Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Thesis Analysis of an Image

Find an image and make a thesis statement about it covering its elements of rhetoric.

This image is used with the headline “tornado-ridden Tuscaloosa ready for Bama football” and establishes clear rhetorical elements of pathos – with the juxtaposition of a football jersey over the wreckage from a tornado, and also of logos, with the expectation that the town has more than survived the disaster.


Image taken from  latimes.com.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Blog Assignment 2

Find an image or an ad and rhetorically analyze it using the terms ethos, logos, pathos and kairos.

The image I've gone ahead and selected for this particular blog post is a movie poster for Captain America: The First Avenger, which is incidentally one I saw over the Summer. The movie itself was.... well, not what I expected, but that's a different story.

About the poster itself: the very clear focus of it is Captain America, who takes up the full height of the poster, yet his face is oddly very high up and not what we're drawn to. Instead we focus on the text after a bit. However, the presence of the main star, Captain America, is an appeal by ethos – after all, a super-powered hero who works for good (or just America) has some ethical authority. Another appeal I see from it is that of pathos, as the grittiness and overall darkness of it gives off the feeling that the situation he's in is pretty serious. Indeed, another pathos appeal comes from the background, as the thick dark clouds suggest dark times and a grave situation.

If we look at his outfit, we'll see more of the grittiness, and the fact that it's marred, scratched, and torn up. Clearly he's been through a lot, and logically he would seem to be quite a tough guy because of it. This logical appeal is the logos of the poster, though it is, I think, the least used appeal of them all.

But, these appeals mostly give the impression that the movie will be of a serious tone, such as that of another comic book movie, The Dark Knight. This is where the kairos of the poster comes into play: the Dark Knight showed that a serious and dark comic book movie could work - and be a success. The poster is tapping into that, and if you compare it to a poster for The Dark Knight, you can see the clear resemblance.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

First Blog Assignment

Think about what kind of visual images you see on a day to day basis. What kind of images do you see everyday? (ads, Facebook, newspaper, tv, computer etc.) How are these persuasive, what makes an image more effective or less effective? 

 
The kind of images we see every day really depends on what type of media we choose to expose ourselves to. For me personally, the majority of the images I see are online - they're mostly ads and complimentary images with articles. Online ads have to be persuasive in one thing: getting you, the viewer, to click on them. Unfortunately for ad makers, most people suffer from a sort of fatigue regarding online ads, and as such, ignore them very easily. This then lends itself to ads trying their utmost to be eye catching, sometimes with flashing lights.

Take this ad: the “start your free trial” button flashes (not shown), while there is a scattering of six movie titles in the banner and a bright red section with the main text.



In terms of persuading a viewer's thoughts or mindset though, online ads don't do much. However, I think the images that are used with online news sites tend to be much more persuasive in this regard. These types of images are presented to enhance the article, and add to the persuasiveness of what the viewer is reading. Good persuasiveness here relies on a good tie to the article and strong scenes. An example of this, at least to me, is in the image below.



This image was the front picture of an LA Times article reporting on the civil war in Libya. Specifically, it covers the destruction of one of Ghadafi's symbols in a victory for the rebels. This is reflected by the people in the image, and the feeling of triumph it contains. The article can be found here http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-tripoli-20110824-20110824,0,5290849.story (image not immediately present)