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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyFebruary 13th, 2015
I recently saw an anti-gay graphic on JoeMyGod that excels so thoroughly at destroying its own message it feels like the best worst graphic ever. I’m an instructional designer and a big part of my job is creating direct, clear, effective messaging, so I felt compelled, almost as a professional exercise, to analyze what makes it so perfectly disastrous. This is probably just for my fellow geeks, nerds, and dorks, but have a look at this masterpiece.
Most people, when they first look at this, absorb the photos before the headlines or captions. Pictures have more immediacy than long word-strings. Pictures, in fact, distract from words. I recall a study that showed students learning about lightning actually retained less knowledge when the lesson’s verbal description was accompanied by pretty lightning pictures. The pictures split their attention and decreased their ability to focus on words. Pictures are only effective when they reinforce and add to the basic message.
And if you take away the words, what message do these pictures send? That anti-gay protesters today are eerily reminiscent of anti-black protesters from generations ago. In fact, if you couldn’t read speak English you’d probably assume the graphic is a huge slam at the foes of marriage equality. I could stop there, because nothing else matters — the picture has made its point — but let’s continue.
Suppose the viewers, now primed with a pro-equality message, move on to the words. A few appear bigger than the rest, so their eyes first notice this:
The message for the primed reader is clear:
In each case the typography reinforces the pictorial message. It even points out the flaw in the intended message, which seems to want to set up a distinction between civil rights and morality — as if civil rights weren’t a moral issue, as if they were separate things — but ends up graphically doing just the opposite.
What about the rest of each headline? The meat doesn’t come until the end of each, with the words right and wrong (which aren’t just at the end, but aren’t even emphasized!). Furthermore, wrong is in a gray that fades into the black/white/gray of the picture. Not that we need typographic help to minimize that message. A simple rule is this: the more words you toss onto an image, the less power those words have. The graphic designer is in constant battle with the viewer’s attention span and myriad distractions, so drowning a graphic in a flood of text is a good way to ensure the text isn’t read.
But let’s soldier on and imagine viewers haven’t already skipped to the next post in their Facebook feed. A primed reader will find the headlines nonsensical — or at least counter-intuitive — and the rest of the text helps none at all. The Bible verses on the left side affirm our common humanity, and now seem like condemnations not just of racism but of homophobia, too. Viewers who start on the left and move to the right will thus be further primed to reject the anti-gay verses there as bigoted, or more charitably, as archaic and irrelevant. All this culminates in the sentence at the very bottom, which now seems to declare that opponents of marriage equality aren’t just abandoning the right side of history, but are violating God’s Law as well.
Not that most viewers will go through a careful analysis. Instead, all this will be synthesized into one simple and unintended message:
These people are idiots, too dim to realize how dim they are.
And by “these people” I mean those in the left pic, those on the right, and those who created the graphic as well. That’s catastrophic. Researchers have found that when people are confronted with a difficult question, they opt out by substituting an easier question in its place. For instance, instead of asking, What are the moral cases for and against same-sex marriage?, they’ll divert to Which group do I want to be part of?
And nobody want to be part of the idiots.
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Neil
February 13th, 2015
When I first saw this graphic, I did indeed assume it was a pro-equality meme mocking the poor judgement of the oppoaition today by comparison with the Civil Rights confrontation of the past.
In fact, I still thought that several other times it turned up until it became apparent from the context of discussion around it what was intended by the meme’s author.
Timothy Kincaid
February 13th, 2015
And to add…
The content of the images is compellingly similar.
In both there are men and women carrying placards. In both there are people carrying flags. In both people seem to be facing the same direction. Both have signs appealing to Christ/God.
Stephen
February 14th, 2015
Not being a dork, I found this breakdown extremely instructive. I should think like almost everybody I assumed on first seeing this that it was intended to be arguing for equality. I’ve seen it several times since but it wasn’t till Mr. Tisnai broke it down into its constituent parts that I even noticed the proof texts.
Very interesting to read the effect that images have on comprehending text. I feel that way about background music. If music is droning somewhere I can’t understand what is being said.
eddie
February 16th, 2015
me too – I had to read twice and concentrate on it to get the message. but I wonder – is that because I am coming at it from a gay bias or is it because it is just so damn stupid as Rob T says it is. Maybe a combination of the 2 ? I wonder what homophobes see when they look at this for the first time. Are homophobes confused too when they see this or does their bias already tell them what’s up?. Altogether it’s quite interesting.
NancyP
February 16th, 2015
Well, I am no graphics expert, but I am a media user and an amateur photographer. It seems perfectly apparent that people are going to assume that the two photos should be interpreted in the same way – protesters are wrong.
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