viz. - rhetorical analysis

Hey Girl, I Made This Meme For You

Rachel Schneider — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Some recent procrastinating led me to Jezebel and thus Joey Thompson’s recent YouTube video, in which he teaches men how to look like actor Ryan Gosling. I was intrigued because I have been following the proliferating Ryan Gosling memes for a while—which have gone on long enough that they’ve been accused of jumping the shark. Still, I’d like to take some time to think a little bit about what their newest evolutions might tell us about memes, form, and feminine desire.

Image Credit: Poli Sci Ryan Gosling

In case you don’t know what a meme is, Richard Dawkins first defined it in The Selfish Gene (1976) as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” The Internet has lead to the proliferation of memes, from "all your base are belong to us,” to Xzibit Yo Dawg, to the most prolific of them all, the LOLcat. What many memes share is a consistent form: a picture with humorous text superimposed over it. Frequently the memes—like the LOLcat—even use the same fonts to create a visually consistent appearance. What these memes do is to create communities through the shared humor and enjoyment of the same structure. Thus, the LOLcat meme developed certainly consistent cat characters like Ceiling Cat, and further iterations would feature new references to Ceiling Cat.

Image Credit: Rhet/Comp Ryan Gosling

The earliest Ryan Gosling meme started with a humble blog named Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling, which gained notoriety when Ryan Gosling read several posts from it during two separate MTV interviews. What followed were numerous other Tumblr blogs, including Feminist Ryan Gosling, Typography Ryan Gosling, Silicon Valley Ryan Gosling, Campaign Staff Ryan Gosling, and of course Rhet/Comp Ryan Gosling. The Goslimania culminated in protests against Bradley Cooper when People declared him the Sexiest Man Alive over Ryan. While People will go on to find more sexy men and Gosling more work, I’m left wondering what this decidedly symbolic protest represents.

Image Credit: Feminist Ryan Gosling

Anne Helen Peterson’s excellent post on the topic argues that the Gosling meme only works as long as the pictures support what he says. When it came to versions like Feminist Ryan Gosling, “you could actually imagine Ryan Gosling saying the very phrases that adoring bloggers were photoshopping into his mouth.” However, she argues that versions like Biostatistics Ryan Gosling go too far because they don’t fit the meme. She reads the meme’s appeal in the juxtaposition of star and text, creating connections between Gosling and his fans:

Pairing star images with dense theory is funny. Every scholar wants to think that an object of their desire would be interested in the things they’re interested in — would have a discussion in which you share a secret language familiar to a select few (and then, after you’ve had a good debate, you go to the Farmer’s Market and snuggle). I wish Ryan Gosling’s image wanted to get his PhD in media studies with me. But it doesn’t — he fell in with the gender studies people long ago. That’s where his image belongs. That’s where it works. To take it beyond can be funny……but, if we’re honest with ourselves, misses the point. It’s a meme built on a meme, and thus evacuated of its core.

I agree with Peterson that the attraction lies in projecting shared values onto Gosling, particularly feminist ones. We female academics would like to think (and perhaps have reason to suspect) that Gosling shares our values, and that we could talk Laura Mulvey with him—or Susan Jarrett, or any other topic we enjoy. However, I also suspect that the Gosling meme works best on women of this type: political liberal, feminist, and educated. These viewers appreciates how Gosling’s mild, non-threatening appearance can be endlessly appropriated to fit their desires—which is why the meme’s life has extended so far beyond its original appearance. The Ryan Gosling meme's core lies not in Ryan Gosling, but in his audience.

Image Credit: Hey girl. I like the library too.

Thus, Steve Kolowich’s suggestion that “it is unclear whether the blogs are intended as pure irony or as a genuine experiment to test whether the following gambits stand a chance of working even under optimal conditions” is a complete misreading. None of these women are suggesting that the pickup lines attributed to Gosling in the images would work. Rather, Gosling is a space in which women can vocalize desire. I think this is why the meme has been adapted to include variants like Gael García-Bernal Feminista, Academic Coach Taylor and Fuck No Rick Santorum. If Gael García-Bernal Feminista adds social justice overtones and sensitive floppy hair, Academic Coach Taylor embodies a more authoritative—though equally feminist—intellectual male. Fuck No Rick Santorum explicitly flips Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling to protest Santorum's sexist political policies. When so much Internet culture is explicitly sexist, the Ryan Gosling Tumblr memes constitute a safe space for feminist—and female heterosexual—discourse.

Victory Gardens and Retro Propaganda

fc — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:16:02 +0000

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.

Wirtheim describes his work as "an art project posing as a propaganda campaign for new, American homefront values. The message style draws from American mid-century homefront propaganda, and the messages essentially draws from 21st century needs as found in the current environmental sustainability movement. The campaign is designed to access America’s history of ingenuity to overcome adversity, and apply those values to fighting modern problems." Wirtheim does much more than repackage or redeploy turn of the century images. He borrows from the iconography of the era, and simultaneously participates in the urgency of the earlier propaganda and gives us a wink through their campiness. Compare Wortheim's "Break New Ground" with this New Zealand contribution to Great Britain's "Dig for Victory" Campaign.

Image Credit: Joe Wirtheim

Image Credit: Imperial War Museum

While the pitchfork and foot in "Break New Ground" are certainly an homage to the British series, Wirtheim has translated the poster's wartime austerity into a new aesthetic register. The posters share essentially the same goal-- they both want you to start growing your own food-- but they rely on substantially different rhetorical appeals. The paucity of the British campaign is well suited for an audience facing the shortages, rationing and hardships of a protracted war. There are no unneccesary embelishments, just the bare earth, the blank sky and the task at hand. It resonates with both the English stiff upper lip and the mid-century penchant for martial drama.

Wirtheim's poster presents another argumenta altogether. His cityscape teems with life as plants sprout not only from the ground but (prophetically) from every roof on the skyline. As urgent as America's food crisis may be, Wirtheim isn't speaking primarily to people who are confronted daily with scarcity and want, so he presents growing your own food as an inviting pleasure rather than a stern duty. (The Chuck Taylors give us a pretty good hint about the range of his intended audience). The friendly-looking worm (who appears to have stopped by to watch the digging and chat with us) and the plump little fly add a playfulness and whimsicallity that would be entirely inappropriate in the British campaign, but they are pitched perfectly for an urban gardening movement that idealizes compost and earthworms. The brown-and-green palette reinforces the "dirt and plants" focus of the poster and fit within a recognizable iconography of organic farming and environmental awarness. The patch on the trouser leg makes a subtle argument about living a non-consumer, environment friendly lifestyle that borrows from the WWII era concern with scrap, necessary trips and "making do" in general (a sentiment that was sadly not shared by the Bush administration that encouraged Americans to buy on credit while it began borrowing heavily to finance two foreign wars).

Image Credit: NH.gov

Wirtheim also borrows from post-war iconography to craft his new American propaganda. His project is, after all, not just any victory garden: he presents the Victory Garden of Tomorrow, and several of the posters draw heavily on the campy futurism of the 1950s and 60s. As he does with the war posters, Wirtheim updates and revises the images while holding onto a tongue-in-cheek version of the original sentiment (in this case, unbridled Jetson-esque optimism).

Image Credit: Joe Wirtheim

This last poster works in yet another iconic image and emphasizes Wirtheim's conscious connection to the environmental movement. Over the shoulder of the Meyer-lemon growing lego-spaceman, Wirtheim includes a version of Earthrise, a photograph taken by William Anders on the Apollo 8 mission and often viewed as one of the single most galvanizing images of the environmental movement.

Image Credit: NASA.gov

Earthrise reminds us in dramatic fashion that our earth is a tiny island home in the cold, dead vastness of space. Wirtheim's image--a mix of space-age camp and environmental realism, reminds us that (since none of the mid-century dreams of space colonization by our century have panned out) the way we grow our food-- and the way we treat the earth in the process-- has lasting effects for us as individuals and for the entire planet.

Delivery and Comparative Rhetorical Analysis

Rachel Schneider — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:45:55 +0000

Image Credit: Phil Gyford

For a handout, download the PDF document outlining this assignment.

Notes for the Instructor: The design of this unit is to teach students to do analysis of visual media like musicals, which include song and dance as well as traditional scripts and visual elements, by focusing on the issues of rhetorical delivery (specifically, the performance of the actors within the stage/camera shot, and the visual elements associated with that performance). This unit was built to go after a more traditional unit that focused on analyzing the lyrical content of musicals’ songs, and to encourage students to tie lyric to delivery.

The elements of the unit included as follows:

Week 1: Introduce terminology of delivery, do comparative analysis of examples in class.

Week 2: Watch two versions of a full-length musical and analyze them in class.

Week 3: Write a short comparative rhetorical analysis (1-2 pages in length), bringing in new material to go with material already covered in class.

Week 4: Write and workshop full-length (5-7 pages) paper.

Goals: The goals of this unit were to make students aware of visual forms of rhetoric and the delivery within performance contexts, as well as to make them consider how those gestures work to constitute meaning along with more traditional elements (like words and lyrics). This unit is also to help them expand their researching skills by learning how to research in multiple venues (electronic and non-electronic, performance reviews, books on composers and lyricists, etc).

Images of the Statue of Liberty in science fiction

John Jones — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:07:51 +0000

Gerry Canavan has posted a collection of images of the Statue of Liberty taken from science fiction stories and films.
Fantastic Universe, August-September 1953 from Thundarr the Barbarian This list should be a great conversation starter for any classes discussing the rhetoric of science fiction or Americana. via Boing Boing

Visual analysis of the Strait of Hormuz incident

John Jones — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:40:59 +0000

Lucaites at No Caption Needed has posted an interesting analysis of the recent dustup between the U.S. and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. According to Lucaites, the argument that the Bush administration has tried to make about the incident through the images—photos and video—released by the U.S., “relies upon two optics or visual logics, one drawing upon a Cold War consciousness and the other drawing upon the logic of the ‘suicide bomber.’ ”

The Cold War optic recalls the ability of the modern, technologically sophisticated, military to observe the world from afar as a means of identifying and assessing threats to national security. Think here of Adlai Stevenson challenging Ambassador Zorin of the USSR with satellite photographs of missile silos in Cuba in 1962. Or more recently, of course, we have Colin Powell using similar photographic evidence to prove the existence of WMDs in Iraq. One case turned out to be true, the other false, but what is important is the underlying assumption of the positive truth content of such visual evidence which presumes to show what otherwise could not be seen. Of course, this is nonsense. Nevertheless, recent videotape from the Gulf of Hormuz operates in precisely this optic. Shot at great distance, we never actually see individuals, let alone incontrovertibly threatening behavior, but that actually works in the favor of the underlying optic of the Cold War logic, for in a sense it is what cannot ordinarily be seen that is the threat, and so the speed boats function as a cipher for a presumably hidden, greater menace.

In this instance, the threat that can’t be seen is animated by the more contemporary optic of the “suicide bomber.” Suicide bombers operate in the light of day, not the cloak of darkness (as was the myth of the Cold War spy). They can be anyone, and indeed, their very visibility makes them effectively invisible (hidden in plain sight), and thus all the more a threat. Add to this the discursive connection between “suicide bombers” and “Middle Eastern Islamic fanatics” and the picture of the speed boats takes on a somewhat different resonance. All the more so in the wake of the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, a self-professed terrorist organization, in 2000. And to accentuate the point the U.S. Navy added an audio recording to its version of the videotape that has someone threatening to bomb the Hopper. We are now told that the Navy doesn’t know where that voice came from and, indeed, cannot confirm that it came from the speedboats. And more recent videotape released by the Iranian government suggests that it is unlikely that it came from the speedboats. But, again, the point is that the photographs are framed within the optic of the suicide bomber that encourages the viewer to see the ordinary and everyday as threats.

Analysis of political campaign posters

John Jones — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:41:34 +0000

The New York Times has posted a slideshow by Ward Sutton, “Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos,” analyzing the posters and bumper stickers of presidential candidates.

via Boing Boing

Filet a fish, or: Why do people hate some advertisments?

John Jones — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:58:35 +0000

I’m a big fan of Seth Stevenson’s advertising columns at Slate (he’s going on sabbatical and will be missed). On Monday he posted a new column, where he discusses readers’ submissions for the worst ads on TV. Like a therapist, Stevenson doesn’t so much agree with the contributors as he commiserates with the feelings of anger, betrayal, emptiness and loss directed at or prompted by these advertisements. One question that we can ask ourselves (and our students) is: Why do we care so much about ads? Take this McDonald’s ad for example:

The ad, which is called “hideous” by its nominator and a “Filet-O-Failure” by Stevenson seems to me to be quite good at selling the product. This is not an artsy ad where it is impossible to tell what is for sale, as in this Simpsons parody:

Instead, the ad reaffirms the product constantly by repeating its name over and over. At the end of the ad, you know what’s for sale, and the repetition has drilled the product into your brain. If you pull up the Filet-O-Fish ad in YouTube, the second item in the list of related videos is this ad, which is titled “Worst Commercial Ever”; however, I would argue that it too is effective. When the ad is over, you know what Flea Market Montgomery is just like—a mini mall! Further, the bizarreness of both the Flea Market and Filet-O-Fish spots is likely to get people to watch them (and share them with their friends on YouTube), an increasingly difficult proposition in the age of TiVo. Shouldn’t the title “worst commercial ever” be reserved for an ad that doesn’t do these things?

So, what is it about these ads—ads which I feel are quite effective at selling their products—that irritates people so much? I think this question might be a good entry into a discussion with students of the rhetorical effects of ads; to get the ball rolling, here are two answers I came up with.

First, I believe that sometime around Bud Bowl I—possibly earlier—consumers began to expect that advertisements should entertain them. (This is a development that might be unique to television; I don’t think radio advertisements are made by people who are worried about entertaining listeners.) If an ad is weird or unfunny, then that somehow violates the unspoken agreement we have with advertisers that they must entertain us. The existence of such a contract would explain why the two commercials discussed above are considered so awful: it’s not because they are bad advertisements, it’s becuase they are bad entertainment.

Secondly, I think commercials like the Filet-O-Fish one irritate people because they offend our culture’s logo-centrism. Consider this quote from Stevenson on the McDonald’s spot:

I will admit I occasionally grinned the first time I saw it. But in terms of selling the product? Filet-O-Failure. One should not film fast-food items in their sad cardboard boxes, exposed to the audience's close inspection in a series of long, tight close-ups. Those greasy fish-bricks look decidedly unappetizing.

Here he is attacking the ad on logical grounds. Fast food is gross, he says, so it isn’t logical to show it in closeup in advertisements because then people won’t want to eat it. But everybody knows that Fast Food is gross (particularly the Filet-O-Fish), but even post-Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me people still flock to McDonald’s: the company’s recent resurgence has been built on the back of their greasy staples, not their salads. Clearly, logic isn’t the only thing driving our food-purchasing behavior. Acknowledging this, I think, is cognitively difficult for many people, so when they see ads that defy logic, they ask why a person would make such an ad. The answer—they made it “that way” because that way is effective—is troubling, and the seeming disconnection between the purpose of the ad and its logical effect makes them upset. In other words, hating an advertisement is often an expression of a person’s own dissatisfaction with their emotional decision-making processes.

Comparison and Rhetorical Analysis

John Jones — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:55:51 +0000

Notes for the Instructor: This is a unit-long assignment, which asks the students to write first a short paper (300–500 words), in which they compare two images/objects/spaces and their respective messages, and then produce a long essay (4–5 pages), in which they incorporate the text they have already produced in the short paper, but make an argument about the rhetorical effectiveness of the two images/objects. In other words, in the short paper they discuss message alone; in the long paper they discuss both the message and its reception. The assignment involves doing extensive research into the respective culture/ideology, which produced the images/objects. Both the short and the long essay should contain a rhetorically crafted, comparative description of the images/objects, which should serve to set up the main argument, i.e., to make the reader more receptive to it.

Here are two sample arguments (quoted with the students’ permission):

Short Paper: “Two of the most well-known statues of King David were erected by Renaissance painters Michelangelo and Donatello. Both artists’ sculptures differ from previous representations of heroic figures in that their versions of David are depicted in the nude. However, these two artists’ figures differ in their characteristic representation of David’s victory: Donatello emphasizes its spiritual side, while Michelangelo expresses its power.”

Long Paper: “Designed twenty years apart, house X and house Y both claim to blend artificial, human creation with the natural landscape, in an attempt to appeal to homebuyers’ rising ecological awareness. However, while X spurred an entire trend in residential architecture, Y remains a lonely monument to its author’s efforts. Y’s rigid, museum-like aesthetic has proven unattractive compared to X’s accommodating, livable beauty.”

Assignment Description: Write a short comparison, which leads to the creation of a rhetorical analysis.

Category: Individual Project.

Goals: This assignment has several goals: a) to give the students the opportunity to realize that successful arguments about rhetorical effect can be quite complex and require much research, b) to give them a chance to revise and incorporate some of their own writing into longer pieces of text with different goals, c) to help them realize that no description or comparison is “neutral;” all descriptions/comparisons have a particular rhetorical goal and audience, and their language and selection of elements is important.

Short Essay

Choose two closely related images/objects, which are at least fifty years old and write a short essay (300–500 words), in which you make a comparative claim about their respective messages. In order to make a sustainable claim, you will need to research the historical and cultural context in which the images/objects first appeared.

Before you begin, consider again the following questions:

What is the context in which the images/objects first appeared?
What audiences were they meant for?
How were they meant to be used/viewed/displayed?
What is their message? Their goal?
How do they strike you as a viewer?

Requirements:

Your paper must have an arguable, strong comparative claim.
The historical/cultural context of the two images must be expounded briefly – in no more than one paragraph for each image/object. Only choose to include that information which will help your argument.
Your may have a “block” comparison or a “running” comparison – choose the strategy most appropriate for your argument. Your comparison must include a description of the images/objects crafted so as to set up your main argument and to make your reader more receptive to your claims. In other words, concentrate mostly on the elements which will help your argument.
Your paper must contain sufficient visual analysis to support your claim.

Grading Criteria:

Clarity, focus, and value of your central claim/argument
Appropriateness of selected visual elements, their ordering, comparison, and interpretation in relation to main argument
Use of visual terms and vocabulary
Clarity and precision of language
Correct syntax, grammar, and punctuation

Long Essay

Building on your short paper, write a long argumentative essay (4-5 pages), in which you make a comparative argument about the rhetorical effectiveness of two closely related images/objects. Your images/objects must be at least fifty years old. In order to make a sustainable claim, you will need to research the historical and cultural context in which the images/objects first appeared. You claim must involve the ideologies and messages of your images/objects as well as the reception of those messages.

Before you begin, consider again the following questions:

What is the context in which the images/objects first appeared?
What audiences were they meant for?
How were they meant to be used/viewed/displayed?
What is their message? Their goal?
How effective were they in their own time and place? If you cannot find direct information on this question, take your best and most educated guess!

Requirements:

Your paper must have an arguable, strong comparative claim.
The historical/cultural context of the two images must be expounded briefly – in no more than one paragraph for each image/object. Only choose to include that information which will help your argument.
Your paper must contain descriptions of the images/objects, appropriate for your argument and for the comparison you are making. The purpose of the description is to set up the subsequent argument and analysis.
Your may have a “block” comparison or a “running” comparison – choose the strategy most appropriate for your argument.
Your paper must contain sufficient visual analysis to support your claim.
You must cite all sources you have used for your paper in a Works Cited sheet. Please use at least three academic or otherwise reputable sources. (Wikipedia will not do.)

Grading Criteria:

Clarity, focus, and value of your central claim/argument
Appropriateness of the descriptions and comparison in relation to main argument
Appropriateness of selected visual elements and their ordering in relation to main argument
Use of visual terms and vocabulary
Clarity and precision of language
Correct syntax, grammar, and punctuation
Correct use of citation guidelines and formatting