Design and Rhetoric

Kress argues that authorship must give way to designership. Design, he argues, helps us to deal with the shifting world of technology that has come upon us because of the shift from print to the image. Whereas authorship and print assume a static world, according to Kress, design and the use of multiple modes is more useful in our current sociohistorical moment. With this shift to design he sees a wider capacity for agency, an agency that responds to the world and the modes through transformation rather than acquisition, which he relates to language / literacy acquisition (20). Since the decline of the authority of authorship, Kress argues that the audience has become increasingly important in designing so that modes are chosen for their “aptness of fit” (19). He concludes from this that rhetoric has subsequently “re-emerged” (19).

The shift from print to image / design can be seen in a project put out by Equality Ohio, a statewide organization dedicated to LGBT rights, called Our Stories. They have been doing this project for three years, each year telling the stories of LGBT individuals and straight allies, those who combat heteronormativity. The first year was a book of more than 80 stories from individuals in Ohio who are LGBT or allies. This may be seen as further evidence for Prior’s critique of Kress, as it is a book that allows for multiple entry points (see Prior 25). Nonetheless, there is a shift from print with images to the second-year video interviews and finally to the third year (just released August 20th, 2008) of digital narratives. This is one instance that supports Kress’s notion of agency through design. These eight digital stories use film, voice-overs, still images, and music to convey their messages. This digital ensemble shows a recognition of the affordances the modes allow to the designers. The Center of Digital Storytelling worked with Equality Ohio and these eight participants to help create the videos.

Here is a link to one of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU5-RFmYnOw. If you search “digital stories equality ohio” on youtube.com you will find all of them. The purpose of these videos is political in that they are meant to convince the (straight) public that LGBT people deserve equality. Equality Ohio was formed and has been shaped by the political context of 2004, where gay marriage exploded onto the national scene. Therefore, many of the videos focus on family. Also, there is a rhetoric of “normality” and “sameness” that underpins the entire project (for critiques of this politics see queer theorists Michael Warner and Judith Butler and LGBT historian John D’Emelio among others). Nonetheless, I selected this video to talk about because of Kress’s argument that rhetoric has re-emerged for designers. This video’s rhetoric is sophitocated, at lest in its use of kairos, timing (and potentially kairos used as metis, cunning), compared to the others.

The video focuses on a lesbian woman’s relationship with her older brother. The logic goes like this: (1) Family is important to LGBT people because we have good relationships with our siblings (a response to “family values” rhetoric that ignores the fact that LGBT peeps are born into the heterosexual matrix of their family of origin and create families of their own—families of choice, involving any of the following: partners, children, and / or friends). (2) There are straight people who are supportive of LGBT issues and you, too, can become one (The message of gay liberation in the 70s—“We are everywhere”—has turned into almost a strange Uncle Sam message--“We want you!”). This message is derived from the portrait of her brother as an ally. (3) LGBT people just want to be “normal” and have a family like straight people do. See, we are just like you (a response to pathological notions of “deviant” sexual identification and gender-variant individuals). By ending the video with her plan that she and her partner will have kids and that they’ll play with her brother’s kids, she is also trying to identify with a straight audience that has similar hopes for their prospective children; although the assumption is that all straight folks want and will have children. The other glaring assumption is that LGBT peeps want to be like straight people. This is simply not the case for many of us.

The video is all about timing! The designer is crafty enough, and understands her audience enough, to start with “family values”—her relationship with her brother. It is something that, presumably the audience will connect with emotionally. Also, the choice of using video clips that have that old-time flickering quality to it (not sure if it is just old film or if that was a manipulation on the part of the designer) also may connect emotionally with the audience through nostalgia for “the good old days.” It is not until half-way through the video that she reveals she is a lesbian. At that point, she believes that she has established a “family values” ethos; evidence of her relationship with her brother stands as her credibility. Furthermore, she locates herself in a place, a topoi??, of “normality” by identifying her commitment ceremony to her partner in the same breath as she outs herself. These choices may be explained through Kress’s notion of “aptness of fit.” She certainly had the audience in mind when creating this video. I wonder how effective it will be. For me, I found the pathos appealing and even got a bit teary-eyed, despite my different political agenda that instead of seeking to normalize LGBT individuals, examines the ways that heterosexuality has been normalized and uproot those built assumptions from our world, especially the very hetero-sexy and “family friendly” public sphere.

Just to give a decidedly different approach to LGBT issues, consider the British organization Stonewall. This organization gets its name from the bar in New York where gay liberation began in 1969. The bar was raided by the police, which was common at the time. However, what was uncommon and what sparked the gay liberation movement (you won’t get this history lesson in high school by the way) were the transgendered individuals of color who protested the raid for days. With that in mind this organization started an education campaign in response to bullying in schools with this billboard: http://wallflowermag.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/get-over-it.jpg. The billboard reads, “Some people are gay. Get over it!”