I was at the Austin Bike Summit this weekend, and one of many things discussed was how to make cycling more mainstream, so that cycling is seen as normal behavior instead of as an aberration (the reasoning being that if cyclists are considered normal and acceptable on the road, drivers are less likely to engage in hostile behavior towards us, thus making cyclists safer). Among the ideas were examples of intentional advertising in cities with a successful cycling programs: bicycles are seen in advertisements for completely non-related products, for example, much as many adverts include cars regardless of what is being advertised, because cars are already a normal part of life. Then on Sunday morning I happened to see an ad for paint with a cyclist in it. Pretty cool, I think, although if I hadn't heard the previous day's discussion I'm sure I wouldn't have thought twice about it.
This fits in, I think, with what Edbauer says about rhetoric: "Rhetorical situations involve the amalgamation and mixture of many different events and happenings that are not properly segmented into audience, text, or rhetorician" (20). Was the paint ad designed to convince people to ride bicycles? No, the intention is to sell paint. The cyclist, along with other traffic pictured in the ad, contributes to the rhetorical situation of a busy city and thus the busy life of the woman (the paint in the ad is very pink, and only women are shown using it) who needs a hard-working paint. Was the cyclist a happy coincidence, or an intentional plant into this rhetorical framework? It could go many different ways: Perhaps the PR firm is trying to reach cyclists. Or city dwellers. Maybe they were greenwashing the paint, by subtly showing a green transportation at the beginning of the ad but not calling attention to it. Or someone responsible for the ad is a cyclist, and put in this little shout-out to him or herself.
To borrow what Edbauer says about "Keeping Austin Weird", the cycling message "is distributed across purposes and institutional spaces. It circulates in a wide ecology of rhetorics. To play off Shaviro's words, the force of 'messages,' as they accrete over time, determine the shape of public rhetorics" (19-20). For the cyclists gathered on Saturday, this would be the best possible outcome toward making cycling normal, visible, and accepted.
(By way of warning: If your comment is about how cyclists annoy you, then I will delete it. That's not the point of the post.)
I had never considered that subliminal messages (which is what I think is going on in this ad) could be a part of rhetoric. But I suppose that I must admit that I was only considering written rhetoric when framing that thought. You are right, though. Cars play some role in everyone's lives, so a commercial for Coldwell Banker with a Lexus in the background does not seem abnormal or wrong in any capacity. I didn't think that bicycles would be any different, but I feel that my eye would be more drawn to a random bicycle in a commercial or print ad than to a car. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI was watching "Leverage" (a show on TNT, don't know if anyone else has seen it). The main characters (the good guys) were trying to crack into the bank account of a grifter to return the money to its rightful owners (a Robinhood of sorts). Throughout the episode, they would repeat numbers, words, or ideas when in the presence of the grifter. He changes the pass-code for his bank account, fearing the good guys were on to him. It turns out that he had changed the pass-code to incorporate all of these numbers, words, and ideas - just as the good guys had hoped and expected him to do. They were able to crack the code and take the money. I feel that is along the same lines as what you are talking about with the advertisements.