied/disembodied personifications the most rhetorically interesting aspects of the commercial, but who doesn't love some unicorns and glitter? Or flame-throwers and bad jokes (below)?

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post

All that glitters is not gold... or in good taste

Cate Blouke — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:15:55 +0000

Image Credit: posted by "Hellen Killer" on Regresty, originating from PeachyProfiles.com

H/T to Megan Eatman for sending me the blog

As recent Twilight films have demonstrated, sparkling is one of the few things that doesn't translate well into new media. It also makes it hard to take anything seriously - regardless of authorial intention or gravity of subject matter.

In the wake of the September 11th attacks nine years ago, comedians across the country were faced with the question of how soon would be "too soon" to joke about the tragedy. The question of timing has arisen over and over again, recently in conversations about Clear Blue Tuesday, a movie musical with 9/11 as its narrative foundation that premiered in New York last week. The subject is inherently a sensitive one, and though the blog post I pulled these images from used them as a source for ridicule, this will be a conversation more about glitter than the ethics of humor.

Image Credit: posted by "Hellen Killer" on Regresty, originating from HitUpMySpot.com

Though these images were (presumably) created as hearfelt monuments to one of America's most significant tragedies, the use of a "glitter" effect fundamentally undermines any sense of solemnity that they were intended to invoke. The underlying photographic image of two New York City firefighters with hands clasped and arms raised, signifies a brotherhood and sense of community that infuses our collective memory of the 9/11 attacks. Yet the sparkling overlay, though it certainly draws our attention, also obscures the sincerity expressed in the caption. Sparkles are tied to feelings of festivity and celebration that seem utterly inappropriate for the content, and the juxtaposition verges on laughable (depending on your sense of humor) or downright tragic.

While these images are bound to stir up an unpedictable mix of feelings, they might serve as a useful tool for talking about context, content, and ethos. They seem to come from websites that specialize in icons for use on MySpace, and this could be used to fuel conversation about social networking and the "image" students present to the world. Or, an equally interesting converstation might arise regarding marketing strategies and pathos - to what lengths will advertisers go to grab our attention?

I'm not including a link to the url listed at the bottom of this last image as it seems to be a spam site that traps you into answering survey questions before you can navigate away from the page. Perhaps that's fitting given this is probably the most tasteless of all the images "Killer" collected. The cartoonish sparkling sky set against the reality of the smoking buildings completely negates the seemingly reverant message.

Image Credit: posted by "Hellen Killer" on Regresty, originating on MySpaceLayoutsHome.com

Sensual Suicide and Ironic Intent - Florian Jennet and Valentin Beinroth's "Freeze! Revisited"

Cate Blouke — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:42:01 +0000

Image Credit: "Freeze! Revisited" by Florian Jennet and Valentin Beinroth via todayandtomorrow.net

H/T to Ben Koch

Since the 1950s, the pop art movement has been challenging our ideas about mass-produced images and objects. Particularly by manipulating context, pop artists identify and exploit cultural trends. In a recent exhibition, two German artists explored the intersections of art, violence, and mistaken identities.

Image Credit: "Freeze! Revisited" by Florian Jennet and Valentin Beinroth via todayandtomorrow.net

The “guns” in these images are actually just gun-shaped popsicles. Even with contextualization, the images are striking, primarily because they reverse my expectations. The sensuality of the young woman contrasts ironically with her (essentially) suicidal pose. Given the other people in the background and the incongruity of her expression, it’s easier to disassociate the image with the potential violence it depicts.

The vending machine look of the freezer (above) provides an interesting commentary on contemporary issues of mass-produced violence and the widespread availability of weaponry. I don’t know much about gun politics in Germany, so maybe I’m just reading my own political views onto it. However, images from this project were featured in an issue of as|peers (an American Studies journal) that focused on America and Crime.

These images come from "Freeze! Revisted," the second version of Valentin Beinroth and Florian Jenett’s “Freeze” project. In the first project the ice guns were flavorless, not intended for consumption but just to “look real on first sight.” The artists enacted realistic situations with the ice guns and then discarded them in various places around Frankfurt – until the performances were stopped by the police.

For “Freeze! Revisited,” the edible ice guns were handed out to visitors. Whereas the first project left little visible record, this version resulted in an exciting archive of images.

Image Credit: "Freeze! Revisited" by Florian Jennet and Valentin Beinroth via todayandtomorrow.net

On the whole, I found the project delightfully morbid, and most of the images amused me thoroughly. The photo of the little boy, however, I find rather disturbing. Standing alone and gazing earnestly at the camera, the boy reverses the gaze and thereby implicates the spectator. Directly connecting youth and violence, this image loses the sense of irony that the project otherwise invokes.

Or, perhaps, irony was never the goal. The artists’ websites are largely written in German (which I don’t understand). So this brings up the interesting question of intentionality, especially across cultural divides. Is my reading of these images as anti-gun, pro-gun-control any less valid though the “text” is German and I’m American? Were these ever meant to be ironic? Or were they intended to shock instead of amuse? Does intentionality even matter if I can’t access it?

The Ethos of Hipster Dinosaurs

Cate Blouke — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:37:47 +0000

Image Credit: Imgur

H/T to Matt

For me, humor is one of the most powerful tools available for both pedagogy as well as social resistance. It seems appropriate therefore to introduce myself to the viz. blog with something a little offbeat and (potentially) funny.

The term “hipster” has experienced a resurgence in American vernacular in the last few years – at least I’ve heard it used with increasing regularity since I moved to Austin. For quite some time I found myself a bit perplexed about what people meant when they called a person a “hipster.” Since it generally seems to be used as a derogatory sobriquet, I felt it important to have a clear idea of what the term encapsulates.

As I should have known, the populist and notoriously un-academic resource, urbandictionary.com, offers an extensive and thorough discussion of the term. I was surprised by the thoughtfulness of several of the entries, and amused (as usual) by others. Much as I’d like to elaborate on those entries here, this is a visual rhetoric blog and I want to address the ways in which “hipsterism” is shaped by these images.

Image Credit: Imgur

What I find interesting here is the ways in which this series of images constructs hipsterism through visual cues and conversation bubbles. These “Hipster Dinosaurs” illustrate both a fashion sensibility tied to the hipster identity as well as an intellectual and anti-consumer attitude.

From these images, we gather that hipsters are coded as often (but not always) wearing thick-rimmed glasses, having manicured facial hair, smoking all-natural cigarettes and generally expressing intellectual disdain across a wide variety of subjects. However, finding humor in the pictures requires a foreknowledge of the identity.

Image Credit: Imgur

The use of dinosaurs is particularly intriguing. Since the term originated in the 1940s, is the use of dinosaurs meant to argue that contemporary hipsters are seeking to resuscitate an extinct species? Or, conversely, is it meant to indicate that hipsters are headed for extinction? Are they bound to be fossilized through their own intellectual elitism? Is it their own negativity that enables them to be put forth as a subject of ridicule?

Using coloring-book images and crayons to illustrate these drawings, the creator links the hipster persona with juvenility – seemingly the “know-it-all” attitude of youth. One could also argue that the act of creating such images is an equally juvenile and petulant response to a rather harmless subculture. This raises the question of authorial ethos. What assumptions can we make about the person that made these cartoons? Can we make any assumptions?

Humor generally relies on somebody being the butt of the joke, and who it is and is not appropriate to ridicule is an interesting question in the (post?) politically correct landscape. As is the question of who is allowed to do the ridiculing. The element of risk seems fundamentally linked to all forms of humor, but that very danger strikes me as the reason it is used and talked about so infrequently in academic discourse.

After writing this post, and getting ready to upload it, I found myself suddenly wondering if this was even appropriate to use. Would it offend someone? Would it get me in trouble? What if I self-identify as a hipster? Is self-mockery the only safe form of humor left?

Satire Sandwiches: Stephen Colbert's Thought for Food

fc — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:50:12 +0000

Image Credit: screen capture from ColbertNation.com

Food policy can be pretty disheartening stuff: anything that combines environmentalism, worker's rights and public health in a single topic is likely to include bad-to-terrible news pretty much every day. With the Senate underfunding the Child Nutrition Act, bluefin tuna set to go extinct and Dirt! The Movie preparing to air on PBS, even my fairly-high tolerance for crisis fatigue was wearing thin this week. Thankfully, Stephen Colbert was there to talk me off the ledge. As is often the case, Colbert managed to make life livable with his pringle-and-whipped-cream-like blend of irony and humor-- two remarkable human capacities that are often undervalued because they elude satisfactory explanation by rhetorical, literary or philosophical models. While even Jon Stewart's comedic analysis of politicians and pundits can often be as depressing as it is amusing, Colbert's satiric send-ups consistently manage to wink their way through all kinds of maddening news stories and leave me with a crisp, clean finish. His new "Thought for Food" segment lives up to those expectations. Rather than attempting (and almost certainly failing) to explain the jokes, I thought I'd share a few videos and comment as needed. More on Colbert, corn-surpluses, advertising and unholy sandwiches after the break.

Colbert began his "Thought for Food" segment in mid-March. His second installment covers a lot of the ground that I have written about recently on this blog. He begins, appropriately enough, with some novel uses for corn-- when subsidies artificially supress the price of corn while simultaneously creating massive surplusses, you get... well, you'll see. He ends with his own take on Oliver's Food Revolution.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Thought for Food - Corn Diapers, Fatty Foods & Jamie Oliver

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

The third and latest installment of "Thought for Food" focuses on marketing processed foods. The centerpiece of the segment takes aim at KFC's new "Double Down" "sandwich". If you thought Colbert's Pringle-RediWhip creation was a bad idea, then you'll love this bacon sandwich with fried-chicken buns. Oddly enough, the fist time I logged on to ColberNation.com and watched the video of Stephen roundly panning the fried mass of animal protein, the banner ad at the top of the page was selling-- wait for it-- KFC's new Double Down sandwich (I guess that when your food is a publicity stunt, any attention is good attention). It reminds me of Michael Pollan's "rule" about not eating anything you've ever seen advertised.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Thought for Food - Mentally Ill Advertisers & German Cupcakes

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

One important effect of satire like the Colbert Report comes from creating a space in which we can release the engery, frustration, angst, etc. that are stirred up by serious social problems. They can be refreshing without being escapist. As Kierkegaard puts it in his "Concept of Irony," works like this can disarm us, and being taken off-guard can be a valuable experience for people locked in an entrenched debate. Humor can give us critical distance from even deeply held values (an effect Bakhtin notes when writing about parody and the sacreligious), and even when it doesn't bridge differences and open new lines of dialogue, that temporary distance lets us catch our breath and rest our passions. Ok, that's all the speculation I have in me today. I'll leave you with a video of Colbert interviewing Jonathan Safran Foer in which Stephen gives the world's greatest description of free range chicken eggs.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Jonathan Safran Foer

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

For your Valentine Viewing Pleasure

timturner — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:09:34 +0000

(Disclaimer: there is some blood and guts in this video.)

Slate V has posted a video celebrating the collision of the lovey-dovey Valentine holiday with the seemingly incongruous tradition of releasing gory movies with Valentine's day themes. The video was inspired by the upcoming release of the remake of Friday the 13th--on, appropriately, the upcoming Friday the 13th, the day before Valentine's Day. Surely the collision of these two elements says something deep about our culture? Maybe love really *is* the devil. Or is it just that machete-wielding maniacs are as good an excuse as any to get a little close to that special someone? Surely this is a very old idea: while I was writing this I thought of the motto engraved on the Wife of Bath's amulet in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: AMOR VINCIT OMNIA [Love conquers all]: an ominous pronouncement then and now...

The Simplicity of a Line

Sarah Wagner — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:22:43 +0000

Cartoons—your everyday, old-fashioned ones—are one of my true loves. I haven’t studied graphic art theory, I don’t get into manga, I have no idea who the radical artists are out there. I think it’s a great medium, full of possibilities for telling stories, presenting viewpoints, making people laugh and think. Heck, I learned most of my Vietnam-era US political history from reading old Doonesbury books. Graphic novels? I’ve read two (V for Vendetta and Fun Home) and loved them. But let’s just say I’m a casual but enthusiastic lover of the comics.

This one is called Spot the Frog by Mark Heath. I learned about it from another website, where someone who follows these things more actively said this was one to check out. So I did. I loved it—but couldn’t quite pinpoint why. There’s always been something about its cuteness that’s more than just cute. And then I saw the first panel of this strip. I was immediately homesick for Maine’s winters, for the beauty and quiet that lie all around, even surrounding our largest cities. I know this snow, I know that sun. I can tell you just about what month it is, and the temperature; I know what I’d be wearing if I were there. The simplicity of Heath’s two lines for snow covered hills not only allows me to fill in the scene with my own memories, but it is the scene. The simplicity is there in real life—those hills are just two lines, no detail, no movement, absolute silence.

Except for the frogs. They’re just silly.

[Mark Heath stopped the strip this past July, but they’re still running old ones at comics.com. You can find the one above here.]

Instant Yeezy: “Be Kanye” ad campaign

John Jones — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:31:32 +0000

According to the interwebs, these ads, explaining how you can buy a pill to transform you into Kanye West, are for Absolut Vodka.

Mr. West’s tongue-in-cheek appearance marks the second collaboration with the vodka company, which is sponsoring his “Glow in the Dark” tour this summer.

In a video at the Web site bekanyenow.com, which is designed to resemble an infomercial, Mr. West sells tablets called “Be Kanye” that promise to transform the taker into “Kanye” for a four-hour duration. “How many times have you told yourself, ‘I feel famous and powerful on the inside, but nobody sees it that way on the outside?’” he asks.

via SuperTouch

“When people talk, General Hayden listens”

John Jones — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:52:19 +0000

Mark Fiore has posted a satirical cartoon on the role of telecoms in the warrant-less wiretapping controversy. The cartoon stars Snuggly the Security Bear and CIA Director, General Michael Hayden.

via Boing Boing

Framing and defaming

timturner — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:48:50 +0000

Last night while watching Barack Obama give his speech after the Pennsylvania primary, I got all excited about posting something on viz. for general amusement. But then when I read some other blogs, I realized I was not the only person to see what I saw. I forgot that in this Golden Age of the Internets, Original Ideas do not stay that way for long. But behold, anyway:Notice the three dudes in Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts right behind the Senator. Supposedly the campaigns choose the people in those seats pretty carefully; one has to wonder, if in fact that's true, what was going through the head of the person who made this decision. Not that there's anything wrong with Abercrombie (well, Jezebel says it's "the epitome of everything about the America that is not 'ready' for" a President Obama), but still, it seems like a weird choice, no?

The Serious Side of Sarcasm

Jillian Sayre — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:18:38 +0000

Is sarcastic, rather than bitch, the new black? To build on our discussions of the image of women in politics (see John's post about Michelle Obama's halo and Tim's recent post about Hillary and/as the Devil), I find the discussion of the two women's "edgy" humor to be quite interesting and I think it affects the way that their images are produced and read.

Katie Couric, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and now Newsweek have all noted how Obama's rhetoric contrasts with the optimism and hopefulness of her husband's campaign. But while most of these sources will present the trait as positive (albeit dangerous), the Times for instance called Obama "Outspoken, strong-willed, funny, gutsy", Clinton is considered dour or angry.

The funny thing is, the visual argument seems to be presented in the opposite manner. Newsweek's profile of Michelle Obama featured a good deal of "stern" pictures, despite the frequent mention of her humor in the text (she pokes fun of her husband, makes frequent jokes that not everybody gets). Despite a few nostalgic young Obama shots (and the cover which features a controlled smile on a woman who seems almost to be physically restraining herself), most of them looked like this:

both images property of Newsweek

Hillary, on the other hand, as Tim's devil picture indicates and as Jon Stewart has pointed out, seems discomforting in her happiness, the "hard-nosed realist" who enjoys lambasting hope and faith. When she makes these sarcastic comments in speeches and during debates, she smiles, even laughs. While I think we would agree that this normally says, "hey, joke here!" it is read by these critics as over-rehearsed or abusively cynical.

Perhaps what I am most intrigued by in this debacle is the disjunct of rhetorical strategy and analysis. While Obama's serious posture is productively rebellious, making her a thoughtful as well as humorous (Newsweek says that she's not the expected "Stepford booster, smiling vacantly at her husband and sticking to a script of carefully vetted blandishments"), I think Clinton joyfully produces her barbs so that the listener is encouraged to hear her and laugh along, a sort of benevolence. The effect, though, is suspicion and distance; these critics argue that her smiles actually isolate the audience and I wonder what context creates this reading.

Recontextualizing images

John Jones — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:05:27 +0000

The blog garfield minus garfield contains some wonderful examples of the ways in which images can be recontextualized to create new meanings. According to the site

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

Garfield the strip is mostly lame; but, by removing the dull main character, the strip is completely transformed. I particularly enjoy the empty panels, and the effect their silence has on the meaning of each strip.

via The Comics Curmudgeon

The Stuff White People Like problem

mkhaupt — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:29:59 +0000

The person pictured below is Christian Lander, one of the authors of the much-discussed blog, Stuff White People Like.

Some love the blog, some find it offensive. I fall into the latter category because I think to write about "Stuff White People Like" (which feels grammatically wrong somehow), even satirically, is to exclude non-whites from the things that the titular white people like, like recycling, pricey sandwiches, dogs, kitchen gadgets, and Mos Def (?). While I admire the project of poking fun at the Gen X and Y Brooklyn- and Echo Park-dwelling hipsterati who have more money than actual sense, I do think it's a bit irresponsible to present such a limited view of whiteness and declare it ALL whiteness. What does it mean to the white person who rejects the Prius or can't afford a $300 Kitchenaid waffle iron (or never learned to ride a bicycle as a kid because their family couldn't afford one)? What about the person of color who practices alternative medicine, or lives by the water? Or the white woman who loathed Juno?

What I do like about what Lander has done with his most recent entry, as well as the recycling entry is that he has made himself complicit with the white people he's lampooning by making himself the visual representation of the problem he's diagnosing (as opposed to using the stock images he usually utilizes). Also of note is the Star of David on Lander's t-shirt in the recycling picture. If you read the comments on the Sarah Silverman entry, you'll see that there is some (uncomfortable) debate as to whether Jewish people are technically white (ouch, I know). He seems to be answering that question by posing in that t-shirt (outside of a Whole Foods, natch) for the recycling entry.

Maybe this Lander kid is smarter than I thought.

Yes we can/no we can't

mkhaupt — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:57:22 +0000

By now, you've probably seen the moving and (I assume) influential video by the Black-Eyed Peas' Will.i.am "Yes We Can" video in support of Barack Obama, which sets Obama's New Hampshire primary speech to a stripped-down tune, the words voiced by a coterie of A- and B-list celebrities:

While some might argue that seeing/hearing Scarlett Johannson sing Obama's words might dilute their power, the video certainly helped determine where my vote, once belonging to John Edwards, would go. I had not previously heard Obama's speech, and hearing his indirect (yet rhetorically powerful) reference to Martin Luther King, Jr., sung by John Legend certainly caught my attention.

Equally interesting is the "spoof" video (one among many, I am sure), which adopts many of the same techniques, casting "real" people in the celebrities' roles and portraying their dismay at John McCain's pro-war rhetoric. The producers, "Election 08," claim that "earnest people reacting to a candidate is the future of music video":

God's Eye View

mkhaupt — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:53:14 +0000

Back in July, the Creative Review blog posted an entry regarding an art exhibit that imagines scenes from the bible as seen via Google Earth.

The entry's author quotes James Dive, one of the artists from the collective responsible for the work as saying, "As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted, it has been interesting to mess with that trust.”

With that in mind, it's particularly interesting to read the comments on his entry, which range from head-scratching as to whether they got the time of day right for the crucifixion to a condemnation of "the ‘art’ of discrediting a trusted source like satellite imaging, with lies and deceit."

And here I was, thinking it was pretty cute to look up my address on Google Earth to see how bad my yard looked when the photo was taken! (Thanks to Jodi Egerton to alerting me to this topic.)

Watch out, Marty McFly

John Jones — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:51:43 +0000

The image below, from the March, 1936, edition of Science And Mechanics, shows how you can rig up your car so that it will shock anyone who tries to hang onto the bumper to hitch a ride.

Such a device would surely have prevented this tragic waste of fertilizer.

via MAKE Blog

Mustache blog

John Jones — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:15:28 +0000

I’ve spent the past hour trying to think of an educational or theoretical reason for posting this link, but I can’t come up with anything. Here it is anyway.

For those of you who’ve been waiting for a mustache blog, but not just any mustache blog—this one that chronicles diseases of the mustache—may I present Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century.

via Boing Boing

The pixelator

John Jones — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 02:22:46 +0000

Following up on Nate’s post about retouched photos, The Daily Show has revealed some contemporary presidential image-retouching:

Apparently the Vice President has had his residence pixelated on Google Earth. Interestingly, the White House and Congress are left in high-resolution.

Update: The YouTube video I had orignially linked is gone, so I replaced it with a video from Comedy Central’s site. I was informed, however, that the video will “expire on July 28, 2007.”

Lawnmower People, Part III

Nate Kreuter — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:04:14 +0000

With the summer recreation season fast approaching I wanted to put the Lawnmower People to work this week with a public service announcement. If you golf, take stock:

In what is perhaps more of a testament to my simplicity than anything else, I have to admit that these goofy lawnmower people crack me up. I would like to point out though that not all visual texts make arguments. I find when teaching Visual Rhetoric units that students initially want to see ALL images as arguments, whereas images like these really depend on the accompanying text to make any warning/argument clear, at least in the case of more complex warnings.

I would also like to point out that many of these images come courtesy of Capnwacky.

Kurt Vonnegut, author of "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Breakfast of Champions" and a hand-drawn Asshole, Dies

Nate Kreuter — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:32:23 +0000

With Vonnegut's recent passing it seems worth noting that his books almost always featured a simple hand-drawn image at least once per novel. I'm not exactly sure how to describe the rhetorical effect of these drawings, but someone with more time could do a fascinating study of how these drawings operate within Vonnegut's texts.

I am happy to note that at Vonnegut's official website, http://www.vonnegut.com/ , the favicon is a replication of the asshole drawing from, if my memory serves, "Breakfast of Champions".