The civic artifact that I chose is the iconic “I Want You” poster.
Introduction
- Author is James Flagg
- This is one of 46 posters he created for WWI
- The poster is actually a combination of used ideas
- The pose is borrowed from a 1914 British recruitment picture
- The British poster depicted Lord Kitchener (Secretary of War) pointing at the viewer and saying “Your Country Needs YOU”
- Obviously the poster depicts Uncle Sam
- Uncle Sam was already a well-established figure at this time
- He represented the U.S itself and its ideals
- The pose is borrowed from a 1914 British recruitment picture
Uncle Sam
- Prior to this poster Uncle Sam had been primarily depicted as a cartoon character
- Flagg veered away from the classic depiction
- He instead gave him a more muscular and attractive frame
- Interestingly enough, Flagg didn’t have anyone to model the new and improved Uncle Sam for him; so he used his own face and just added facial hair and aged it
- This makes the viewer want to emulate Uncle Sam as he seems like the perfect American citizen
- Leads me to believe that the target audience was white males
- They would have been those who identified the best with Uncle Sam, making him the most effective for this audience
- Given the time period, white males also would have been seen as the most desirable recruits for the army
- He instead gave him a more muscular and attractive frame
- The fact that the poster appears to be coming from Uncle Sam, the archetypal embodiment of American ideals, gives it impressive ethos
Pathos
- The poster appeals appeals to pathos in a number of ways
- This was a time in which many Americans felt we had to present a united front against the rest of the world
- This meant that patriotism would have been one of the most vaunted ideals in society
- How could the viewer call themselves a patriot if they refuse the call of Uncle Sam, who is representing the country itself
- Guilt-trips the viewer into enlisting
- This meant that patriotism would have been one of the most vaunted ideals in society
- The poster also plays into the viewer’s sense of self-importance
- It seems to single out the viewer and speak specifically to you, both with the pose and the words
- This makes the viewer feel important, and makes them think that the country needs them specifically to win the war
I didn’t know that the American poster was based off a British poster before your elevator pitch so that was interesting to learn. I think this outline is good because it provides a solid background of the origin of the poster and then goes into the devices which is a good segue.
Your introduction is great- not only does it provide context, but it is also very interesting! You also have a lot of great points in the body of your speech. My only suggestion would be to choose a more consistent organization; Uncle Sam and Pathos are relatively unrelated categories. Maybe you could do ethos, pathos and kairos; or break it up by different aspects of the cartoon and how they relate to rhetorical strategies or the rhetorical situation.
I think your outline looks very precise and well organized. I think you could benefit from adding a conclusion at the end which wraps up what commonplaces you found in the ad, however, apart from that I think that your outline contains a good amount of detail and information!