some ideas I am playing around with, very rough guys but if anyone has ideas please comment

This image sucker-punched me in the gut. The obvious punctum sits between a middle aged man's crotch and a young teenage girl in the form of a cigarette. The young girl is obviously on her knees performing a sexual act. She doesn't seem to be enjoying herself, there is no look of ecstasy on her young face instead she is masked in what appears to be subservience and submission-- slavery. This is fitting because the french caption underneath the ad translates roughly into "Don't be a slave to tobacco." The rhetorical warrant assumed in this ad are catastrophically disturbing. It infers the idea that a young girl on her knees is chained in slavery to the Man. She is obviously a sexual object, but more than that she doesn't look like she is being physically compelled, more that her will either doesn't exist or that she has surrendered it to the man, where her eyes are lifted. She isn't fighting her position, she is submitted to it. Taking this even deeper another warrant assumed is that a woman on her knees performing oral sex is in slavery and that she couldn't possibly be doing it for her own satisfaction. I make no personal commentary on this, only that it is interesting that even in France this infers the idea that woman are sexually repressed and might not enjoy certain sexual acts as much as men. It in fact subscribes to the 19th century tradition of the corseted woman who is not free to experience sex in a pleasurable way, rather she exists to serve the man in this way. This underlying warrant is disturbing because it drags us back to a time when men owned women in every way, not just her power and money and sex but even if she was allowed to enjoy sex. It also supports the warrant that particular sexual acts are demeaning to woman, when this is an archaic idea. Some other obvious notes about this image about color-- the background is not just an off-white eggshell color, but because of the content of the ad one's mind might even call it semen colored. The masculine overtones of this are HUGE. The masculine energy in this entire ad overpowers with its sheer space the feminine of the ad. The girl is placed in the center of the space, but this only draws attention to her, it doesn't put her in the most powerful position. The power comes from the all-encompassing masculine energy of the man, his hand, the semen-colored background and the cigarette. Now, lets C.R.A.P this apart. Contrast: The contrasts within this image are powerful. There is the obvious contrast-- man-woman, then there is the even more disturbing contrast. The man's age vs. the young girl. This assumes the warrant that young woman are often seen as subservient and viewed as more sexually appealing than the man, who can age and weather and still 'get some.' The clues to this man's age are in the rounded stomach that protrudes forward and the hair feathered on his hand. This contrasts strongly with the face of the young girl. We do not see any face from the man, but the girl is wide-eyed and innocent looking and screams of youthful niavity. Repetition: The main element of repetition is sex. It is in the semen-colored background, the cigarette, the crotch, the girls mouth...sex is repeated in this ad as a constant. It is used in a distasteful way, however, because the biggest contrast is the girl performing a sexual act that places her in 'sexual servitude.' Alignment: The cigarette is placed front and center, the strong phallic symbol of Masculine enslaving the Feminine in the ad. Though just a hint of the man is actually in the image, as opposed to the face of the girl, the cigarette is an extension of the man and its placement and alignment imply power. P: This image is an anti-smoking advertisement. This implies its blatant object to persuade. The image is banking on how powerful it is so much, that the text is secondary to the size and placement of the rest of the image. The image talks, and it says alot: smoking will enslave you, smoking is not glamorous, smoking is not smart-- DON'T SMOKE. But taking this deeper, especially through the lens of Blaire, it supports Blaire's idea about images persuading whether there is text or not. The idea that rhetoric is not just lassoed to words and language. This is powerful. What does this image assume about the audience? One underlying cultural warrant might be the Sexy-Older-Man-and-the-real-consequences. The image shows us a young girl on her knees positioned in front of an older man in a suit. The suit might imply wealth, power, position, sophistication, even sex appeal. The young girl is lured in by the power and sophistication of the Older Man. She allows herself to be completely seduced. It isn't until she is on her knees that she notices his slight belly, that she realized her position. She is in the Older Man spell, and therefore his slave. What once was sexy and sophisticated is know dirty and demeaning. Taking this further, the Older Man might equal the tabaco companies, the cigarrett

no words.

So, so much to say.

what is visual rhetoric

Somewhere between Barthe’s ideas of studium and punctum and Blaire’s philosophies on what actually makes up visual rhetoric rests what visual rhetoric exactly is. It seems to me to be most like the Affect— like that flash we feel in our gut in regards to what a particular image does to us physically and emotionally before our brain grabs hold of it and starts plastering it with constrictive labels. Why are we so compelled to look at a particular image? What is that form of communication before language traps it, wrapping it up neatly in a box? Language is often inadequate and it seems once again to prove true when I look at an image and feel a soft oomph or sigh or even a scream somewhere inside me that I can’t describe— it’s so deep that all I can do is feel. Somewhere in this label-less realm I think the definition of visual rhetoric resides. Images have a way of reeling through our minds faster than words. This propels them with what I believe is a communication more powerful than words. In what might take a poet, or narrator a page to accurately describe (and even then will surely leave the reader open to her own interpretation between the lines) an image speaks in a raw, truthful fashion unique onto itself. What an image makes someone feel can be individual to that person and their own culture and memories— but it is in the making someone feel something in .5 seconds that is unique unto the visual. Defining visual rhetoric is tricky. Most hold rhetoric’s definition loosely to “the art of persuasion.” If this is true, than visual rhetoric is speaking to our desires, speaking to our wants and impulses in a sneaky fashion that can catch us off guard faster than non-visual rhetoric. This is all speculation on my end, because rhetoric…and especially visual rhetoric seem to be all around us. It is not just the obvious propaganda, it’s the subtle influence. It’s the whispers into our subconscious asking us what we basically want.

Can images of food really make us hungry? I think yes. Whenever I see a Taco Bell commercial I find myself reaching for my keys and tempted to take a midnight drive just to sink my teeth into a Beefy-Five-Layer-Burrito. I snapped this image of a cake I made, just to experiment with food images.

My Dog Scout. And yes, that is Scout as in TKAMB. He was almost named Atticus :) Studium seems obvious to me, I think its Scout himself. What proud owner hasn't tormented their pet by taking obnoxious amounts of photographs? Punctum: Glasses, maybe? Though not sure. They evoke a sense of nostalgia and playfulness in ME, but this is my dog we are looking at here. The photo itself is pretty poor quality...and I was lucky enough to slip the glasses on him for 3.7 seconds before he jumped into canine action to remove the bothersome spectacles and I snapped this puppy (literally and literally) on my phone cam.