This is a poster for a vocal youth protection group aiming to raise awareness of the dire consequences of not banning guns. The choice of text is a visual text created for a campaign advertisement to rally adults to take action to protect the impressionable young minds. In the setting of a library, two incomparable objects are foregrounded, a book and a gun; one of which is stated to be banned and the other to be not. This creates a rather surreal and visually provocative impact due to the guns displacement in the frame. The producers of the advertisement ultimately highlights and communicates the absurd nature of the American gun laws, whilst also seemingly mocking the law itself. The element/topic of Communication has been selected because of the advertisement’s core purpose of “communicating” its intentions/purpose to the intended audiences through its visuals.
The absurdity of the advertisement is communicated through the harsh usage of juxtaposition between a book and the unsettling displacement of the gun in the setting of a library. Immediately upon looking at the advertisement, the gun is disturbingly the most salient object of matter in the image. Moreover, the scale of the gun in comparison to the child communicates almost a false sense of size, giving the gun a more exaggerated impression of threat and violence. Elements of logos are then being used with the vague phrasing of the above-centred text to harshly depict and rather appeal/manipulate the audience to conclude the gun is the mentioned banned item as a result of the seemingly harmless book in comparison. However, the producer mentions the reason of the ban of the book. This not only creates credibility but cruelly breaks the assumption of the audience and communicates the questionability of the American law as any such reason will be completely offset by the presence of a gun. Thus, the banning of the book “little red riding hood” due to it containing elements of “wine” is rather insignificant when facing an object that kills thousands in American. This ultimately combined with the children’s presence in the image evokes a sense of confusion and sparks anger in the audiences. The eye-level shot of the frame and the glares of the children’s straight-ahead also creates a rather intense atmosphere and stimulates the audiences, invading straight into their personal space and thus perhaps communicates some sort of urgence in attention. Overall, all of this contributes in provoking the intended audience and communicating a sense of absurdity in keeping guns unbanned, which ultimately contributes to helping the movement grow.