Public Facing Discourse on Image-Text Juxtaposition
By: Andrew Thurston
According to the CDC, 28% of all traffic related deaths in the United States were alcohol related in 2016 (“Impaired Driving: Get the Facts.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 24 Aug. 2020, www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html#:~:text=In 2016, 10,497 people died, involved an alcohol-impaired driver.) That is a large majority of all traffic related deaths, but doesn’t account for other impaired driving deaths. 30 people die every day from drunk driving, and one of them could be you. In an opposite atmosphere of the world, different penguin populations are declining at a rapid rate. For example, some of these populations have declined by nearly 77% in 50 years (Written by Olivia Rosane, Freelance Reporter. “This Penguin Colony Has Fallen by 77% on Antarctic Islands.” World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/penguin-colony-antarctic-islands-climate-change-environment/.) This decline in population has been linked on multiple occasions to global warming and the melting of glaciers and ice caps that are the habitat for these penguins. These are examples of major problems that need solutions ASAP. It’s important to advertise the topics and spread awareness to support the problems that are often put away by companies or people. I am writing this to compare the two topics that are very dissimilar on the surface, yet similar in their underlying meanings, and to raise awareness of the problems they withhold.
When you think of penguins you don’t think of drunk driving, so it is hard to compare them, creating a juxtaposition in the topics. Both of these topics are very necessary to address due to commercial cover up over multiple years and failure to address the problems on a larger scale like both topics should. In school, or in drivers-Ed, it’s explained clearly that driving while intoxicated is very dangerous under any circumstance and should not be done, yet people continue to do this without remorse. The reasoning behind this may be unknown but one thing is for sure, alcohol has the tendency to give people courage. Maybe it’s because most people have never seen or been in a crash involving drinking, so it could be a matter of seeing is believing. The same thing could be said about the penguins. Many people believe that, in the case of global warming, “seeing is believing”. Due to the temperature rising small amounts over long periods of time it can go unnoticed by many and may not be enough proof for some. Yet in the long run this has had an intense effect on many animals around the world, one being penguins. Therefore, it needs to gain awareness that global warming isn’t a laughing matter and that it has and will affect many species as long as we keep turning a blind eye to it.
Below is the Juxtaposition image created from the two contradictory topics of penguins and drunk driving.
When I began looking for a topic to talk about, I started with looking up images with juxtapositions. One image of a group of penguins with one standing out caught my eye. I used this to single out the penguin and connect it to another opposing yet relevant topic. The topic I came to rest on was drunk driving and how I can sing out the reader to take accountability for their actions while also connecting the singling out to the penguin who was also singled out. In terms of Cohn’s “Understanding Visual Rhetoric,” the image creates a visual connection due to the text and color of the text through the highlight of the word “you” and the highlight of the penguin. It also makes a connection based on the shape and pop of the text itself and how that could draw the reader in to make inferences on the connection of the two topics.
The exigence of the image-text juxtaposition indirectly addresses the problem of global warming and how they can create a large impact on many different populations as well as humans. It also addresses how we are responsible for our actions and what we do on this earth can be permanent. So instead of turning a blind eye like many corporations do, we need to act on raising concern and awareness of both topics discussed in this essay. The constraints of people that believe “seeing is believing” or corporations that cover up these problems for their own profit should not be enough to persuade others to join along. We need to start thinking of the bigger picture and taking account of our actions, to see if it’s necessary to have species die or get in car crashes just for our own enjoyment. This should be directed towards everyone who chooses to educate themselves on how their actions may affect people or things such as the penguin species or other drivers on the road.
In the end, I created this image-text juxtaposition to, despite being so drastically different, create a connection between two topics of discussion. This was created to show how people should take accountability for their actions and what risks come along with those actions. The image purpose was to also spread awareness of how humanities actions have affected a lot of things from species to other people on a drastic scale and how there are no excuses to how people and corporations have turned their backs to these issues for their own selfish benefit. Hopefully, this article can contribute to raising awareness on the issue and how drastic both problems have become over time, considering how many media platforms and corporations have seemingly stopped reporting on these topics. When people view the image, my hope is that they will think on the topics and question the problems that humans have created and will want to raise awareness of the issue as well.
