All advertisements, campaigns, and conversations are conducted with an awareness of context. There could be no discussion without a prompt relevant to “the now”. Appeals to kairos attempt to persuade an audience based on a movement particular to “the now”.
These posters were anonymously plastered all around Hollywood shortly after the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s long-silenced sexual abuses. The #MeToo movement had just begun to take off, and victims of abuse in Hollywood were starting to find a platform to finally speak about this issue. Without this context, the poster featuring Weinstein and the words “She Knew” across Meryl Streep’s face would be unintelligible. Released at the opportune time, this minimalistic poster capitalized on the attitude of contempt towards the now immediately-recognizable abuser.
Interestingly, the focus of this poster was not on Weinstein, but on Streep. The words “She Knew” undoubtedly imply that the designer believed that Streep knew of the sexual abuses, yet remained silent. This accusation was a recent hot-topic due to tweets by Rose McGowan decrying the hypocrisy of some of the celebrities supposedly supporting #MeToo. The poster’s impact amplified McGowan’s denunciations, directing anger to not only alleged abusers in Hollywood, but also to their enablers.
Masterfully employing kairos, this poster depended on the rapidly growing powerful sentiments regarding assault to convey its message. Cleverly focusing the emotions associated with Weinstein and like abusers on purported enablers, the poster communicates that knowing about predatory behavior and doing nothing about it is inexcusable.
The designer, however, missed the mark by specifically targeting Meryl Streep, especially in how they chose to do so. Using the graphic style of famed feminist artist Barbara Kruger, the designer employed the famous style in an attempt to build ethos. This attempt at ethos falls apart due to the fact that the poster’s designer had stolen Kruger’s intellectual and artistic property by virtue of making the poster and marketing it as their own, despite being anonymous. Detrimental to its success, and as much as the condemnation of abuse enablers is important, making Streep the face of this message resulted in incredible controversy. Streep had been using her platform to praise those with the courage to speak up about sexual predators in Hollywood, supporting the victims of Weinstein’s abuse. In that context, an attack on Streep appeared to be an attempt to discredit her as well as the people whose stories she promoted.
Events specific to “the now” benefited the spread of this poster and expanded its impact despite the fact that its intended purpose was initially unclear*.
*An artist under the pseudonym Sabo has since claimed responsibility for the posters. Judging from his past works, which include contracts under alt-right Milo Yiannopoulos, as well as smear campaigns against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Sabo was very intentional in attacking Streep in his poster design. In an interview, he admitted that Streep was targeted because of her outspokenness against Donald Trump, saying “She’s swiping at us, so we’re swiping back.”