14. Rhetoric and Visuals
Visual Culture
In what ways is the contemporary world, particularly in the U.S., a visual culture? Visual cultures are scenes of shared public life where shared meaning is made using images, artwork, and memes.
Although social media platforms have made visual representation and persuasion a common part of American public life, U.S. culture has a long history of commemoration, identification, and self-representation through visual imagery. There are at least seven different ways that a visual culture has manifested historically in the United States:
1) In a Visual Culture, Visual Rhetorics are Common and Change Forms
Visuals and technologies of visualization have been around as long as verbal rhetorics, and change forms.
Sometimes the images that define a culture shift in meaning over time and over different visual texts.
2) Visual and Verbal Rhetorics Work Together in Visual Culture
The second way that the contemporary United States is a visual culture is that visual and verbal rhetoric work in conjunction with one another. A number of experts from a various fields have said that there are significant differences between “visual” and “verbal” culture.
Some have also argued that we are moving away from a primarily “verbal” (or literate) culture, defined by the circulation of information-as-words, and toward a “visual” culture in which we prize photographs and moving images as ways of digesting and retaining knowledge. The technologies available to us today make us multi-literate, rather than illiterate.
For anyone who’s ever had to explain how to use the computer, TV remote, or phone to a relative — or who have had to ask others for this kind of help — it’s clear that the kind of "literacy" that more recent generations have isn’t less valid than the predominantly written cultures of the 20th century.
This new visual AND verbal literacy has generated its own languages; one example being the pictograms we use to communicate today. Emojis, for instance, allow us to easily communicate that we are “running late” 🏃⏱️, that it’s “party time” 🥳 ⏰, or wish someone “good luck" 👍 🍀. But we can also imagine that these patterns of symbols would be mystifying for someone who was not always enculturated to know them.
3) Visual Culture Elevates Presentational Symbolism
Third, the contemporary U.S. is a visual culture because it elevates presentational symbolism. Presentational symbolism, according to the definition in Rhetoric in Civic Life, is “a direct presentation of an individual object” that “widens our conception of rationality far beyond the traditional boundaries, yet never breaks faith with logic in the strictest sense.”
An example of presentational symbolism is the difference between attending a lecture virtually and attending it in person. The experience of a virtual and an in-person lecture is very different. Specifically, the style and feel of the presentation are different. Your experience of what counts as “in-class” time is different. You either can control the experience of how you look by using camera covers or backgrounds or – because you’re in a classroom with limited movement space, you don’t. Your experience of speech and persuasion is different depending on the presentational context. Your sensory experience, whether in a space with other people or by yourself, is also different.
Visual culture elevates presentational symbolism because it tries to simulate the face-to-face experience as a virtual experience. It tries to re-create face-to-face conversations (e.g. Zoom) or one-on-one debates (e.g., Reddit or Twitter (I refuse to call it X)) using technologies that allow us to symbolize our communication. Often, however, staging “debates” or “face-to-face conversations” does not completely simulate the interpersonal experience. Other times, merely simulating debates results in further polarization or otherwise fails to live up to the argumentative ideal of idea testing or a true engagement with opposing ideas.
Presentational symbolism also “produces a simultaneous impression of many elements,” or a gestalt. Images multiply and proliferate. They also become increasingly complex, representing increasing magnitudes of data. An example of this kind of presentational symbolism is the graphic representation of populations, as this map below illustrates the “big picture” of viral outbreaks in the United States as a presentation of reality that relies on a simultaneous impression of many elements, as in this coronavirus outbreak map:
4) Visual Culture is Where Rhetorical Reading Happens
Visual culture is the site of dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings. These key terms describe how we interpret the visual rhetoric we encounter and create new visual rhetorics in response.
The dominant reading is the preferred, taken-for-granted, hegemonic reading. In a dominant reading, the viewer takes the connoted meaning, and operates in the dominant code.
Depicted below is the famous “Flag Raising on Iwo Jima.” It is also an example of an “iconic photograph.” The most literal, hegemonic interpretation of the image is as a celebration of American teamwork in service of the shared goal of U.S. military victory. This is a dominant reading of this image. According to Palczewski et.al., “by recognizing and accepting these connotations, we participate in a dominant reading, in which what this means for the United States culturally is accepted and goes unchallenged.
A negotiated reading is where the viewer accepts some of the taken-for-granted meanings but recognizes exceptions. They understand what the image depicts, but challenge what it means.
Depicted below is public artwork from Sydney, Australia that shows soldiers raising a McDonald’s sign rather than the flag. Like the original photograph, the image denotes a kind of military “victory,” but one that ultimately supports America as the land of capitalist corporations rather than as upholding civic virtue. The negotiated reading allows some of the photograph’s original meanings to be accepted — the denotation of American victory — while others are challenged — replacing nationalistic camaraderie with connotations of commercialism.
In an oppositional reading, the viewer subverts or challenges the basic ideas of an image circulating in public contexts.
During the Iraq War, political cartoonist Billy Day drew a cartoon showing oil executives from Texaco, Exxon, Chevron, and Halliburton raising an oil derrick — and gas prices — under a banner reading “mission accomplished” in an oppositional reading of the famous Iwo Jima image.
Mission Accomplished” was a phrase visually featured in a speech by George W. Bush, who had declared victory in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 while aboard an aircraft carrier. The cartoon is oppositional because it suggests that the U.S.'s motives for victory were financial rather than virtuous and that the “victory” that was sought might actually be reflected in harder times for Americans at the gas pumps. The oppositional reading, therefore, acknowledges the denotation (or “victory”) and the connotation (or “virtue”) by offering a rebuttal to the dominant reading on both fronts.
5) Visual Culture is a Stage for Presence
Fifth, visual images possess presence. Presence means that the image has an immediate impact on the viewer’s perception, or that it “acts on us” by bringing something before our eyes.
Presence is one reason why prosecutors bring the alleged murder weapon into court.
In visuals, presence can create a sense of "being there"; as Palczewski, et. al. put it:
Visuals may create virtual experiences in a particularly intense way, by making audience members feel as though they were present to witness an event. They offer a direct presentation instead of a discursive description. They can make things that are distant in time or space feel current and close.
6) Visual Culture References Beliefs, Values, and Ideology
Sixth, visual images are points of common reference that illustrate and depict taken-for-granted beliefs, values, and ideologies of a culture.
According to rhetorical scholars Victoria Gallagher and Ken Zagacki, visual images do the work of reflecting the culture that produced them. Some images, like the paintings of Norman Rockwell, have, in their words, “evoke the common humanity of blacks and whites by making visible the abstract forms of civic life in the lived experience of individual citizens, both black and white.” According to Gallaher and Zagacki, Rockwell’s images did the work of reflecting American culture in three ways:
Rockwell’s images disregarded established caricatures of Black Americans
Rockwell’s images regarded its subjects as human individuals with unique narratives and identities.
Rockwell’s images made abstract political concepts like “equality” or “fairness” knowable and concrete.
Let's examine two images of Rockwell paintings from Gallagher and Zagacki’s article using these criteria. The first image of the Rockwell painting titled “The Problem We All Live With,” which depicts Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate Louisiana's all-white William Frantz Elementary School, on her way to her first class in 1960. The girl was escorted to school by four Federal marshals every day for a year and faced mobs screaming racist slurs at her and other harassment.
First, Rockwell’s style of painting departed from typical ways that Black Americans were represented in editorial cartoons. Whereas a common way of representing diversity was in cartoons and using racist stereotypes, Rockwell painted Bridges and his other subjects as realistic characters in a three-dimensional space. His artwork sought to faithfully render events as they actually transpired in public settings without lampooning or satirizing the subject material. In “The Problem We All Live With,” Rockwell places Bridges on a sidewalk, presumably on her way to school. In the background, the viewer can see the residue of a thrown tomato and a vile slur scrawled on the wall.
Second, Rockwell recognized the particularity of his painted subjects: they tell a unique story and stand out from the other characters in the painting. Ruby Bridges is personalized in this image because she is the only figure who is fully within the frame of the picture. Her school materials make a striking contrast with the tomato and the slur, a reminder of the pro-segregationist protests that accompanied her attendance at the school.
Finally, Rockwell’s image made abstract political concepts such as segregation and equality knowable. Ruby is depicted as “on her way” to a desegregated education, while in reality she was still segregated within the school. Although Ruby represented the political battle over the desegregated classroom, Ruby was not “free” in her learning environment, contained by American racism, law enforcement escorts, and a community that was reluctant to accept her.
The second image is called “New Kids in the Neighborhood,” which depicts a Black family moving into a white suburb.
As with the previous painting, in “New Kids in the Neighborhood,” Rockwell again disregarded racist caricatures of Black people by white artists. As noted earlier, his illustrations also depicted the standoffish relationships between Black and white residents at a time when the suburbs were still popularly depicted as populated by an exclusively white middle class.
Rockwell recognized characters in their particularity, this time through a juxtaposition of formal elements in the painting. The “new kids” are personalized based on their contrasting posture (standing straight and leaning forward/back). The color scheme on the left and right sides of the painting is also distinct. The “new neighbors” are dressed in pastels; they are holding a white cat and a baseball glove. The children to the white are drawn in a darker color scheme, one holding a black dog by a leash and another dressed as a baseball player. Gallagher and Zagacki state that the characters strike a “visual balance” and “show the things blacks and whites shared in common, despite racial and other differences."
“New Kids in the Neighborhood” made abstract political concepts knowable. Rockwell visually portrayed a gap between the two groups of children. The disproportion in the numbers of children on each side gives a form to abstract concepts such as equality and material realities, such as housing segregation.
7) Visual Culture is Immersive
Finally, the United States is a visual culture because visual forms of communication surround us, appearing in multiple outlets all at once. According to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, "culture is the historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols.” In this case, these symbols are visual and work with the verbal to construct a familiar world of meanings that gives us a sense of security.
⏯️ The popular 2012 film The Avengers, for instance, depicts a transformed and futuristic military as desirable, transforming the popular Marvel superhero franchise into a positive depiction of the military as morally righteous and technologically sublime.
Our visual culture is modeled after written culture, but it creates new, relational forms of communication and gives us new ways of relating to one another. The ultimate purpose of understanding the specific pattern of meanings and symbols that we use in our time, and how these unique forms of meaning-making also are generative of who we call our family, our friends, and our communities.
Genres of Visual Rhetoric
Although the rhetoric of visual culture changes dramatically over time, rhetoricans have pointed to several different kinds of visual rhetoric that shape Americans’ popular and political beliefs. These include iconic photographs, body rhetoric, monumental rhetoric, and image events.
Iconic Photographs
Iconic photographs are widely circulating images that retain political significance in a visual culture. They are made famous because they commemorate a specific moment in time and symbolize the values of the public that it represents. Iconic photographs have four key features:
They must be recognized by everyone.
They must be understood as representations of historically significant events.
They must be powerful objects of emotional identification and response.
They must be regularly reproduced or copied across a range of media.
First, iconic photographs must be recognized by everyone in a public culture. Each of the photographs marks a specific moment in American public memory.
The Flag Raising on Iwo Jima and the 🔗 Times Square kiss photo are widely recognized as associated with American public culture at the end of WWII because each uses a widely recognized pose to depict American military victory alongside the American flag or iconic American locations like Times Square.
The 🔗 Kent State photograph, depicting student resistance against military force in Vietnam that resulted in military violence against students, similarly captures a widely recognizable moment that lasts well beyond the moment when the photograph was taken.
Second, iconic photographs must be understood as representations of historically significant events.
As artifacts of American public culture, both “Flag-raising at Iwo Jima” and “V-J Day in Times Square” are representations of wartime victory or post-war celebration that clearly mark the end of WWII. The Kent State photograph is widely recognized as a representation of American culture and student resistance during the Vietnam War.
Third, they must depict objects of strong emotional identification and response. The “ideas” depicted in the photographs are emotionally charged. Each represents a kind of emotional release, the enthusiasm that comes with collective victory and success, the joy of being reunited with a loved one, the grief, and anger that accompanies the taking of innocent life. In each case, the emotions are prominent to the viewer.
For instance, 🔗 Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" shows a migrant farmworker and three of her children in a tent at a workers' camp during the Depression and evokes strong identification with the family's desperation.
Finally, iconic images must be regularly reproduced or copied across a range of media. Part of what contributes to the recognizability of the photographs is the fact that they have been so widely circulated, remixed, reproduced, and parodied, as in these three examples. Click through all of the images.
Body Rhetoric and Enactment
According to Palczewski, et. al., body rhetoric tries to capture the impact the human body has on the messages that it communicates: “Who says a message and how a body is made present communicate as much as what is said.” Body rhetoric is rhetoric that foregrounds the body as part of the symbolic act.
Enactment occurs when the person engaging in symbolic action functions as proof of the argument they advance.
The photo above was taken on the day of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2018. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court after a number of women, including Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford, testified that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted them. During the protests around Kavanaugh's confirmation, body rhetoric, or rhetoric that foregrounds the body as part of the symbolic act, occurred when the crowd of protestors gave public anger a communicable form. Following the vote that confirmed him and just before his swearing-in, a contingent of protesters descended on the Supreme Court. Bodies poured onto the stairs with chants such as “Whose Court? Our Court” and “Arrest Sexual Predators, Not Protesters.”
The second way that body rhetoric occurred during this event was as enactment, as protesters used their own bodies as examples of what they were protesting. Occupying the prohibited stairways and chanting through the swearing-in, this protest was capped by Alex Wong's photo of a woman who climbed the statue titled “Contemplation of Justice," sat in her lap, and held up a fist and a small handwritten sign reading “#MeToo.”
Monumental Rhetoric
Palczewski, et. al. group monuments, memorials, and museums together as a unique genre of visual rhetoric. They assert that this grouping is appropriate because “controversy often arises over monuments and memorials,” which mark famous locations or commemorate the dead — and because they “direct people’s views of themselves.”
Visual rhetoric is concerned with the way that certain sites are places where shared meaning is made, and how this shared meaning is transmitted in the representation of a place, as well as the experience of "being there." Monumental rhetoric guides people in their thinking about facts from the past, how to act in the present, and what possible futures to seek. They sustain what the public remembers about its own historical events, and make arguments about how to think about the identities of particular groups of people.
The photos below depict a monument: the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and Ground Zero site. Click through all of the photos.
The 9/11 memorial in New York City demonstrates how this kind of memory — which is about the past, present, and future — is built into visual representations and the experience of being there. According to Palczewski, et. al “The Freedom Tower at Ground Zero, now called One World Trade Center, did not open until 2015. Disagreement over the form of monumental structures at the site delayed construction until 2006. The final monument does a lot of representational work by commemorating the dead and creating a symbolic reminder of September 11th."
Rhetorical scholar and analyst Joshua Gunn calls the commemoration of 9/11 “a cultural performance of witnessing, a longing to return to, and escape from, the violent scene.” The endlessly flowing pools also remind viewers that they are not just healing waters but also open wounds. They capture loss while also reminding attendees of the towers that used to stand in the footprint of the memorial. This loss is created because the falls are built downward, a physical reflection of the towers that once stretched upward. Like a tower where a viewer from up close would have to strain to see the top, the pools are built so as to create the illusion of an endless waterfall, where you would similarly strain to see the bottom.
As an example of monumental rhetoric, the memorial offers us a version of the past, present, and future which are captured in the intentional design of the monument as well as the kind of experiences that can be had by people who pass through it. As a reminder of the past, it tells us about the tragedy of the towers’ destruction, as well as who was lost in the event. As a monument suited to present-day concerns, it allows visitors to remember, express grief, and see their own reflections in the lists of names. As a vision of the possible future, it seeks to communicate a sense of loss as a reminder and warning for what might come next.
Image Events
Image events are staged acts designed for media dissemination. Recently, controversy erupted over the way that the National Archives blurred and censored protest signs from the Women’s March in Washington. Protests are also carefully controlled events, often involving the securing of permits and the supervision of the police. Protests are therefore either choreographed or not; the way they are captured as organized or disorganized, as having a story or not, dictates how they are reported and remembered.
Palczewski, et. al. tells the story of the “original” image event, which was staged by Greenpeace on July 27, 1975. Developed by Greenpeace activists who wanted to stage protests in a publicly visible way that could be widely circulated, the “Mind Bomb” was a way to publicize the social movement to save the whales.
The problem with image events is that their staging can be genuine or disingenuous. ⏯️ How to Change the World Trailer
If we were to compare the tactics of Greenpeace to say, the ⏯️ television show Whale Wars, which was canceled after facing significant legal troubles, we can see that strategically staged protests can serve the interests of social movements, as can other events calculated to generate images, such as when Donald Trump kissed the fire suit of the man killed during the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump.
Sometimes, image events are co-opted for other purposes, as in the infamous ⏯️ Pepsi Cola commercial starring Kendall Jenner, which was quickly ⏯️ parodied by Saturday Night Live, or 🔗 tobacco companies' efforts in the early '90s to create a fake "grassroots" campaign to fight the smoking ban on airplanes.
Reviewing the Genres of Visual Rhetoric
An iconic photograph can take many forms, but it would not be something with personal meaning like a family photograph, a random picture of a politician in front of a well-known building, or a well-taken picture of a monument at sunset. It must be published and circulated; it must be well-recognized as commemorating a historical moment or event. However, the meaning of an iconic photograph isn’t an image where everyone agrees on what it means. Instead, it’s possible that people forget what it means, and for people to remake its commonly accepted meaning.
Bodies can be the proof of an argument, and can themselves be an argument. Bodies can also make the argument that their own speech has been restricted. When a person’s body is an example of the argument they are making, it is enactment.
Monuments commemorate and create history. The architecture and movement through a monument are also a part of its rhetoric. Visitors are guided to perceive objects from a new perspective because of the symbolic and embodied design of memorials.
Finally, image events take the form of representations of an instance of social protest. Multiple photographs or videos summarize a movement, such as news footage of the National Women’s March, would be examples of an example of image events.
Last updated