Academic

Do These Posters Make You Want To Vote? Or Do They Fill You With Despair?

By Ann Bartow

Nayeli Rodriguez observes at the XX Factor:

Declare Yourself isn’t alone in its tendency to threaten and alienate its audience despite better intentions. The “Vote or Die” campaign that began in 2000 promotes its own violent message, particularly when organizer P. Diddy gets aggressive or weirdly personal about the issues. Aguilera is actually a double offender in the scary ad game, having already taped this eerie display (those eyes! that smile!) for Rock the Vote last May.

E.J. Graff writes in response:

Ewww, Nayeli, I agree with you entirely: Those ads are creepy. Worse than creepy, really: They’re advertising the sexiness of violence against women. Duct-tape her! Sew up her mouth! Dominate that chick! The voting tag line reads as an afterthought to the main message that rape is just soooo hot. Maybe there’s a secret plan to bring out the misogynists while suppressing the women’s vote?

Via Dawn at The New Agenda, who notes the same resort to violent imagery is used in this Free Your Vote film. Why is it that so many public interest organizations apparently feel that the only way to get attention from their intended audience is to conceptually link voting and violent pornography?

–Ann Bartow

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).