viz. - politics

Walter Benjamin on photography and film

Laura Thain — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 08:14:16 +0000

To wrap up our semester on viz., our staff showcases new static content we've added to our "teaching" and "visual theory" sections. Below is my discussion of Walter Benjamin's canonical essay on photography, film, and the politics of mass media, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Each day this week, we'll feature a new piece of static content on our blog. We hope instructors, students, and persons interested in visual rhetoric will browse our archives (linked in the top bar) and find useful material for research, pedagogy, and all forms of intellectual inquiry.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations. 1955. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Reprint ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1986. 217–52.

By Laura Thain

In this seminal essay, originally published in French in 1936, Benjamin outlines shifts in the way art produces meaning after the advent of the photograph. His essay takes places in fifteen parts, which explore how film is physically produced, how that production influences the way that audiences interact with film, and how those audiences reconcile film with their pre-existing value structures and beliefs. Benjamin ultimately suggests a method of reading photography and film that accounts for both their material production and how that material production supersedes or alters prior methods of criticism. Central to critical practice in the age of mechanical reproduction is the establishment of critical distance between audience and media form, so that the audience can resist pure enjoyment and instead ask how photography and film can help us see differently, even as they attempts to perfectly replicate the way we already perceive the world. Writing from Paris, Benjamin, a Jewish German expatriate disturbed by the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, explores the political implications of new, mechanized art forms in a rapidly-changing 20th century.

I. “In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. “

Benjamin begins by outlining a history of artistic reproduction. Even the ancient Greeks had technologies to reproduce art, like founding and stamping. The principle difference between earlier forms of reproduction and photography, argues Benjamin, is speed. Photography, which allowed the artist to create with his eye rather than his hands, eventually developed into moving picture able to contain speech. This is the point from we might begin to consider mechanical reproduction an artistic form in its own right, rather than a way to reproduce pre-existing art forms.

II. “The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.”

Before photography, a piece of art’s authenticity resided in the original copy. This is because the original work of art occupies a particular time and space, handed down from person to person since its creation, bearing evidence of its own provenance. Any copy that comes after an original work of art was a “forgery” of the original, and therefore, practically worthless.

Art created via mechanical reproduction doesn’t fit into this old model for two reasons. We can’t call the scene captured on film the “original” like we can do with a painting, because the camera lens creates art from its subject matter—the subject matter alone is not art. In this way, the camera can even surpass what the eye sees in the original scene, because the lens can see slower, faster, or closer than the human eye under the right adjustments. Secondly, mechanically reproduced art does not occupy a single time or space like a painting does. Photography and sound recording are forms of telecommunication because they allow us to see and hear things from a different time and place.

Because mechanically-reproduced art has no claim to authenticity by means of singularity or originality, Benjamin posits it loses some of its connection or essence. He coins the term “aura” to encompass that which the painting has but the photograph lacks—the aura is all the contexts a thing gathers since its inception. Photographs, by contrast, exist in multiple places simultaneously, and each viewer experiences them within a distinct and separate context. No longer can we trace a provenance of photography. Thus, we lose the artistic object’s relationship with tradition.

III. “The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope.“

Benjamin talks here about the relationship between human senses and the media that humans use to communicate those senses. The way we perceive and process information has two causes: “natural” and “historical.” Our natural way of sensing is biological and grows with us innately. But our historical way of seeing is shaped by our culture—but the modes of art we understand and become familiar with. Benjamin claims that classical cultures did not realize this distinction, but wiser now and more modern, we might.

The tension between natural and historical sense is also the tension between experiencing something and seeing it represented in a mechanical representation. He uses the example of a mountain vista. We like the idea of seeing mountains on a warm summer day, and because we seek the “aura” of the real experience, we consume endlessly reproductions of it in photographs and magazines. And because the public desires equality and accessibility in the industrial age, photographic representations of the mountain become a more stable reality than the mountain itself. But the photograph can never have the aura of the original experience.

IV. “…for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.“

Art’s function, Benjamin argues, is historically tied up with ritual, and ritual depends on the existence of an original, authentic piece of art. Even though the same piece of art might get tied up in several different rituals over time, ritual remained an important way that viewers made sense of art. However, as mechanical reproduction increased, artists needed to find new justifications for art outside of ritual—“art for art’s sake.” This attitude toward art denied that art had any social function.

This is the biggest hint that art in the age of mechanical reproduction has an even clearer social function than ever before. Freed of “parasitic” ritual (in which the piece of art is the authority), art was now free to be a form of communication built from new contexts and orders. Art was produced not for ritual then, but for reproduction. In this sense, art can only be political when it breaks free from the “aura,” and this process is only possible via mechanical reproduction.

V. “Works of art are received and valued on different planes.”

While works of art in the past were the center of ritual and therefore were primarily of “cult” value, mechanical works of art are the center of exhibition. When works are created for ritual, they function as a type of magic and can only be recognized as art over time. However, when works are created to be exhibited, they are considered works of art from the start.

VI. “The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture.”

Benjamin recounts a brief history of photography. The first popular photographs were portraits that allowed loved ones to become cult objects, especially after their death. However, soon, photographs became visual evidence of certain places at certain times. Soon, people need captions for photographs to tell them what they are seeing. Rather than being cult objects, photographs become new centers of meaning; therefore, they take on special political significance.

VII. “Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised.”

Benjamin discusses how photography made possible a language of pictures that “transformed the entire nature of art,” and uses this section to transition into a discussion of film as a new site of artistic meaning.

VIII. “The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera.”

Benjamin dissects the difference between a stage actor’s performance and a screen actor’s performance. The film actor performs differently than the stage actor because his audience is not present, putting them in a position of “critic” rather than spectator. The camera forces the perspective and position of the audience, and this becomes a crucial tool in establishing the relationship between actor and audience in the medium of film. Because the audience’s perspective is fixed by the camera’s lens, there is no possibility for the kind of “cult value” Benjamin ascribes to earlier forms of art and portrait photography.

IX. “[W]hat matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than representing someone else.”

While the stage actor constructs the narrative of the play, the camera constructs the narrative of a film. Disparate moments are reassembled by mechanical means to tell a story, sometimes beyond the intentions of the film actor. The film actor, then, is prized for his realism and the extent to which he can successfully provide the self-performance necessary to the film’s narrative. The camera fragments and disrupts the actor’s “aura” through mechanical reproduction, replacing the presence of the actor with the presence of the camera. This presents a new space for artistic reproduction similar to that which Benjamin ascribes to the photograph. No longer must audiences believe in the reality of performance to understand that performance as artistic—now, audiences can celebrate the performance as constructed, and judge its artistic value based on that construction.

X. “At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.”

Benjamin discusses the politics of labor involved in filmed performance. Through the technology of film, the actor is able to translate his “mirror” image to the public, but this aura-less reproduction is a mere commodity to which the actor has no more connection than a factor worker to the products of his labor. To replace the aura, film studios construct “cults of personality” which attempt to hide the film’s status as a commodity. While film has revolutionary potential, the material conditions of its production in Western Europe limit its political value.

Film also has the potential to make its audience its stars. Like other forms of mass media that precede it, specifically, print journalism, newsreels offer every day audiences the potential for filmic representation. In addition, film audiences feel, like sports fans, compelled to critic and comment on the thing they watch, which makes them feel like participants in the film’s creation of meaning. For this reason, Benjamin argues, the line between reader and writer in the 20^th century has become considerably blurred. There is enormous power embedded in an audience’s conception of themselves as co-authors of film, and for this reason, the film industry relies on spectacle and distraction to neutralize film’s revolutionary potential.

XI. “The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.”

Benjamin further elaborates on film’s creation of spectacle. He explains that a spectator watching the process of filming (rather than the film itself) could only avoid seeing the tools of film production by looking through the lens of the camera itself. Otherwise, being present during filming means seeing the tools of film production all around you. This is a major difference between stage and screen that we might take a sign that technology has finally brought about its own invisibility.

Benjamin reads this phenomenon in terms of rhetorical distance. He contrasts painting and film using the analogy of the magician vs. the painter. The magician increases critical distance to perform his magical healing, whereas the surgeon closes the critical distance between himself and his patient by literally penetrating his body. Painting also relies on mysticism and distance to create aesthetic value. Film, on the other hand, closes the distance between the real and the imaginary so completely that the imaginary appears real.

XII. “The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”

Benjamin now turns to a discussion of the implications of mass production to popular culture. Paintings, he argues, could not have a mass audience because they could not be reproduced and publicly viewed. But because films are manufactured via reproduction, we must consider how the mass public reads these objects. Benjamin asserts that the public “uncritically enjoys” the conventional—the thing they are used to and familiar with—and responds with “aversion” to anything new.

XIII. “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.”

Benjamin implicitly asks his reader to reject and resist the “uncritical enjoyment” of conventional film and instead look at how we can use this new technology to perform new kinds of critiques. Because the technology allows us to rewind, revist, slow down, or speed up action, sound, and experience, we can use the film to “see” as we’ve never seen before. Just as psychoanalysis asks us to think about and articulate the unthought and the unspoken, film asks us to see the unseen.

XIV. “One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later.”

Benjamin argues demands for new forms of artistic expression predate the development of film, and that this is a pattern we can trace throughout history. Artistic expression always demands more than technology can provide. In fact, art can be seen to push technological developments as it provides the ideological context for them. Art understands that new media eventually become normalized, and so art always strives to push the available means of technology beyond its present capabilities.

XV. “The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.”

Benjamin concludes by asking the public to consciously understand the processes by which they view film and “apperceive” or make sense of the film in terms of their pre-existing beliefs. This, according to his larger argument, is what a larger method of film criticism should consider. The chief danger of film is its ability to hypnotize its audience into acceptance via its hyperrealism. Public attention to and interest in how a film constructs narrative, reality, time, and movement is necessary if film is to accomplish its revolutionary potential.

Further reading

T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919).

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944).

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964).

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980).

Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation (2000).

What's Haunting Dove's Real Beauty Campaign?

clsloan — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 13:57:29 +0000

Image Credit: People's Lab

Every image is haunted by the excluded. Every social movement is haunted by flaws. After reading Avery F. Gordon's Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination and Nivedita Menon's Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law, I became a bit haunted by the possibility of subversion. These two texts tell us that ghosts, in various forms, are absolutely everywhere, and after ruminating on their content and methodologies, I started to see ghosts, too.

Gordon's book criticizes canonical sociology being far too focused on the present, the physical and the empirical, and for failing to account for “missing” and the “disappeared” subject positions. These absent presences, the ghosts that haunt our supposedly complete accounts of societies and histories, need to be accounted for. The ghost, for Gordon, is “the sign, or the empirical evidence if you like, that tells you a haunting is taking place. The ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life” (8). In other words, what societies exclude, keep out and make abject are, paradoxically, at the very heart of cultural meaning.

At first glance, Menon's study seems pretty far removed from Gorrdon's subject matter. While Gordon's book makes itself tantalizingly fantastic by splaying references to ghosts and hauntings all over its cover page, Menon's text looks pretty down-to-earth. Weighty, serious terms like “politics” and “the law” indicate no-nonsense subject matter. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Gordon and Menon's projects actually share a lot of crucial points. Menon, like Gordon, suggests that cultural movements are haunted by unintended subject positions. Menon emphasizes the overwhelming power of discourse and demonstrates that even apparently revolutionary action can backfire if it's energized by problematic reasoning. Menon gives the general example of abortion “rights” early in her book: pro-choice discourse that claims abortion as a “private right” for women who deserve to make their own decisions about their own bodies necessarily forecloses on the possibility that abortion could be a public concern that requires, for example, insurance coverage or even subsidies. Menon focuses on legal discourse, but we can infer that all social movements and campaigns are bound by the rules of intelligibility: what can be said is limited by what makes sense given the current cultural climate. Because of this intrinsic problem with discourse, that only culturally available ideas are, well, available for mobilization, revolutionary discourse becomes haunted by counter-revolutionary possibilities, the ghosts of future oppression.

When it comes to the difficulties of emancipatory discourse, people craving equality for various gender and sexuality subject positions have certainly struggled with some double-edged swords. The highly volatile, highly relevant, intensely current debate on gay marriage springs to mind. By appropriating the universalizing discourse of the normalcy of monogamous marriage, many gay couples strive to secure valuable legal rights and cultural intelligibility. On the other hand, does this appropriation simply re-affirm the value of monogamy, the desirability of a capitalism-driven “normalcy”, and/or erase the multiplicity of queer experience in favor of the bourgeois “loyalty, romance and procreation” model of sexual relationships in mainstream culture?

Another interesting movement, a supposedly all-inclusive self-esteem builder for women, has been picked up by the Dove soap company. Their “Real Beauty” campaign strives to differentiate Dove from other hygiene or clothing product companies that rely on exclusive, unattainable ideals of attractiveness to sell their merchandise. This advertising scheme (which can, perhaps, double as a social statement) implies that our current standards of beauty unfairly exclude women who are too old, too fat, too ethnic, too “physically flawed.” Instead, Dove's visual ads argue that our concept of beauty needs to expand so that we see all women as beautiful. Of course, there are some problems here. The image of “beautiful” women of diverse races and body types is haunted by a few obvious exclusions: women with blemished skin, women with disabilities, women who might not be immediately recognizable as women, women who aren't sparkling and clean who, perhaps, can't afford Dove soap. Isn't it unfair, though, to criticize a soap company for not suggesting that dirty women can also be beautiful? I can hear some of my practical friends asking. Not when their ad campaign focuses on beauty as an all-inclusive category, I can hear myself snidely responding. Like “universally recognized rights,” “universally recognized beauty” seems like a completely unattainable dream.

And even if it weren't, even if we could exorcize the ghosts from this image and convince the world that beauty is, indeed, about confidence and personal pride, are there any discourse-related problems we should be thinking about? About a week ago I came across a public-service campaign. There were several signs taped up on stall doors and beside mirrors in a public women's restroom. Drawn in marker on colorful construction paper, they assured the reader, “You are beautiful!” and that “Beauty has no rank order.” Even as I recognized that the campaigners certainly meant the absolute best and were doubtless motivated by great intentions, I was immediately prompted to wonder: so I deserve to be encouraged about my beauty but not my happiness, my intelligence, or my ability to help others? The signs, even in kindness, even in the suggestion that all women were beautiful, relied on the discourse of attractiveness to empower. Self-worth is still couched in terms of physical appearance, even if we're getting a bit more generous with the required criteria.

State-Craft or The Art of Leadership in George W. Bush's Paintings

Rachel Schneider — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 04:17:13 +0000

Image Credit: Kim Leeson / George W. Bush Presidential Center

Last year, an adventurous hacker found and leaked pictures of paintings made by former President George W. Bush, including two revealing self-portraits from the shower. Now, the private hobby has been made public by President Bush himself. The George W. Bush Presidential Library, up the road in Dallas, has just opened an exhibit, The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy, which features portraits Bush painted of the world leaders he once encountered as President, paired alongside mementos from his travels and his musings about statecraft. However, what makes these paintings remarkable for viewers?

Image Credit: Grant Miller / George W. Bush Presidential Center

It’s not their particular styling, for one. Look at the portrait of Tony Blair above: the pose (facing forward, including head and shoulders) is fairly standard. His formal outfit—blue jacket, blue shirt, red tie—belongs in a professional headshot. If his artistic intention was, as he told his daughter in a Today interview, to capture “the unique personalities with whom he served,” his art perhaps fails to rise to this level. The art itself is fairly generic. These portraits are something like outsider art, as painted by the ultimate insider.

Rather, here, the interest comes not from the art, but the artist. If, as hinted in the exhibit’s copy, “this exhibit tells the story of his relationships with these leaders,” it comes from Bush’s presentation of his work. The exhibit frames the art as the result of personal diplomacy in practice; displayed above various gifts he received from these officials, the portraits become another kind of tribute. His interview with his daughter Jenna Bush Hager focuses significantly on his intentionality—what he felt as he painted the works and what he feels about the individuals.

Image Credit: Grant Miller / George W. Bush Presidential Center

For example, Bush and his daughter discuss at length his portrait of Vladimir Putin. Bush recounts a story about when Putin “dissed” the Bush family dog Barney, and explains that “Vladimir is a person who views the US as an enemy. I felt that he viewed the world as US benefits and Russia loses, or vice versa.” This binaristic attitude might well be reflected in what Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post described as Putin’s “creepy scabs of eyebrows” and “the murky mud-mask of the rest of the face.” But any personality the viewer might find in the portrait might come more from the viewer than the art. Because we know about President Bush, because this art might reflect his own insight, we can read into the art some meaning. Even if the craft is not high, the art is there, in the viewer’s mind.

Image Credit: Grant Miller / George W. Bush Presidential Center

These portraits, like outsider art more generally, raise interesting questions about interpretation. What can we read into such work? What attention should we pay to the artist’s intentions? If this gallery seeks to instruct its viewers in the art of leadership, that art is one that is difficult to visualize. But these self-expressions on Bush’s part might in fact suggest legitimate insights about statecraft: the tenuousness of personal connections, the struggle to engage, to produce real intimacy, to turn it to public good. Portraiture is often judged based on the likeness—does this portrait of President G.H.W. Bush, done by his son, capture him? What it does preserve, however unskilled, is the son’s engagement with his own father’s legacy, and presents it for the public view. At least there’s some interesting vulnerability there to enjoy. I for one can’t wait for Barack Obama’s post-presidential poetry chapbook.

Texans Getting Campy

Laura Thain — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 19:33:56 +0000

Image Credit: daviddewhurst.com

Hey y'all, in case you haven't heard, we're electing a new Lt. Governor this year here in the great state of Texas. With four Texas Republicans competing for the position, a campaign is taking shape to see who can be the cowboy-iest candidate of 2014. With a fight like that, you might expect to see some campaign ads that border on self-parody. And what, my friends, do you get when sincerity fails? Well, of course, a whole lot of camp!

Incumbent David Dewhurst, who is (for real) a member of the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame, released an unusual campaign ad this week. Before we view it, let’s take a look at a more serious cowboy call from contender and current Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples:

Ok, so we’ve got some typical campaign rhetoric going on here with a little bit of cowboy flair, but nothing too unusual. Staples' team shows that our Texan values are threatened by the specter of the Democrats and big government (specifically, the evil Obama and his friend the state of California). And it’s no surprise that the ad finds a way to say “Todd Staples” as many times as possible while showing him practically BURST across a true Texan field on a horse. He’s a cowboy in shining armor. Let’s take this as an example of non-campy cowboy. There’s nothing particularly failed about the sincerity of this campaign video—its effectiveness rests firmly in the success or failure of its polemics. This is a candidate who’s clearly courting Tea Party conservatives and ready to toe the Republican party line, taking no prisoners. (Perhaps it’s no coincidence that he’s considerably behind the other three candidates in a recent poll.)

But here’s what happens when the cowboy antics get a bit more theatrical: check out a favorite of mine (courtesy of Cate Coleman here in the DWRL), from current US Senator John Cornyn’s 2008 campaign:

The particular kind of camp we see here is determined by the audience:

Image Credit: Screenshots form Cornyn's campaign video

It is the campaign’s attempt to be serious and the utter failure of that seriousness that makes this over-the-top cowboy spectacle campy—and it’s the risk that many conservative appeals to “traditional” Texan-white-rancher-values take.

How, then, might a conservative campaign make the same kind of appeals to individualism and masculinity without resorting to the cowboy cliché? Take a look at Dewhurst’s recent campaign video as a response to that kind of rhetoric:

That’s right, folks. No cowboys. No news coverage. No dark and foreboding shots of Washington or California. Just a simple, sustained (nearly twenty full seconds) demonstration of bodily masculinity. Contrast our TX t-shirt wearing SuperBeard with the California hipster literally fondling a shake weight. Could it be that, unlike John Cornyn’s campaign, Dewhurst is intentionally using camp in his campaign rhetoric?

Image credit: Screenshot from Dewhurst's campaign video

It’s a strange move that I think attempts to accomplish a few goals simultaneously. First, in response to radical right complaints that Dewhurst isn’t “Republican” enough (perhaps because he has on occasion dared to try and cooperate with Texan Democrats in the State Senate), Dewhurst’s campaign produces a video so machismo that you almost can’t help but laugh. The camp seems self-conscious—which we might infer from the heavily stylized camera filter and a variety of other formal elements of the film itself—but it is serious in its implications, that is, that the Texan economy is absolutely tied to strong, hyper-masculine leadership. Bigger is better. Bearded is best.

I dare say the video also makes sincere attempts to appeal to younger voters, although this might represent the limits of the campy aesthetic. The crude, Instagram-like styling of the film (which, upon further scrutiny, is most interesting because it appeals to nostalgia for a time that young people in Texas never experienced outside of The Wonder Years and photo filters) has the most potential, despite its sincere intent, to fail.

Perhaps this lesser-watched Dewhurst video can tell us more about the campaign’s strange appeal to a hipster aesthetic. Watch it and see if you think Texas is ready to “walk down the aisle” with Lt. Governor Dewhurst all over again:

Does it remind you, too, of a Royal Tenenbaums style narration? What do you think of Dewhurst's campaign rhetoric?

Commercial and Cooperative Subjectivities: Does an Independent Lens See Differently?

Laura Thain — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:09:05 +0000

Image Credit: Hudson Valley Almanac

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."--Robert Capa, founding member of Magnum. d. 1954, landmine accident

Currently on exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center is a carefully curated selection of Magnum photos, drawing from the organization’s archive housed at the Center. Magnum, an elite professional photographic cooperative, brings together some of the world’s premiere photographers in a collaboration resistant to the commercial demands of photojournalism. This week on viz., we’ll feature the exhibit and explore issues central to visual argumentation and mass media. This post will explore what possibilities arise when photographers become their own producers and distributors—what influence do the conditions of production have on the genre of photojournalism itself?

AUDIENCE Many photojournalists speak of the “poster effect”—a bold, central image and a clean, contrasting background. The “poster effect” assumes a disinterested, distracted audience who must be coaxed into viewing the image amidst a complex matrix of visual competition. Below is an example of the "poster" effect. This image, taken by DC freelance photographer Mannie Garcia, was used by Shepard Fairey (without permission) in the iconic Obama HOPE poster.

Image Credit: The Online Photographer

The Magnum photos arguably make different assumptions about a general audience—at the heart of the organization's ethos is the belief that people are interested in the depiction of human experiences and events. Reading this audience in good faith, a condition which is possible only when we remove photography from its commercialized context, opens up artistic possibilities. Below, Inge Morath plays with the convention of "poster" photography by including a posed photograph alongside a boy cobbling shoes in Iran.

Image Credit: Perceptive Travel

I was struck by how seldom Magnum photographs relied on the conventions of high art to communicate their message. Instead, I observed tactics that subtly drew attention to photography as a medium rather than as an unmediated experience. These compositional techniques showed respect for a mass audience and assumed they wanted more than a photograph that exactly replicated experience. Rather, these photographs meditate on what it means to capture an experience at all.

From Henri Cartier-Bresson's series The Great Leap Foward. Image Credit: Personal Photograph.

COMPOSITION These photographs often resist the “poster effect” and instead include jarring edges, multiple centers of movement, and background that resists its position vis a vis the foreground. Below, Burt Glen plays with photographic convention to depict integration in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Image Credit: Personal Photograph

TECHNIQUE Rather than creating “true-to-life” images, the Magnum photographs are often interested in using the camera lens to see beyond the naked eye. In so doing, they often highlight the limits of both the camera and of visual memory. Below, Erich Hartmann photographs data output of an IBM voice recognition study in an attempt to visualize sound.

Image Credit: Personal Photograph

MEDIATION Unconventional cropping, composition, and photographic technique bring attention to the photograph as a medium, rather than a transparent window into experience. They challenge the idea that photography represents memory and suggest that our cognition, rather, has shifted with the advent of photography. While commercial photojournalism often capitalizes on the relationship between human memory and photography, presenting photography as an artifact of memory an therefore memory available for consumption, the Magnum photos challenge the assumptions underpinning “photorealism” (that is, that a painting of a photograph is as close to the real scene as a painting of the scene itself). By daring to bring attention to the medium of photography itself, the Magnum photos seem to suggest that the photographic has altered our perception of memory, rather than the other way around.

Below, Paul Fusco depicts Robert Kennedy's funeral train by using an unconventional f-stop setting to depict the movement of the train.

Image Credit: Agnostica

THE PERSISTANCE OF THE COMMERCIAL Despite all the ways in which the Magnum photos resist the conventions and assumptions of commercial photojournalism, the commercial persists. Magnum's experiments in the digital acknowledge competitition from new media as a driving inspirational force. And human experience itself cannot, of course, avoid the commercial as a formative part of cultural experience. Magnum photos often play with commercial conventions in order to make subtle statements through the photographic medium itself. For instance, Muhammad Ali's fist here is the real celebrity. Its owner is merely relegated to the background.

Image Credit: Roberta Cucchario

We hope you will enjoy the rest of the week's post on the Ransom Center's exhibition and offer us your own thoughts about the intersections between photography, visual rhetoric, and the digital age.

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

What is graffiti and who does it belong to?

Laura Thain — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Geoff Hargadon

This week on viz. we'll be exploring graffiti culture in Austin and beyond, beginning with an interactive graffiti map that we'll use to begin archiving graffiti in and around the community in which we live. Please visit and contribute!

In this post, I'd like to introduce some issues central to reading graffiti as both a performative and political act. I take as my primary examples the HOPE Outdoor Gallery on 11th St. and Baylor in Austin's Clarksville neighborhood and graffiti from inside a now-demolished bicycle shop that once operated in West Campus. Using these examples, I'd like to explore definitions of graffiti and raise questions of property and ownership in public spaces. Join our interactive mapping project and follow our posts this week as we take a closer look at Austin graffiti.

The HOPE Outdoor gallery was founded 2011 on the site of an abandoned condominium construction site. At 2011’s SXSW festival, Shepard Fairey, renowned street artist and creator of the iconic HOPE poster for the Obama campaign, contributed the first murals, pictured above. The project hopes “to provide muralists, graffiti artists and community groups the opportunity to display large scale art pieces driven by inspirational, positive and educational messaging.”

Most people in Austin, however, refer to the installation as the “free wall” or the “Baylor street art wall.” Within weeks, Fairey’s mural was tagged by local graffiti artists, and the HOPE foundation began to lose control of the mural. Although both the property owners and HOPE make consistent attempts to control contributions to the site, its current façade is a constantly-rotating parade of vibrant Austin graffiti culture alongside (and often, on top of) commissioned art.

The remains of Fairey's mural, late 2011 Image Credit: Super Sonic Electronic

Such political battles represent a larger discussion of “street art” vs. graffiti. “Street artists” often cite their desire to escape the negative connotations attached to graffiti and those who create graffiti, who go by a variety of names (tagger, bomber, writer, or simply artist). The editor of a LA street art blog Melrose & Farfax represents this point of view. She explains, "Both graffiti and street art use the re-appropriation of public space. But with graffiti you are limited to what you can do with a spray can on the spot. Street art might employ some of the application techniques, but most often, it is a finished product that is brought ready-made to the location, so the artist's message is much more developed. Street art is not so much about making a name and leaving a mark as it is getting people to interact with and view something in a new way, and that is a big difference."

Current state of Fairey's mural as of Sept. 2013. Image Source: Personal photograph. Click to enlarge.

Street art, at least, in the case of the "free wall," represents the commissioned, publicly-sanctioned offspring of graffiti culture. And the battle between graffiti and street art on Austin's Baylor St. represents a larger battle over ownership of public spaces. That conversation often revolves around aesthetic value--that is, that public art is of higher value to the community (and, less abstractly, the surrounding property) if it comes from a commissioned artist. Differences in quality are difficult to determine and always rely on subjective aesthetic criteria, though attempting to set out those criteria clearly demonstrates that the aesthetic and the political go hand-and-hand in public spaces. Often, the "quality" of an art installation relies heavily on our ability to name the artist. It is anonymous or psuedonymous art that holds less aesthetic value. Graffiti shows us in clear and interesting ways the connection between art and power.

Issues of ownership influence indoor spaces as much as outdoor ones. I'd like to close by raising some questions about ownership as well as definition. The images below come from the shop bathroom and workspace of one of the oldest bicycle shops in Austin which closed in May of 2013, citing high property taxes in West Campus. The building that once housed the shop was demolished within days to make room for a student-housing high rise.

Image Credit: RED

Unlike most photographs of graffiti, this documentation represents not a stage of graffiti production on a particular architectural object but the final stage of graffiti in this place. Rather than reminding us only of the ephemeral nature of street art, it points to the temporality of urban landscapes, as well.

As far as I know, this is the only surviving photograph of this graffiti--a lone entry in an archive. Bathroom graffiti is a peculiar example of public art. It holds a particular type of captive audience, but exists in a private space within the public (that is, the public space of the restroom itself.) This particular graffiti came from a bathroom that was used exclusively by bike mechanics and perhaps a few special regulars, but like most bathroom graffiti, still functions on some level as an insider text.

Image Credit: RED

I'd like to close with this image in the hopes that it can help us both expand and refine a definition of graffiti. This is the mechanics' bathroom door, heavily decorated with objects removed from punctured tires over the course of many years. Like the bathroom wall, it is an ever-changing landscape that documents specific events and experiences to a larger audience. If graffiti is collaborative, largely anonymous or pseudonymous inscription geared toward communicating presence and experience in a public space, the nail wall certainly qualifies--it in fact goes beyond the experience of the mechanics and additionally documents the experience (and presence!) of the cycling community of which they are a part.

For more on graffiti, see this week's other contributions:

Graffiti? I'll Know It When I See It. Or Not.

Graffiti as Advertisement

Jeremiah the Innocent Icon

Violent Encounters

Laura Thain — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:39:42 +0000

Louisville Cardinal players react to Kevin Ware's leg injury during March Madness. Image Credit: Yahoo Sports

I’ll admit, I stayed up way past my bedtime last night listening to the Boston police scanner, following as closely as I could the developments in the Boston Marathon bombing. In the wee hours of this morning, I thought about documenting the dozens of news items (as well as widespread speculation across message boards and social media) to take a tally of how much of the information proliferating in the uncertainty of Friday morning would be disproved by Friday afternoon.

As I began the project, it soon proved futile—there was far too much information and I ran into (as I might have anticipated) problems discerning journalistic fact from fiction right from the get go. It was only when I stopped documenting and trying to quantify the evidence that I began to think about the relationship between violence and speculative practice and assemble a quite different archive. [GORE WARNING: the images beyond this cut are NSFW and may shock and disturb some viewers. Discretion is advised.]

What appears here is a somewhat experimental exercise in assembling and reading images of violence and gore. The images below all represent some intersection of sport, violence, and speculative practice. Let me explain why I’ve picked them.

Image Credit: Tumblr

Sporting events are ritualized violence.

Sporting events contain and set limits on the violent impulses of society, translating violence into spectacle for mass consumption and participation. It is for this reason that when violence occurs outside of the set script of the sporting event, the results are often traumatic for both the participants and the audience. Non-scripted displays of violence bring attention to the unstable nature of “appropriate” and “inappropriate” displays of violence. They also cause us to question the ethics of our consumption of violence by juxtaposing structural and non-structural violence; the pleasure of one is interrupted by the horror of another when we witness violence on the playing field.

Let’s look at an example of unscripted violence before the age of the internet:

The video above shows goaltender Clint Malarchuk during a 1989 Sabres game against the St Louis Blues. In a freak accident, the Blues’ right wing slashes Malarchuk’s throat with his skate, severing his jugular vein and very nearly killing him.

Note that the announcers demand the camera pan away from the accident and immediately begin to play a radio ad for Buick over the noice of the crowd’s reaction. Those present in the stands witnessed “many spectators physically sickened by the sight [of Malarchuk’s injury]. 11 fans fainted, 2 more suffered heart attacks and 3 players vomited on the ice.”

Present-day broadcast media is far less likely to pan away from injury in this manner. Kevin Ware’s NCAA March Madness injury, for instance, was replayed several times as they carried Ware away in a stretcher. How can we account for the dramatic difference in the way violence is portrayed and mediated now?

Speculative practice can help assuage anxiety about the unstable line between scripted and non-scripted violence.

When audiences engage in speculative practice about violence that occurs outside the realm of accepted social practice, they are asserting their own boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate engagements in violent behavior. In this way, speculative practice can help create a crowd-sourced discursive boundary where institutional boundaries fail—that is, these institutional boundaries are either inadequate or are subverted by violent offenders.

Speculative practice in response to violence is multi-faceted; it can pursue a variety of solutions to the breach of the code of institutionalized violence.

Tactical approaches can seek to bring violent offenders to justice, but they just as often can seek to levy judgment and punishment independent of institutional authority (i.e. vigilantism). Speculative practice is not, however, always tactical. Speculative practice can happen in sustained, maintained alternative media outlets (reddit, 4chan, conspiracy theory hubs, etc.). Often, speculation serves as a tool to process trauma among online communities that have established relationships with each other (reddit), although it can also happen in settings in which users operate in anonymity (4chan).

With these three principles in mind, let’s turn first to the case of Kevin Ware, the Louisville guard who suffered a dramatic compound leg fracture during March Madness.

Note, as I’ve mentioned earlier, the repeated replay of the injury, as well as the announcer’s focus on the absolute horror of Ware’s Louisville teammates. Spectators reported seeing his teammates vomit and other audience members lose consciousness at the sight of Ware’s injury.

Image Source: Imgur

High-resolution pictures of Ware’s injury were posted to Reddit immediately after Ware sustained his injury, and in a 2,000 long comment chain, redditors weighed in on the injury.

The top-ranked comments on Reddit regarding Ware’s injury were, strangely, not the ones that relished/disgusted in the gore of the injury. Instead, the top comments speculated on Ware’s medical prognosis. Redditors with a wide variety of medical experience made predictions about Ware’s ability to play again, why the wound bled so little, how the wound might be best healed, etc. Commentors also praised Ware for remaining stoic—for “performing” away the injury.

Though the image was clearly posted and became viral because of its gruesome nature, we can see from the example of Reddit that the audience’s speculation attempted to “heal” the wound discursively. The practice of speculation also helps us understand the extreme viral interest in and disgust about Ware’s wound as somehow reflective of a hierarchy of trauma. In general, as exhibited in the case of Ware, twisted or maimed bodies, especially limb injuries, rank higher on the gore scale than mere blood, head injuries, or dead bodies. Why? Because while we might reconstruct a maimed limb with speculative practice—be disturbed by its “inside out nature,” but comforted by the ability to right the inversion—we cannot repair blood spilt or life lost. The horror of seeing a body disarticulated from itself is more immediate but less final than a whole body stripped not of limbs but of life.

The extreme reaction to a Ware’s ghastly injury resembled a similar discussion on Reddit about the following victim of the Boston Marathon bombings:

Image Credit: Imgur

The disarticulation of this man’s legs became the most viewed and commented on image from the carnage following the bombing. And although photos in the same series (also posted to the same /wtf/ board on Reddit as the Ware photos) capture dead or nearly dead bodies, viewers find the spectre of dismemberment far more disturbing.

Image Source: Hug-a-Leg

Again, the top comments speculate on healing—they individualize each victim and speak of their chances for survival, the techniques they hope the paramedics used, the treatment they hope the victims are receiving, etc. In displaying medical knowledge (credible or otherwise), users attempt to, from their computer screens, heal the broken bodies of the victims of the bombing.

Speculative practice can also have very real effects on how a population deals with the aftermath of a trauma. On Thursday, 4chan’s /b/ board released detailed interpretations of FBI-released footage and claimed that the board on the whole had identified the “most likely” (that is, “99% confirmed) suspect. 4chan’s attempt at vigilante justice arguably created only more chaos (as parodied by The Onion here) and, despite claims of 99% accuracy, it took only 24 hours for the /b/ board’s claims to be disproved.

Perhaps I can end by suggesting that 4chan’s speculative practice may demonstrate an important issue for further discussion: that while a shift in the distance between violent act and viewer might result in different responses to that violence, the only way to decrease violent acts in society is to address candidly the disjunction between what constitutes state sponsored, socially-sanctioned violence and non-state sponsored, non-socially sanctioned violence.

Image Source: Designation Systems

Maybe we can start by ditching the drones.

How USA Really Voted on November 6

Chris Ortiz y Prentice — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:10:56 +0000

Image Credit: IDV Solutions

What a wonderful map! This IS the popular vote on November 6, 2012. John Nelson gave us this map, and we thank him for it. It's called a "pointillist map:" one blue dot for every 100 votes for President Obama, randomly distributed in the county in which the votes were cast. One red dot for every 100 votes for Mr. Romney. You've heard of purple states? Well here's our purple country. Click the link on the image credit to find a large and hi-def version of this map. Then meet me back here, won't you?

I'll be candid. There's an irrational part of me that wants the result of an election to match how much blue or red there is on the map. I know that's not how it works. This time, the state-level electoral college map came out pretty evenly red and blue. But take a look at the county-level map:

Image Credit: Wikipedia

As usual, it looks like a sea of red with a few islands of blue, and yet, as we all know, President Obama was elected for four more years. I realize that it's a question of population density not geographical space, but now, at long last and thanks to Mr. Nelson, I can see that.

Mr. Nelson tells us he was inspired to make this kind of map by his advisor, a Professor Kirk Goldsberry. Here's a pointillist map of the 2012 presidential election Professor Goldsberry did of the Dallas Fort Worth Area:

Image Credit: Kirk Goldsberry/KK Outlet

The top map shows red and blue dots for Mr. Romney and President Obama respectively. The bottom map shows voters by ethnicity. (Can you guess? Try and then click the link to find out.) What a revelation! Of course, pointillist maps are only one of the new mapping techniques to show election data, but they are a powerful one. Looking at John Nelson's map I find myself thinking: so this is who we are.

Image Credit: IDV Solutions

One thing we seem to be is country and city. Do you notice how there is a ring of red around the purple-blue cities? That seems to hold true around the nation.

The Secret History of Lines

Laura Thain — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:53:24 +0000

Image Credit: Colin Stearns

With 24 hours to go, media outlets projecting the outcome of election day are covered in geographical maps of states and counties painted starkly in red and blue. I’ve enjoyed the responses of armchair intellectuals like Randall Munroe, who playfully reinterprets the red/blue divide to create a complex and comprehensive visual history of the Republican and Democratic parties. The proliferation of regional and ideological divides across multiple media this week urged me to explore two important questions in visual rhetoric: What does it mean to visualize a geographical boundary? And what does it mean to visualize an invisible line? (I would be remiss not to mention the enormous amount of border studies that exist in postcolonial and Anglophone literature and criticism—but today on viz I will try to confine myself to a discussion of the visualization of intranational borders.) Here to help me is the photography of Colin Stearns, Assistant Professor of Photography at Parsons. Stearns' current project is photographing the Mason-Dixon line in order to capture "this border of cultural distinction at the places of its occurence." Each of his photographs contain the invisible interstate line somewhere within their composition. I'll also put Stearns in dialogue with William Byrd II, the 18^th century commissioner of the colonial line between North Carolina and Virginia.

First, a bit about the Mason-Dixon line’s place in the historical record and in our national imagination. In his artist’s statement, Stearns recognizes the Mason-Dixon line as a “cultural barrier,” a particularly apt term considering the large discrepancy between the actual and the imagined political effect of the drawing of the line. Surveyed between 1763 and 1767, the line’s chief purpose was to settle a land dispute between the Penns of Pennsylvania and the Barons Baltimore of Maryland. The ensuing line established a firm boundary between the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania and Delaware as a satellite colony of Pennsylvania with varying levels of independent government in the colonial period. (Delaware’s history of strong government influence from the dynastic governors of both Maryland and Pennsylvania no doubt contributed to the eagerness of its home-grown politicians to be the first to join, as an independent state, the newly formed United States in the 1780s).

Image Source: Wikipedia

But at no point during the colonial period did the Mason-Dixon serve as an actual dividing line between slave and non-slave colonies because there simply did not exist such a delineation. Laws explicitly prohibiting slavery, with the noted exception of Vermont, did not exist in the colonial period. (Vermont’s Constitutional Charter, which declared Vermont separate from New Hampshire early in the Revolutionary War, is one of, if not the first, abolishments of slavery among the British colonies of North America.) It was not until a full two decades after the Mason-Dixon was drawn that Pennsylvania outlawed slavery (1780); Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire did the same shortly after the recognition of the new Republic in 1783-1784. New York and New Jersey took decades to follow suit (1799 and 1804, respectively), and the line cannot be argued to have the smallest significance in slave/free state designations west of the Appalachians. Delaware, firmly north of the dividing line, did not abolish slavery until the 13^th amendment was passed in 1865. Clearly, the Mason-Dixon line had no correlation to the practice of slavery in the colonial period. It was not until the 19^th century—during Congressional debates culminating in the Missouri Compromise of 1820—that the Mason-Dixon line began to symbolize a politicized North/South divide that claimed slavery as its principle cultural difference.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

So how can we read the Mason-Dixon Line’s historical significance with more care? How can this reading help inform Stearns’ project and in general expand our conception of the visual representations of political boundaries? I answer this question by going even further back into the colonial 18^th century of America and examining the first significant commissioned survey of a colonial boundary—that of North Carolina and Virginia, led by failed governor hopeful and plantation aristocrat William Byrd II of Virginia.

Image Credit: UNC

Byrd published two histories of his 1728 excursion, both of which have become indispensible primary sources of both public and private life in the 18^th century colonial South. (Byrd’s secret diary, which was decoded only in the 20^th century, gives a particularly detailed glimpse into the private thoughts and cultural attitudes of a colonial husband, land owner, and slave holder.) The History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina contains an official account of the survey, but the more interesting text is the semi-parodic and much more candid Secret History of the Dividing Line, which Byrd drafted for a small circle of political elite in England. It is of no small significance that it is in the Secret History, not the official account, that Byrd spends considerable time describing difference between the Virginians, who he saw as the gentile elite of the English colonies in North America, and the North Carolinians, who he describes as disorganized, uneducated, and culturally inferior. In addition, the Secret History also emphasizes that the initiative to survey the line originated within the councils of the colonies themselves, not from a royal entity. The importance of colonial sovereignty in the exercise of drawing the dividing line receives great rhetorical attention, and so the end result of these two conflicting impulses in the text is that while the North Carolinians are culturally discredited, their presence in the process of boundary-making is essential to the legality of the line formed. Byrd is thus able to legitimize the survey expedition both culturally and politically, strengthening his claim to the validity of its existence and the importance of the endeavor.

That Byrd considered these elements to belong to a “secret” history—that is, a suppressed or forgotten one—is in no small way related to the immense amount of cultural labor that surrounds the border-making project, and this is the same type of cultural labor that political factions exert and popular imagination perpetuates in the case of the Mason-Dixon line. The line became a crucial piece of evidence for both secessionist and unionist rhetoric during the various secession crises of 1820-1840, and of course, played a role in the ultimate dissolution of the Union in 1861. Beginning in the 1820’s, the survey stood no longer as a triumph of scientific instrumentation (Mason and Dixon’s survey techniques later led to the first accurate calculations of the earth’s density) in drawing an arbitrary geographical border or a legal precedent for settling land disputes between colonies and therefore states. Instead, the line was used to argue that political borders reflected an innate or organic cultural difference between each side’s respective constituents, and thus, strengthened the legitimacy of the artificial divide. And of course, unlike the lines drawn by the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the Mason-Dixon line exists in physical representation, with a stone marker bearing the arms of both Pennsylvania and Maryland placed every 5 miles along the surveyed line.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

And it is artist like Stearns who reveal and interrogate the labor of creating these boundaries. Stearns’ photography does so by several means. First, he utterly avoids the iconic line-markers, choosing instead to allow a mixture of organic and architectural details to connect the physical composition of the photographs to the theoretical subject matter. In highlighting these two types of “line-drawing,” Stearns seems to emphasize both the political border’s reliance on a rhetoric of organic divide (that is, that the cultural distinctions between populations predate the proverbial drawing of a line in the sand) but its essentially constructed nature. Take, for example, this photo:

Image Credit: Colin Stearns

Sometimes his photos make a primarily architectural argument:

Image Credit: Colin Stearns

And sometimes they seem to make an organic one:

Image Credit: Colin Stearns

But almost always, they combine elements of both.

Image Credit: Colin Stearns

If I can get away with making overarching aesthetic claims here, I would like to posit this: the audience, in the very act of viewing these pictures with the knowledge that they are visualizations of a geographical border, searches for delineation within them, even as they know those delineations are artificial. The audience thus becomes both aware of political boundaries as a cultural construction and aware of their own complicitness in creating them; the pieces no longer become a mere accusation of the stark black-and-white artificiality of manmade divides but an interrogation into the process by which we as members of society participate in the creation and perpetuation of those boundaries, even when they become oppressive.

Munroe's Complex Visual History of the US Congress. Image Credit: XKCD

The lines I’ve examined today helped to create and sustain a cultural and geographical border between the North and the South and designate them as opposing ideological spaces, creating a (bi)polarized and (bi)polarizing political rhetoric that has dominated American politics since the splintering of the Democratic Republican party and Jackson’s presidency during the aforementioned 18^th Congress of the 1820’s (but that’s another long story). Where might we go further with this investigation? Can we use extend these arguments to describe how political boundaries function in 21^st century America? Does, for instance, our current connection between political boundary and ideological identity depend less upon regional dichotomies (North/South, East Coast/West Coast) and more upon population density (urban/rural)? How does this change how we might read these invisible lines?

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

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

Image Credit: Kevin Lau

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

Image Credit: missus manukenkun

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

Image Credit: Tony Alter

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

Image Credit: Tony Delgrosso

Image Credit: Tracy Apps

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

Image Credit: Washington State Secretary of State

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

Image Credit: Julie Vazquez

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

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

Image Credit: Commission on Presidential Debates

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

Image Credit: Frank Peters

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

Image Credit: Cornell University Library

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

Image Credit: Anheuser-Busch

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

Image Credit: United States Government

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

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

Dressing to Dissent at the United Nations

Chris Ortiz y Prentice — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 15:22:24 +0000

Image Credit: United Nations webtv.un.org

Almost every male speaker to the September Summit of the General Assembly of the United Nations wore a suit and tie. It is easy to overlook this fact, so widespread is the convention, so rare the defiance. But what heads of state wear in front of one another shows something peculiar about the modern nation state. Leaders are, by and large, drawn from the cultural and economic elite. What all this suit-and-tie wearing indicates, however, is that the ruling class of the modern nation-state must subscribe, or seem to subscribe, to middle class or “business” virtues, like hard work, entrepreneurship, merit, and self-effacement. When a male leader chooses not to don a suit and tie, a choice made by President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pictured above), he is really saying something: but what, exactly, is he saying?

Take, for example, the suit and tie worn by U.S. President Barack Obama for his address to the world on September 25.

Image Credit: United Nations webtv.un.org

President Obama's suit does not strike me as ostentatious; stylistically, it does not depart from the appearance of workaday, professional attire. (Note, however, how neatly tailored and solidly constructed the clothes are. Not every workaday businessman can afford such a suit!)

Let us take President Obama as the rule and President Ahmadinejad as the exception that proves the rule. Now, what was the historical process by which suit-wearing became the standard for heads of state? Let us speculate.

I would argue that to arrive at an answer which would explain both Ahmadinejad's and Obama's sartorial selections, we need to describe two interelated historical processes, one pertaining to the imperialist nation-states of the Nineteenth Century, the other to the nation-states formed through decolonization in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Of first importance, in the imperialist case, was the long process by which the traditional power formations of the aristocracies--based on tradition, heredity wealth and landholding--were transformed into power formations of the monied classes. This transition was no neat break, including as it did, urbanization and industrialization, the rise of literacy and the popular press, the networking of global cities through shipping, railroad, mail and telegram, the increasing importance of credit to the state, the ousting from parliamentary structures of “gentlemen” by lawyers, bankers, and labor-leaders; in a word, everything (and it’s a lot) that comes as money plays more and more the determining role in social ascendancy. It was a complex historical process inflected by place and contingency; but roughly speaking, the ruling class was kings and barons and lords, and then it became businessmen and buerocratic professionals. The leaders of today's "super-power" nations wear suits, and that includes China, as instanced by Premiere Wen Jiabao (pictured below):

Image Credit: United Nations webtv.un.org

As for the male leaders of decolonized nation-states, I speculate that they wear suits-and-ties as the price of entry, as it were, into "respectable" standing at the United Nations. In a word, wearing a suit-and-tie is a matter of hegemony.

Inflecting these large, world-historical processes--the ascendance of middle-class hegemony as it played out in the West and in the era of decolonization--are other factors, including culture and gender. For of course, not every head of state or person of power wears a suit to the UN. Sometimes the choice of garb would appear to reflect culture of origin, as in the case of Lyonchoen Jigmi Yoezer Thinley, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bhutan (pictured below).

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

The military dictators wear uniforms. Many of the women wear the female equivalent of the suit-and-tie, as instanced by Dessima Williams, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the UN:

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

And, of course, to really explain why a person wears a particular article of clothing to the General Assembly we would have to tell add the histories by which "female suits" or military uniforms became available as options but also personal and family histories and psychologies, contemporary networks of clothes production and consumption, and maybe even a little randomness.

But accounting for all the different variations on suits and the military dictators and the cultural-garb--each of which could bear more analysis--there remains a specific kind of outlier, and that is the person who references the suit while flaunting its conventions. It is these I would point your attention to; these are the ones dressing to dissent, these are the leaders who are highlighting a difference from the world-hegemony that says modern leaders are business people (if they are not military dictators).

Ahmadinejad wears no tie in front of the UN, and the reason is historical and ideological, just as I have posited: according to the BBC and the Guardian, Iran banned the sale of ties after the 1979 Islamlic Revolution in order to signal non-alliance with the West.

Dressing to dissent at the UN, by my analysis, requires gesturing towards the suit-and-tie but flaunting its conventions. President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez achieves this not by foregoing the tie but through tie selection:

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

Chavez's bright, broad red tie is no business man's: it is a flaunt at the "leaders-are-professionals" hegemony of the United Nations.

Let us conclude with a final instance that stretches my theory. Pictured below is the late Noble Prize Winner Wangari Muta Maathai, founder of the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, a non-violent protester and person of great influence. (There is a very moving Independent Lens documentary about this incredible person entitled "Taking Root.")

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

Wangari Muta Maathai is wearing a dress not professional women's garb. Nor does it seem to me her clothing decision can be explained away as an innocuous gesture towards culture of origin, as can the King of Bhutan's. No, I think Wangari Muta Maathai is dressing to dissent in this instance, tactically using culture and gender to do so but without falling into the "exotic performance of culture/gender" that brings into hegemonic alliance other non-suit wearers. This is a tricky feat, and it is difficult to put a finger on just how she manages it. Nevertheless, it forms an additional option to flaunting-the-suit for those who wish to perform resistance to the hierarchies of the UN and indeed the world.

Mitt Romney and the (Mormon?) Rhetoric of Philanthropy

Laura Thain — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:16:26 +0000

Image Credit: Huffington Post

At issue from the moment Romney stuck his neck out as a Presidential hopeful, his extraordinary personal wealth has become one of the primary issues covered by various news media as we march closer to the November election. Epitomized best, perhaps, by a cleverly Photoshopped image that initially made rounds as a campaign gaff, “RMoney” has anything but hip associations—rather, it has inspired vast discussion about the rhetoric of prosperity and philanthropy in the midst of economic recession, both real and imagined.

A less-addressed topic, I think, is how LDS-sponsored sources can inform this debate as it takes place in the mainstream media. Though Romney is not the first Mormon politician to garner national attention (most recently, Jon Huntsman achieved national recognition; former Michigan governor George Romney, Terrel “Ted” Bell, and Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson all held influential cabinet positions in the past), he is arguably the most successful. As such, there has been a resurgence of public interest in Mormonism. The constellation of this interest and the general discussion of the “cult of prosperity” as emblematized in the Occupy protests has resurrected the age-old stereotype of Mormons as wealthy white businessmen—and Mitt Romney, the unexpected champion with the potential of either salvaging or savaging the economy.

Serious discussions of Romney’s finances go as far back in the news archive as early this year, with no little attention paid to his philanthropic contributions, which are outlined to some extent here. Most critics of this breakdown cite the LDS Church as an artificial inflator and use this to deny Romney as a legitimate philanthropist. I’d like to suggest that we consider a different angle of this kind of rhetoric. Rather than addressing where philanthropic money goes, could we not equally question the rhetorical role of philanthropy in political discourse?

I’d like to cite here the search entry for “service” on mormon.org, a website designed for non-church members investigating Mormon belief. The rhetorical focus here is not necessarily on the benefit provided to those who receive charity, but those who give it—as the article asserts,

“Jesus Christ said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” This doesn't mean we have to die to show our love for our friends. We lay down our lives every time we put someone else's needs before our own. These actions, whether great or small, let us feel the happiness of connecting with our brothers and sisters and remind us that God often allows us to be the answer to someone else’s prayers.”

The emphasis on first person pronouns—we and us—and the lack of third person pronouns create a philanthropist-oriented rhetoric—not one in which the philanthropist is repaying a tangible debt to society, but in which he is repaying an intangible spiritual debt and thus further securing his own happiness. This necessarily reorients the rhetorical situation outside of the immediate--concrete social and political dynamics--into a supernatural realm, even as the superficial rhetoric addresses the need for humanitarian aid. The less obvious implication of this, however, is the way it defines the humanitarian/philanthropist as a catalytic wedge. He is empowered to create and control change, but encouraged to do so on an individual level; thus, he satisfies his obligation to his fellow man but is not encouraged to contemplate the situations by which the imbalance is created.

In this way, comparing the private philanthropic contributions of Obama and Romney is a fruitless exercise when it is really the rhetoric of philanthropy—and I’ve quoted from informal Mormon doctrine above, but the principles are, arguably, extant in nearly every Christian denomination—that is itself the flaw. Without the power to enact systemic change, I would argue, it runs a great risk of further increasing the power discrepancy between the giver and the recipient. For me, there is no amount of philanthropy that can fully mediate wealth on either side, regardless of how it is distributed, as long as this power dynamic remains in play.

The Funny Faces of Politics: No Photoshop Required

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

Image Credit: Reuters

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

Video Credit: C-SPAN

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

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

Image Credit: Stupid Faces of Politics

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

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

Image credit: Laura Clawson

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

Image Credit: Nice Deb

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

Image Credit: Stogie

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

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

I Made America, You're All Welcome!

Rachel Schneider — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:08 +0000

Image Credit: I Made America

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to distract herself from work, Facebook provides. Through the The Second City Network I found a video entitled “Founding Fathers History Pick-Up Lines.” Clearly, I couldn’t resist. I was deeply amused to watch Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and John Adams seduce modern women with such lines as “It’s not the Louisiana Purchase, but it will double in size,” “Never leave for tomorrow what you can screw today,” and “I take the virgin out of Virginia.” The full video below features many more salacious lines, some of which might not be SFW:

More delightful than the video itself was discovering that it is part of a much larger undertaking. I Made America is a transmedia project that relies on multiple media to tell one story: how Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and John Adams were kidnapped from the past, brought to 2012 Chicago, and the adventures that followed. Transmedia, as described by Henry Jenkins, “represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” This scattered content then “offers backstory, maps the world, offers us other character’s perspectives on the action, or deepens audience engagement.”

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

In I Made America’s case, a series of videos shows how the Founding Fathers adapt to their new circumstances after being abandoned by the American Revolutionaries for Freedom and Family Super PAC, who brought them to the present to endorse conservative causes. Their modern lives include keg stands, romantic intrigues, drunken bar brawls, open mic nights, and even enhanced science-fiction dioramas. Yet the videos can’t contain the whole story—as the Founders wander about Chicago, their activities are recorded on various social media platforms, which are collated and archived on the series’ website. Fans can thus follow their favorites from Facebook and Twitter into real life interactions with the characters at birthday parties and Cubs games.

Image Credit: Screenshot from It is better to be alone than in bad company

Transmedia thus makes possible new kinds of personalized fan experience. An I Made America fan can watch the first episode, then check out Franklin’s video blogs, read Hamilton’s Tumblr, download Jefferson’s music, and follow Madison’s Twitter feed. The series’ heavy social media presence, however, means that fans can not only produce fanart but also share it with the objects of that art directly.

Image Credit: Polks

Their interactions even have the power to solicit new content: as Benjamin Franklin often eats Pop-Tarts during the episodes, one fan texted Franklin to ask if he had ever put a whole Pop-Tart in his mouth. He then attempted to do so on video, challenged others to respond, and then George Washington posted video of his officemate Caroline attempting the feat. The audience can move from passive reception to active participation.

Image Credit: @GoingMadison

However, what is the purpose of such transmedia projects? If transmedia allows audiences greater interactivity with texts, what kinds of experiences does this make possible? And what distinguishes I Made America from earlier (and more conventionally produced) projects like The Blair Witch Project? According to the original video pitch, I Made America is “not about selling a product, but about telling a story. A story of fiction, reality, comedy, politics, and America.” While comedy predominates, its bent is frequently satirical; we can laugh at the sheer silliness of Benjamin Franklin saying “You’re welcome for French ladies,” but Hamilton demanding “Why don’t you vote?” points out the consistent failure of Americans to participate in the political process.

As the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence remain central to American political discourse, remediating and reimagining the Founders through embodied performance calls into question what we understand America to be. Right now, it’s not just fictional groups like A.R.F.F. who feel like they best understanding the Founding Fathers, it’s also political movements like the Tea Party and legal practitioners of originalism that imagine 2012 America should be governed like its 1788 counterpart. I Made America challenges this by imagining how Thomas Jefferson might answer Newt Gingrich’s assertions of what Jefferson might do, as well as suggesting how inadequately the Founders might be prepared to deal with twenty-first century realities.

At the first season’s end, I Made America’s initial light plot turns serious as John Adams begins a presidential re-election campaign and as viewers learn that A.R.F.F. holds Madison captive. What will happen next can only be predicted through another founder’s words: in this case, I Made America’s creator Mark Muszynski, who planned the series to run “alongside the upcoming election so it can respond in real time to things that are actually happening in our world.” So far, Adams has made a campaign stop at Occupy Chicago and received his former Vice President’s musical endorsement. As fans continue to spread the word about I Made America, I can only wait to see what happens next. Perhaps Hamilton, Adams’s campaign manager, can learn some Chicago-style savvy from @mayoremanuel. I don’t think he needs help with the cursing, though.

The Power of Sympathy: Perspective Shifting, Visual Argumentation, and the Gay Marriage Debate

Rachel Schneider — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:16:50 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

I was delighted to hear that the Washington State Senate passed a bill Wednesday legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. The Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger has been closely following the bill’s progress for several weeks, not only liveblogging the debate but also posting numerous excellent speeches on behalf of the bill. Eli Sanders highlighted Republican Senator Cheryl Pflug’s speech as the best of the night, which she ended with the following words:

“And so I commend this bill to you today because it is part of our struggle to recognize that everybody, whether they look like us or believe like us, has an opportunity—should have an opportunity to enjoy those personal freedoms we hold dear.”

The essential argument Pflug makes here—that gay citizens should enjoy rights equal to those of heterosexuals—relies on straight individuals being brought to recognize their commonality with gays. Harvey Milk long ago made this argument when he urged gays to come out, to represent themselves publicly as gay to “destroy the lies and distortions.” More recently, the Australian “independent, grass-roots community advocacy organization” GetUp! posted an ad on YouTube on behalf of same-sex marriage in that country. This beautiful, moving ad works because its visuals work in concert with old-school persuasive tools.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

The distinguished philosopher (and originally professor of logic at Glasgow) Adam Smith briefly explains persuasion in his treatise The Theory of Moral Sentiments thus:

“To approve of another man’s opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to adopt them is to approve of them. If the same arguments which convince you convince me likewise, I necessarily approve of your conviction; and if they do not, I necessarily disapprove of it.”

In other words, effective argumentation exists when two individuals share common opinions and the arguments used by one speaker are found convincing by both of them. This doesn’t quite work as the 1759 version of How to Win Friends and Influence People because Smith doesn’t explain what arguments are equally efficacious for you and your audience, but he does present a non-agonistic tool for persuasion: sympathy.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

Sympathy, as Smith defines it, “may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever” (5). The purpose of sympathy is to bring individuals together in mutual understanding. While we cannot literally feel the emotions of others, Smith explains that we can use our imaginations to bridge the gap:

“As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. … By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in some measure him, and thence form some idea of his sensation, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.” (2)

Smith may seem to be a bit-outdated by about 250 years, but recent studies in cognitive science and social psychology offer some evidence for his views. Studies in affect like Teresa Brennan’s suggest that emotions can travel between individuals within social environments; more relevant, however, is the formulation by cognitive scientists like Alvin Goldman of “perspective shifting,” which is a state in which we “imagin[e] being in that other person’s position, and thus us[e] our imagined thoughts and feelings and decisions to determine what the other will think and feel and decide” (Coplan and Goldie xxxiii). In short, what the GetUp! ad does is to use visuals to create a moment of perspective shifting; watching the ad here will give you a sense of how this works

The ad notably puts the viewer right in the middle of a romantic comedy—there’s a meet-cute on a boat where a handsome man named Paul gives the viewer his number, and then the progress of the relationship follows all the way through fun in the sun, domestic disputes, personal tragedies, all the way to a marriage proposal. The ad beautifully subverts the Hollywood script, however, when the camera turns and reveals that the viewer has not been looking from the perspective of a straight woman, but a gay man.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

However, the ad does not deal in the extraordinary. While there are breathtaking views of riding on boats and rollercoasters, most of what is shown is extremely banal: grocery shopping, moving furniture, meeting parents, and even fights about driving directions. Yet it uses poignant images like a hand on a shoulder to invite the viewer to think about the experience of sympathizing with a partner losing his mother. These gestures taken out of any context read as truly loving, and the viewer is brought to see that this relationship, no matter the parties involved, is like any other romantic partnership.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

In 2010 the New York Times reported on a study conducted by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation “that looked at the reasons behind society's evolving tolerance for gay people. It found that the reason cited most frequently by people who reported having more favorable views—by far—was knowing someone who is gay.” By using these images, GetUp! attempts to reach out to individuals who may not know a gay or lesbian person by inviting them to place themselves in the position of a gay or lesbian individual. The building violins at the ad’s end, in which the camera’s perspective performs the critical shift, create the kairotic moment that the only words in the ad echo: “It’s time. End marriage discrimination.” Hopefully, more ads like this one will bring that time closer.

Representing a Revolution in Government and Medicine -- Unchaining the Insane

Ty Alyea — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Archives of General Pyschiatry

When historians seek gathering metaphors to describe the French Revolution--with its violent upheavals, experiments in re-arranging calendar time, and, of course, the demands for liberty and equality that underwrote these events--they rarely describe the atmosphere or environment of the period as particularly stable or "sane." And yet the work of Philippe Pinel--a progressive French physician who helped lay the groundwork for a major shift in mental health treatment--has been nonetheless remembered as a figurative crystallization of the Revolution's lofty, humanist goals--goals which in turn influenced the trajectory of ninenteenth century psychiatry. Today, I seek to briefly explore how 19th century visual re-enactments of Pinel's participation in a highly mythicized (and mostly apocryphyl) event--a ritualized "unchaining" of the captive patients-- were used to remind French citizens of the virtues of republican government during times of national upheaval.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a growing number of European physicians began to doubt the efficacy and morality of then-dominant methods of incarcerating the mentally ill--namely, the extensive use of chains and physical punishments to keep patients subdued, and, more generally, an emphasis upon containment rather than treatment. Additionally, on an institutional level, the asylums of France were objects of much suspicion; in the ancien regime, after all, any citizen might be one lettre de cachet away from imprisonment. In this environment, Pinel, along with several other French asylum directors, began a policy which tended to remove chains from non-violent prisoners and begin a new form of therapy called "moral treatment" in the second half of the 1790's. Though space limitations prohibit me from going into too much detail here, it should be mentioned that the "moral" treatment was based on a belief that madness--previously regarded as a totalizing condition that justified perpetual separation from society--was frequently only an imbalance in the mind that could could be realigned by various forms of therapy. As the years wore on and the lore surrounding Pinel grew, he frequently was portrayed as a single-handed avatar of benificent Revolutionary Republicanism.

Charles Louise-Muller's commemoration of the event,"Pinel Orders the Chains Removed From the Insane at Bicêtre" (pictured at the top of this blog post) was completed in 1849--near the dawn and collapse of the short-lived Second French Republic. As we can quickly notice, Pinel, who by most accounts, wasn't present when this kind of chain-removal took place, takes on a heroic pose here, dominating the center of the action amidst a band of lightness which separates him from the leagues of drab, darkened clusters of patients that line the sides of the image--almost as if he is parting a sea of madness. At the same time, the dominant colors of the image befit the flag of the Revolution: red, white, and blue. While several of the patients look at their newly free hands in shock, we also notice them looking to their savior--watching what he will do next. Largely docile, the patients accept the enlightened physician's gift of freedom and his authority.

Image Credit: Archives of General Psychiatry

Our next image is Tony Robert-Fleury's "Pinel Délivrant les aliénées," or "Pinel Delivering the insane." Painted in 1878--three year's into the third French republic--the image likewise returns to the liberatory power of the physician and the patients' debt to their liberator. In this case, however, the scene is the women's hospital of Salpêtrière, and Pinel is off-center, advising the manumission of a young, scantily clad, woman in white. As with the previous picture, we see a docile group of unfettered patients on the left hand side of the image looking calmly at the scene, and one of the women is actually kissing Pinel's hand while he stoically does his business. The women on the right, prostrate and languid, await their hoped-for freedom. Far in the background, meanwhile, we see two women moving as they please.

But ultimately, the woman in the center commands the most attention in this image, for she is both visually striking and the center of Pinel's attention as well. Susan A. Hawes of Antioch College argues that the female patient who takes center stage "assumes a position which suggests her unreason, her vulnerability to patrirarchal reason, and the taming of her dangerous sexuality." While the link portrayed here between sexual wantonness and madness is by no means a new one, Hawes points out that it became increasingly important "in this context of morally righteous 'humane' treatments." In this way, then, these images, which were likely comissioned to reinscribe revolutionary era values into France's later republican contexts, bear out Michel Foucault's claim that we should see Pinel's work as emblematic of a general shift in discipline and governmentality toward more discretely professsionalized forms.

"Ice cream. That is cheap. Fact"

Jay Voss — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 01:40:00 +0000

Image Credit: The Daily Show

While searching yesterday for video of Rick Perry’s memory issues in Wednesday night’s debate, I came across an interesting series of montages on youtube. Thinking I was about to hear Perry eloquently speak about “the three agencies of government when I get there that are gone,” instead I heard Perry saying, “Ice cream. That is cheap. Fact.” Only a moment’s pause was needed to see that these weren’t Perry words. Someone divinely competent with video editing software has taken video clips of prominent politicians (in this case, Perry), muted all sound therein, and then over-dubbed random words that seem fitting given the movement of their lips. As can be seen above, these videos work to fantastic effect. Their true success is emphasizing that, in our age, what really matters is the way a politician looks whenever he or she says something. Looking closer at Perry, it becomes clear that he’s modeling his style off that of Ronald Reagan. Perry’s team was probably taking advantage of their candidate’s Reganesque chin when they suggested that he get a Reaganesque haircut.

In the interests of bipartisanship (presumably), the people who’ve made this montage have also made compellations featuring of important Democrats. (The Barack Obama montage is too inappropriate to imbed within this post.) The first moments of these videos will make one chuckle, no doubt. But ultimately it’s somewhat sad that in twenty-first century America, we find it ironically funny when our politicians seem to say nonsensical things. I don’t know what I find more surreal: Rick Perry not recollecting what would be the central aspects of his domestic policy, or a random string of words that perfectly fits the movement of Perry’s lips.

Imagining the 99%: Occupy Austin's (Visual) Self-Representation

Jake Ptacek — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Image: Screenshot from occupyaustin.org

If you couldn't tell from the past few days of viz.'s coverage, the Occupy Austin protests continue, if attendance has mildly abated from this weekend's high. This blog is not an appropriate venue for the discussion of the movement’s goals (you can find more intelligent discussion about Austin’s own version of the movement here and here). However, I am interested in the ways in which the Occupy Austin movement represents its constituents. The Occupy Wall Street / Austin brief—which aspires to represent 99% of the American (some Austin material intransigently claims “world”) populace—faces a particularly clear set of representational challenges even as social networking allows its images to proliferate in ways unimaginable even five years ago. For the rest of this post, I’ll highlight some images from Occupy Austin’s affiliated website.

One of the ways—particularly prominent on the Occupy Austin website—is to simply erase personal identity and to focus on a paramount tool of protest: the megaphone.

Images: occupyaustin.org

The megaphone, of course, literalizes the protest’s desire to make voice audible: “Come and make your voice heard” is a central talking point in various posters and placards the local movement has authorized. At their best, these kinds of images have an extraordinary symbolic power in the clean graphic design. The ideologically potent red star manages to be central to the design without being the eye’s resting point, slipping in without emphasis an inherent socialist claim (it’s worth noting that the red star doesn’t appear on any direct content on the Occupy Wall Street page that I had a chance to view).

Less successful may be the image this post leads with, which is also the main graphic on the Occupy Austin homepage. While replacing the protester’s head with a megaphone conveys the desire to be heard that’s at the center of these protests, I wonder if the substitution of a bullhorn for a brain is necessarily desirable (of course, subbing in a megaphone also allows the designers to sidestep questions of identity politics).

Image: occupyaustin.org

And then there's this image, which cleverly transforms the megaphone into what appears to be an appendage being crushed in a handshake. Graphically the poster is relatively impeccable in the way it quotes the visual motif of the other posters while subjecting it to a transformation. Symbolically, though? While it's hardly an act of despicable violence, it seems at odds with the general tone of peaceful civil disobedience cultivated by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I always feel the end of a post is a good time to come clean, ideologically. I stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Its idealism, and even its pluralistic free-form ideological naivete, are really refreshing to me in a time when being a liberal and a leftist has seemed to be all talk and not much action. The academic in me wants to praise the movement's embrace, whether conscious or not, of a flowing, Deleuzian rhizomatics. But the praxis-oriented person in me wonders how long the movement will be able to avoid significant political and social splits and fissures. Two final examples to illustrate that:

Screenshots from occupyaustin.org

As these images make clear, for the moment that fist of solidarity can find a rapport between the stark brutality of the right hand images color-inverted fist and the eco-aware, pastoral, post-hippie consciousness of the left hand poster. But how long can these positions hang in together? The one poster is pre-dirtied, smudged with toner ink, and hand-markered. It's a callout to political propaganda the world over, as well as invested in a specific hardcore aesthetics. It's definitively urban, and it seems invested in overthrow. The other image is twilight-blue, with a heartbeat center of consciousness in the clenched fist. The Texas cornflowers have peace signs within the petals. It's expansivist, and it wants you to belong: "We are the ones," it proclaims. Fair enough. But for how long can these "ones" be the same?

Branding Occupy Wall Street

Steven J LeMieux — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:11:06 +0000

(Image Credit: Michael Nagle, Getty Images via In Focus)

During the past week Occupy Wall Street has gained increasing media attention. The movement, initially called for by the group Adbusters, began in earnest on September 17th when protesters first began to occupy Zuccotti Park. This initial act seems to have largely been met with bemused ambivalence, and while there was originally a single demand articulated by Adbusters in their July call to action—that “Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington” (Adbusters) –things were quite murky by the time the occupation took shape. Much of the media attention that the movement has gained, especially during this surge in participation, has focused on the apparent lack of concrete demands set forth by OWS. This confusion is misplaced. While the list of hopeful outcomes is amorphous a clear sense of oppositional branding has been developed from the wealth of signs and images created through the movement. OWS demands that we put a hold on our love affair with notions of prosperity that put us in a double bind.

(Image Credit: Adbusters)

This early poster by Adbusters does a nice job of simultaneously crystallizing and confusing the movement. By asking about a single demand it offers the possibility of a unified, concrete protest while leaving that single demand open to interpretation. And while the question broadens possibility the image suggests a possible outcome. Raising above clouds of teargas and crowds of appropriately gasmasked protesters a dancer postures serenely on the Wall Street Bull. She rides the bull when most visitors pose for pictures as they fondle the bull’s balls. The bull can be more than a system by which the 1% (to use the popular 1/99% split that the movement has espoused) cows the other 99%.

(Image Credit: David Shankbone via In Focus)

The Charging Bull, a sculpture created by Arturo Di Modica in the late 80s, has become an icon for Wall Street. Originally created to represent the “strength and power of the American people” the bull has come to stand in for the strength and power of a particular system. What Occupy Wall Street is demanding is that we stop worshiping that system. That all this symbolism has been poured into a bull makes a certain amount of sense. Bulls are domestic animals that never feel quite domestic, yet even with all their power (and perhaps because of it) they are kept under strict control by the humans that own them. Bulls have largely been turned into a tool of reproduction.

The movement has, in some ways, twice enacted a barrier around the bull. Fearful of any particular harm that could befall the icon it was quickly fenced in. The fence and the guards prevented both protestors from nearing the bull and tourists who flock to the bull daily for lucky rubs and pictures. And by enforcing the cordoning off of the bull the OWS protests have perfectly created a visualization of their message. By enforcing this barrier the bull (and, more importantly, what it has come to represent) is show to be something that we cannot access. The above video by BLUCHEEZ accurately portrays some of the frustrations inherent in this sudden distance between the bull and its followers.

(Image Credit: Erin M via Fast Company)

Gaps have value. And creating distance can be a goal in and of itself. Through this distance we can begin to recognize the multitude of relationships that are manifest between the economic and political systems in this country and the people that inhabit them.

Two Sex-Scandals: Focusing in on the Problem

Cate Blouke — Sun, 22 May 2011 14:16:36 +0000

AP Photo/Chris Pizello via NY Daily News

Given the increasing hullaballoo surrounding this week’s two sex-scandal stories (Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger), this image of Schwarzenegger and soon-to-be ex-wife, Maria Shriver, strikes me as paradigmatic of how these scenarios seem to play out: focus in on brooding, somber (occasionally apologetic) male politician; blurry, out-of-focus female victim in the foreground. While the impetus behind these stories is supposedly exposing the men that “done them wrong,” it’s often the women who suffer most from the media backlash.Kate Zernike's New York Times article makes the point well, both the Schwarzenegger scandal and the Strauss-Kahn case “raise similar questions about imbalances of power” when it comes to sexual indiscretion and assault. With teams of high-powered attorneys and publicists at their disposal, both men have the means to launch vigorous counterattacks, circulating rumors and exposing the women’s lives to excrutiating public scrutiny.

Media stake-out of Mildred Baena's home - Jonathan Alcorn for The New York Times

It’s unsurprising that women are hesitant to come forward regarding sexual assault when such a media circus is bound to ensue, and/or when it doesn’t seem to have much impact. As Michael Shaw’s post on BagNewsNotes points out, Schwarzenegger’s infidelity and aggressive sexuality are nothing new – the man won the gubernatorial race despite exposés regarding his mistreatment of women by both the LA Times and Premiere Magazine. The only real news this time is living, breathing, incontrovertible evidence.

With known-philanderer (and consequent hypocrite) Newt Gingrich eying the White House, what become increasingly clear are the cultural denial and double-standards we hold regarding men in positions of power.

Post Adapted/Cross-posted from BagNewsNotes, a site comitted to the social, cutural and political reading of news images.

Visualizing the Economy and the Rhetoric of Infographics

Michael Widner — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:30:00 +0000

via Mother Jones, "It's the Inequality, Stupid"

Infographics can provide visual drama and emotional impact to otherwise incomprehensible and dry numbers. As Ladysquire's recent post on The 12 States of America demonstrates, they can be particularly good at capturing income inequality. The image from Mother Jones above is another nice example of the striking disparity among Americans' perception of wealth distribution, what they wish it were, and what it actually is. Americans clearly desire an equitable distribution that, while allowing for the accumulation of great wealth, nevertheless lifts all boats. Yet the sad reality is not only different from what the population wants and believes it to be, but is also a difference not just of degree, but nearly of kind.

via Mother Jones, "It's the Inequality, Stupid"

Another rhetorically useful element of such infographics is the multiple perspectives on similar data. The yellow circle of the top 0.01% income group barely fits on the page, itself a design choice intended to comment on disparity by imputing excess and greed to the wealthiest.

via Slate, "The Great Divergence in Pictures: A Visual Guide to Income Inequality"

Slate's similarly focused visual guide represents each percentage of the population with a figure of a human, a choice that makes it all the more dramatic.

Screenshot of New York Times, "Obama's 2012 Budget Proposal"

This interactive map (click through link above to interact) of President Obama's proposed 2012 budget makes it immediately clear that the potential cuts to the budget have pale in comparison to the overall costs and, even, increases in spending. Moreover, many of the cuts would disproportiately affect the most vulnerable.

The polished simplicity of each of these and many related infographics serves multiple purposes. The data become not only more compelling, but also less likely to be questioned. While I don't doubt their accuracy, these infographics nevertheless leave little, if any, room for interpretation. Unlike a prose description of context and motivation, the images present bare facts and a single perspective. Although I happen to agree with the implicit arguments for more equitable income distribution these charts make, I also recognize that they make it nearly impossible to arrive at any conclusion other than the intended one of unjust inequality.

Sexy. Sputnik. Science.

emcg — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:09:28 +0000

Image Credit: Associated Press

Via Gothamist

In January’s State of the Union, President Obama called this “our generation’s Sputnik moment.” Since then, I’ve been curious about how the administration would visualize the core message of that speech, which foregrounded science, education, and innovation. Exhibit A: the Beatles-esque tableaux above, from last week’s visit to an NYC science fair.

The President is mobbed by swooning teens, prompting Politico to ask, “Is Obama making science fairs hot?”

Image Credit: Pete Souza/White House

H/T BagNewsNotes

Over at BagNews, Michael Shaw points us to another instance in which Obama brings his trademark cool to a pro-science photo-op, this time in the waiting room at Intel. In keeping with the sleek surroundings, Obama even provides a sartorial antidote to the industry’s characteristic Mark-Zuckerberg schlumpiness. However, Shaw rightly describes the scene as “Jetsons”-like: the mid-century modern look feels more back-to-the-future than Winning the Future. The black-and-white scheme also signals a decided shift toward simplicity, both in the iconography and the message, for a president accused of being too cerebral and complex in the first half of his term.

Image Credit: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

H/T BagNewsNotes

BagNews also posted this image from Obama’s tour of a GE plant soon after the “Sputnik” speech. I like how the photo deftly combines the futuristic-looking generator, with its grandly ambitious scale; the slouchy, hand-in-suit-pocket casualness of Obama at its center; and the American flag behind them, giving a benediction of sorts. Although the overall look might be more 21st-century modern, its iconography nonetheless harkens back to a Space Age triangulation of science, profit, and patriotism.

On the one hand, it feels like quibbling to challenge these representations when their sexy, swinging optimism about science provides such a welcome counter to, for example, House Republicans’ recent defunding of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has largely taken place behind the scenes. However, in its admirable attempt to make science visible within the political conversation, the administration also makes visible certain Sputnik-Era preconceptions about science: namely, a reduction of science (or science-as-engineering) to an economic activity disconnected from curiosity and understanding.

Jackie Speier - Toward a Better Pro-Choice Rhetoric

ladysquires — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:00:03 +0000

(Video Credit: CSPAN)

Last week, I wrote about some striking historical and cultural shifts in anti-abortion rhetoric. Namely, I argued that the pro-life movement has been so persuasive largely because in their verbal and visual rhetoric, they have successfully turned babies into the primary object of the viewer's identification and sympathy. I also argued that a successful pro-choice rhetoric would return women in need of abortions to the center of the frame. I was heartened by Representative Jackie Speier's (D-CA) speech on the floor of the house, this week, where she talked about her own experience.

It is probably unsurprising that others are trying to make sense of the erosion of public support for the pro-choice movement. Frances Kissling published a column in The Washington Post last week that reveals a drop in support for abortion from 56% in 1995 to 54% in 2009, and she argues that the problem is both a policy problem and a rhetoric problem. While I do not agree with Kissling that tight restrictions on late-term abortion are the answer here, I find her argument about the place of the fetus in pro- and anti-abortion rhetoric compelling:

The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights
movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a
right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant
woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant
event. Very few people would argue that there is no difference between
the decision to abort at 6 weeks and the decision to do so when the
fetus would be viable outside of the womb, which today is generally at
24 to 26 weeks. Still, it is rare for mainstream movement leaders to say
that publicly. Abortion is not merely a medical matter, and there is an
unintended coarseness to claiming that it is.

Which makes me think that T-shirts like this one aren't really helping. The argument that a fetus is not scientifically a viable human being simply has not worked, as someone can always insist that in their gut they know it is.

(Image Credit: Tiger Beatdown)

Academic blogger Historiann suggests, much better than I did, perhaps, that Speier's speech represents a real opportunity for pro-choice advocates to recapture the pathetic appeal in this debate:

Here’s my idea for pro-choicers: what worked for the movement to decriminalize abortion in the 1960s were appeals to emotion based on real women’s experiences. For
too long, the professional pro-choicers have thought abortion advocacy
is an intellectual proposition rather than an emotional one, and for too
long, women have been acquiescent in our silence while the forced
pregnancy crowd has effectively and freely used emotion to erase the
human incubators of fetuses to make abortion all about the murder
of cuddly little babies. Telling stories like U.S. Reps Gwen Moore and Jackie Speier did on the floor of the House of Representatives last Thursday night, in newspapers and magazines, on television and blogs, etc., is a lot likelier to move the needle on reproductive choice.

Think about it: Abolitionists wrote tirelessly about the injustice
of slavery and the evils it perpetuated among white and black Americans
alike, but Harriet Beecher Stowe’s dramatic rendering of Eliza’s escape
with little Harry across the semi-frozen Ohio River did a lot more to
put free readers in the mind of the enslaved mother and her heroic
determination not to let her master sell her little boy away from her. I
think some ugly stories about women bleeding out and nearly (or
actually) dying as their physicians sought a non-Catholic hospital, and
stories about women forced to endure a stillbirth or horrific,
life-threatening late-term miscarriage (for example) might wake people
up to the stupidity of permitting state control over our lives and
bodies. Because the truth is that if you are a heterosexual woman, it really could happen to you, too.

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.

Fall 2010 Rallies

catherine_c — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 19:21:40 +0000

The Restoring Honor Rally held on August 28, 2010 and the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) on October 30th were two media-led rallies with the former appealing to the political right and the latter mainly to the left. The images featured in the SoundSlides presentation above are from both of these rallies.

The media figures involved in the rally -- Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert (in character) shaped the tenor and audience of these events. Beck's Restoring Honor Rally was serious in tone, making copious use of red, white, and blue in event decorations and using images of the nation's founders and prominent leaders in decor and memorabilia designs. The coincidence of the location of Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech was contested before the event. Indeed, it is rather strange to see MLK "speak" at Beck's event, as one of the pictures in the Soundslides presentation depicts. According to news coverage including an updated USA On Politics article on the event Beck claimed that the event was intended to be a return to the traditional values that he claims made this country great, encouraging faith in God among attendees of all religions, and the use of the rally as a chance for them to "change [their] li[ves]."

The combined events of Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and Stephen Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive responded to the climate of Glenn Beck's rally and a civil rights march held several miles from Beck's Rally by Al Sharpton, the "Reclaim the Dream" March, according to the Washington Post. The tone of this rally was more sarcastic and ironic with a number of signs mocking the practices of rallying and creating and carrying signs.

According to Jon Stewart by way of AFP, this rally was intended to gather "a million moderates march" on the National Mall in Washington DC in order to "make a strident call for rationality." Stewart continued on to suggest that the Rally would allow the "70-80 percent of Americans who try to solve the country's problems rationally" to "be heard above the more vocal and highly visual 15-20 percent who 'control the conversation.'" The combination of Stewart's and Colbert's events led to an environment where signs joking about moderation and reasonableness and less political jokes and memes blend together.

"Putting the 'Man' in 'Manifest Destiny!'": Making Populist Iconography and Queer Historiography in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

Rachel Schneider — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 02:24:07 +0000

Image Credit: Theatre is Easy

Even though my Rhetoric of the Musical class has finished up, I can’t quit musicals. When I heard that Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a musical I’d discovered when I was preparing my class, was moving to Broadway, I decided that it was the perfect karotic moment to tackle this rich topic. The musical’s Gothic visuals, emo music, and satirical presentation of American politics combine to bring audiences to consider not only American populism but also the act of history making itself.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson covers the career of Andrew Jackson: America’s seventh president, a military hero, a virulent racist, and the first President to claim he was born in a log cabin. However, it doesn’t try to tell the story straight in the way 1776 shows the writing of the Declaration of Independence. The musical’s opening lines set the tone for the evening as irreverent, profane, and visceral: “I’m wearing some tight tight jeans and tonight we’re delving into some serious, serious shit. I’m Andrew Jackson. I’m your President. Let’s go!” The song that follows, “Populism Yea Yea,” establishes the musical’s major concerns: the role of the President as Celebrity-in-Chief, America’s complicated relationship with power and populism, and how these concerns connect to the present day:

The rocking beat, along with the choreographed hip swivels and raised fists, don’t just help draw our attention to lead actor Ben Walker’s sexy Jackson and his tight t-shirt. They also attempt to capture the energy of populist sentiment, as strong today as it was in the 1830s when Jackson was elected. The lyrics blend the concerns of then with now, as the show’s cowboys and cowgirls offer to “take this country back / For people like us / Who don’t just think about things, / People who make things happen.” This language—emphasizing us versus them, action versus thought—could have come as easily from Bush’s western-inflected mouth as from a Tea Party pamphlet. What’s also remarkable here in the way that populist energy is associated with teenage angst: “Why wouldn’t you ever go out with me in school? / You always went out with those guys / Who thought they were so cool / And I was just nobody to you.” Here, the writers indirectly connect populist disaffection with the rebellion of lonely youth, left out by the “elite” who will be forced to “eat our dust.” This might seem a stretch, but the political nature of the musical hasn’t just been noted by New York Times review Ben Brantley, but has also been acknowledged by the show’s lead, the show's co-creator Alex Timbers, and the show's composer-lyricist Michael Friedman:

“Alex [Timbers, the show’s co-creator] and I had both been interested in historical figures and in ways of looking through a contemporary lens at history. And I think we found that Andrew Jackson - and this was five years ago - really spoke to the moment that we were living in and planted the seeds of so much of what we see now. And I think in recent politics, we've seen even more of that.”

However, the connection between the musical and politics is one of long-standing tradition, as has the connection between music and politics. Politicians have used songs to brand themselves, as Obama did with U2’s “City of Blinding Lights,” as Jackson himself did in “The Hunters of Kentucky” (the song that closes the show), and as Reagan famously tried to do with Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” a heritage the show’s poster directly alludes to:

Image Credit: SpotCo

The tag line “History just got all sexypants” points out the musical’s willingness to appeal to audiences through tight pants and guyliner, but the reference to Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. cover also connects the show to the song’s dubious political legacy. Though Springsteen meant his song as a critique of Reagan, others read it against the grain as a populist song celebrating America. Writers Friedman and Timbers don’t shy away from critiquing this populist legacy. When discussing the musical’s end, Friedman stated that

“I think it ends trying to force the audience of having - giving them, I think, a lot of laughs along the way, something to really think about, which is, for me, how much responsibility we take for the people we elect, and how much responsibility we take for what the people we elect end up doing.”

This comes out in the way the show doesn’t shy away from depicting Jackson’s negative aspects. Both Jackson and his wife Rachel take slavery for granted, as she sings in “The Great Compromise” that “I always thought I’d live in a house / With a dog and some kids and some slaves.” The show also rewrites the song “Ten Little Indians” to highlight Jackson’s violence against the Native American population: “Ten little Indians / Standing in a line / One got executed / And then there were nine.” And as the song “Crisis Averted” shows citizens reacting to Jackson’s removal of the Seminoles from Florida, it also invites us to critique the public’s willingness to overlook the bad done by politicians on behalf of the citizens:

Florida Woman: I mean, I think it’s a real tragedy that Jackson moved all the Indians from here to Florida.

Florida Man: Me too. A real tragedy.

Florida Woman: And that’s why we hesitated to move here. Absolutely. I mean, we didn’t want it to seem like we were endorsing that kind of behavior.

Florida Man: No. Of course not. But, then we were like… it is nice that it doesn’t snow.

Florida Woman: Um, yes. It is. So, it’s like, it’s great that he did that. But we definitely don’t condone it.

The audience knows that the Trail of Tears was cruel, but like the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, Americans have been brought to condone it through silent consent.

Image Credit: Gothamist

What I find to be most interesting about the musical is the ways in which its re-mythologizing of Andrew Jackson as emo rock star brings to the forefront the question of history and writing history. The musical includes a designated Storyteller who undertakes to narrate Jackson’s life story, but Jackson shoots the Storyteller in the face before the show’s fourth song, “I’m So That Guy,” in order to take charge of the action and to “make his own story.” In “Rock Star” Jackson narrates his own version of history where “Adams tried to be an American idol / Jefferson tried to be a rock star / Madison tried to make the presidency vital / And James Monroe was a douchebag!” He then claims the mantle of being “a celebrity of the first rank.” After his wife’s complaint in “The Great Compromise” that she is being left behind by his campaigning, he sings after her death in “Public Life” that he will “give my life to the people now” in her honor. He turns tragedy into mythology, the public man sacrificing himself for a dedicated public.

History and the musical have been connected for a while, as my friend Michelle Dvoskin wrote about in her dissertation “‘Listen to the Stories, Hear It in the Songs’: Musical Theatre as Queer Historiography.” As she put it:

“This project argues that not only can musicals ‘do’ history, they offer an excellent genre for theorizing what I call ‘queer historiography.’ While sexuality remains one category of analysis, I use ‘queer’ to signify opposition, not simply to heterosexuality, but to heteronormativity, and normativity more broadly. Musicals' queer historiography, then, is a way of engaging past events that challenges normativity in form as well as content; a way of productively challenging not only what we think we know about the past, but how we come to know it.”

I would argue here that Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson engages in similar acts of queer historiography as its rock style rejects normativity as plainly as its overall treatment of Jackson asks its audience to question the ways in which we think about executive power, political celebrity, and populist sentiment. It draws us to think about the past not just as distant history, but as lived experience and recurrent theme. We may know one Andrew Jackson through high-school textbooks, but the musical forces its audience to rethink that idea—by presenting us with “populajism” and some tight tight sexypants.

Excuse me, but there's some prejudice on your face

ladysquires — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:16:29 +0000

Photo credit: Pargon, Flickr Creative Commons

There are plenty of negative things to be said about the Tea Party, particularly in the wake of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally: that the movement's appropriation of the words and images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln represents the deployment of unreconstructed white privilege at its worst, that it is controlled by corporate and media elites with a vested interest in obstructing a Democratic agenda (note the Tea Party's inexplicable support of the Citizen's United decision, which seems completely out of step with their populist ethos though perhaps somewhat consistent with the libertarian ideal of unfettered markets).

Yet I'm noting, with increasing annoyance, a problematic elementary school nastiness in criticism of the Tea Partiers and their ideologues. Note the photograph above, which was posted on Flickr as part of a series called "Teabonics." The argument of this particular photo and a few others like it seems to be that Tea Partiers are fat and stupid and therefore don't deserve to be taken seriously. Such a reading seems to be confirmed by the first comment, which says, "Resisance is Conservative for Fat Ass." And while, yes, I agree that there is a dismaying irony in signs like the following, given the draconian new anti-immigration laws in the Southwest, I find myself asking, "Really? Is this the level to which we must descend?" (Forgive the hackneyed syntax. I did not want to be accused of ending my sentence with a preposition).

Photo credit: Pargon, Flickr Creative Commons

Such tactics might not merit concern if they weren't being legitimized in corners of the blogosphere that I had previously found quite lucid and respectable. I came across the first photo on the widely popular humor site Political Irony, which accompanies the image with a link to the site LOLGOP, a blog (which is designed to look like the Drudge Report, performing a sort of rhetoric before you even get to the content) that makes the claim that "there may have been only 87,000 people there, but they ate for 1,000,000." LOL indeed. As far as I can tell, that claim is as unsubstantiated as Michelle Bachmann's assertion that 1,000,000 attended the rally and appears to be simply a jab at the rotundness of certain attendees.

Let's take stock of everything that's wrong with that, shall we? First of all, this line of critique makes several aggressively sizest assumptions about the relationship between larger body size, intelligence, and human worth. Furthermore, it eclipses the presence of the many progressives who happen to be fat (or poor spellers). Then we have the Flickr album labelled "Teabonics," obviously a pun on the term "ebonics," which was used for a time to describe African American vernacular speech. In other words, this pun posits a relationship between the quality of one's grammar or spelling, intelligence, and worth as a human being, a logic that has historically been used to exclude African Americans and other minorities from the public sphere. Given the relationshisp between illiteracy and poverty, this is also a logic that erases anyone from a lower socio-economic background.

In other words, this critique--"LOL, Tea Partiers are fat and uneducated"--enacts the same forms of prejudice found within the Tea Party itself by making overt arguments about what types of people and voices count in the political arena, i.e. no fatties, no poor and/or uneducated people, and by extension no one who fails to embody hegemonic ideals of middle class respectability. And don't worry, there's sexism in there to. Among the taglines on LOLGOP is the following: "Sarah Palin is the porn industry's idea of what a businesswoman looks like." Ok, sure, this could be a critique of the way in which Palin has been sexualized by the media, but I doubt it. Devoid of context (and there is no link on that entry), this appears to be a dig at Palin's appearance. How droll. As Melissa McEwan of Shakeville so aptly states, the sexist attacks (most recently in the Vanity Fair piece) on Palin's appearance and performance of motherhood are infuriating precisely because they "compel feminist/womanist women to come to her defense, or, at minimum, point out the absurdity of the coverage. (Bauerlein also tweeted: "'Sarah, these aides say, seemed comforted by having the children around, and she seemed lonely when they were gone.' Truly a monster.") To have feminist writers mock the paucity of legitimate criticisms in a hit piece on Palin can't have been the point."

As the wise man said, before removing the splinter from your friend's eye, first attend to the log in your own.

Digitizing Revolution

timturner — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:33:05 +0000

Image credit: mousavi1388 on Flickr

I wanted to call this post "The Revolution will be Twittered," but Andrew Sullivan (whose coverage of the Iranian protests has been ongoing) beat me to it. But we could also have gone with "The Revolution will be liveblogged, YouTubed, or Flickred." Here in the states, the development of events in Iran has been accompanied by a critique of the (at least initial) lack of coverage on cable news and the widespread reliance on new media technology to cover the events of the protests. In this case, it's hard to ignore the power/potential of these technologies in getting information out of a country that has tried to close its digital borders by shutting down Internet access and intensifying restrictions against foreign media correspondents.

Further, the Iranian regime only seemed to confirm this power when, on the day of the election itself, cellular-, texting-, and social networking-access were all shut down by the state. I've been somewhat skeptical, in the past, about the social and/or democratic potential of social networking technology, but when even the oppressor grants this premise, it becomes difficult to sustain skepticism.

For more on the possible implications of this technology for events in Iran, see this analysis by Haroon Siddique or this one by Marc Ambinder. For more images of the protests, check out tehranlive.org or in mousavi1388's photostream on Flickr.

And in light of these events it is difficult not to think of Tiananmen Square, perhaps because the twentieth anniversary of that abortive uprising just recently passed. Tiananmen has come retrospectively to be symbolized by the iconic photograph of a single individual staring down a row of oncoming tanks. It's difficult not to wonder whether those events might have unfolded differently if they had occurred in our more thoroughly digitized, socially networked age. It's also hard not to see (or at the very least fervently hope for) the truly revolutionary power of these tools for democratic reform.

In a small coincidence, June 12, the date of the elections in Iran, also happened to be the day of the official transition to digital television transmissions in the U. S. We've obviously been living in the digital era much longer than a few days, but the end of analog television (the definitive technology of the twentieth century, I guess, along with the atom bomb), marks something like a watershed moment in the history of mass media technology (and thus public culture in general). But the deluge of information pouring out of Iran almost certainly marks a digital revolution of another sort, and in many senses.