DISSOCIATION and VISUAL ARGUMENTS: CREATING CUSTOMERS for LEVY’S REAL JEWISH RYE Amy K

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY 52 (Fall 2015): 109-124 DISSOCIATION AND VISUAL ARGUMENTS: CREATING CUSTOMERS FOR LEVY’S REAL JEWISH RYE Amy K. Anderson This article argues that Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept o f dissociation is a useful framework for exploring the interaction between texts and images in visual arguments. More specifically, I use dissociation to examine the visual argument in a series o f 1950s advertisements for Levy’s rye bread. I argue that the dissociative interaction between the ads’ text and images expanded the market for Levy’s rye, yet relied on problematic representations o f Jewish identity. Nevertheless, the ads’ dissociative framework allows for the campaign and its parodies to critique and expand notions o f Jewish identity. K ey Words: dissociation, Chaim Perelman, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, visual argument, Levy’s real Jewish rye During the early 1960s, ajewish bakery in New York called Levy’s aspired to sell more rye bread. Levy’s partnered with the up-and-coming Madison Avenue advertising firm Doyle Dane Bembach (DDB), and in 1961, DDB’s creative team crafted the iconic “You don’t have to bejewish” ad campaign to promote the bread (Fishburn, 2007; Ferretti, 1979). As a result of this campaign, Levy’s quickly became the top seller of rye in the entire state of New York, and DDB solidified their reputation as a top agency (Fishburn, 1979).* 1 DDB’s approach to selling Levy’s bread was simple: the campaign consisted of a series of subway posters featuring people of various ethnicities eating deli sandwiches on rye bread from none other than Levy’s bakery. The images are themselves sandwiched by the tagline “You don’t have to bejewish ... to love Levy’s real Jewish rye” (Fig. 1). Early ads in the campaign featured a Black child, a Native American man, and a Chinese man, but later ads branched out to represent other ethnic groups, such as Italians. The campaign quickly entered the modern pop culture canon. Parodies of the ads continually surface today, marketing everything from a Heeb magazine subscription to Offlining Inc’s 2010 No-Device Day. The success of DDB’s campaign should pique the interest of rhetoricians, particularly those drawn to visual studies, because the rhetorical strategies behind the campaign proved so persuasive that they transformed Levy’s from a niche bakery into the proverbial rye breadbasket of New York. To examine these strategies, however, we first need a framework for understanding visual arguments that combine words and images. In the past, rhetoricians have taken three main approaches to theorizing visual arguments, none of which are fully adequate for explaining the Levy’s campaign. The first approach attempts to understand visual arguments in the traditional terms of text-based rhetoric, and it is perhaps best demonstrated by a series of articles in the Summer 1996 issue of Argumentation and Advocacy. The issue opens with a provocative article by Fleming, who posits Amy K. Anderson, English department, West Chester University o f Pennsylvania. I would like to thank Janice W. Fernheimer, Roxanne Mountford, and David Frank for their generous advice on early drafts of this article, and Michelle Bolduc for sharing her English translation of Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “Les Couples Philosophiques.” Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Amy K. Anderson, English department, West Chester University o f Pennsylvania, 532 Main Flail, 720 S. High St., West Chester, Pennsylvania 19383. E-mail: [email protected] 1 Doyle Dane Bembach was also responsible for other famous advertisements, including the Volkswagen “Think Small” campaign and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Daisy Girl” political commercial, which was discussed by Jacobs 110 DISSOCIATION AND VISUAL ARGUMENTS FALL 2015 You don’t have You don’t have You don’t have to be Jewish to be Jewish to be Jewish to *° Jove Levy’s to love Levy’s Figure I: The earliest ads in DDB’s Levy’s campaign2 that images should not be considered arguments in the neo-Aristotelian sense because they do not make clear claims and cannot be refuted. Birdsell and Groarke counter in their introduction to the issue, asserting that images can make clear propositions when considered in context. Blair’s contribution follows in the footsteps of Birdsell and Groarke, noting that images can and do argue propositionally. Nevertheless, Blair admits that image-based arguments are often not as clear as those made purely in text, and his concession highlights the inability of text-based rhetorical theories to fully explain how visual arguments work. A second approach to theorizing images examines them on their own terms instead of those of text-based rhetoric. The New London Group’s manifesto “A Pedagogy of Multilit eracies: Designing Social Futures” (Cazden et al, 2000) posits that comprehending images requires a different sort of literacy than comprehending texts, a literacy also different from that needed for comprehending aural compositions. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) ex tended the group’s work, proposing that text is read sequentially, while images are read spatially. They also provided a “grammar” for comprehending images in Western societies, including guidelines for interpreting a viewer’s prescribed attitude based on an image’s perspective (pp. 179-93). The image-based approach allows visuals to speak on their own terms, yet it also is not fully adequate because it does not account for the ways that images and texts collaborate in multimodal compositions. A third approach to understanding visual arguments is that undertaken by Mitchell (1994), Fleckenstein (2003), and Wysocki (2005), among others. These theorists see words and images as hybrid media that often run together inextricably. Mitchell proposes the term “imagetext,” believing that images and texts have an infinitely reciprocal relationship (p. 9). Similarly, Fleckenstein advocates for a poetics of the “imageword” in an approach to com position that simultaneously embraces the verbal and the visual (p. 4). Wysocki critiques the New London Group’s position by pointing out that the literacy needed to understand image-based arguments is inseparable from that required for text-based arguments (pp. 56-58). Taken together, these theorists argue that perhaps images and words are not so different after all. 2 Images, in order from left to right, retrieved from: http://orangemilky.blogspot.com/2012/03/levys-real-jewish- rye-bread.html; http://orangemilky.blogspot.com/2012/03/levys-real-jewish-rye-bread.html; http://orangemilky. blogspot.com/2012/03/levys-real-jewish-rye-bread.html Ill ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY ANDERSON While the hybrid approach does recognize the inherent rhetoricality of words and images, it fails to account for the disparate ways that the two media can behave when they appear together in a visual argument. Although there is a great deal of overlap between words and images, their contributions to a particular argument are often unequal: one medium may convey more of the argument’s overall message than the other. The hybrid approach to words and images does not fully accommodate this difference, so it cannot adequately explain why the words and pictures in the Levy’s ads work together so powerfully. I propose a fourth way of approaching visual arguments, one which is based in Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s theory of dissociation, as laid out in The New Rhetoric (1969). Dissociation allows us to see how images and words both contribute to a visual argument, yet it preserves the differences between the two media. When the framework of dissociation is applied to the Levy’s campaign, we can more clearly understand how the interaction between the two media made the ads’ argument so successful. T he New Rhetoric and Vis u a l Argument Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric (1969) introduced the concept of rhetorical dissociation, modeled by philosophical pairs. Perelman followed up their tome with the more concise The Realm of Rhetoric (1982), where he further elaborated the theory, and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1979) also advanced their work in her article “Les Couples Philosophiques.” She wondered why so little attention had been paid to dissociation in the intervening years, for she considered it the most original part of The New Rhetoric (p. 81). Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concern has recently been addressed, and dissociation has begun to receive the critical attention that it deserves from scholars including Schiappa (1985), Frank (2003, 2004), Crosswhite (2004,) van Rees (2005), and Fernheimer (2009). There is never theless still work to be done before we understand the full extent of the concept’s theoretical contribution. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca introduce dissociation as one of two main types of argumentation: arguments by liaison and arguments by dissociation. Arguments by liaison connect ideas by forming links between them (Perelman, 1982). Dissociation, on the other hand, breaks the links between related ideas by changing the ways that the ideas are associated with each other. Once these associations are changed, the ideas become uncou pled, creating possibilities for new and different associations, and thus new and different ideas. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca visually represent the relationship between two dissociating concepts using the form of a ratio, which they name a “couple philosophique.” The term is translated in the English version of The New Rhetoric as “philosophical pairs” or as a “philosophical couple,” and the construction has also been called “dissociative pairs” (Maddux, 2013): term I term II Perelman explains that term II, the base term of the philosophical pair, is “normative” in comparison with term I: “Term II provides a criterion, a norm which allows us to distinguish those aspects of term I which are of value from those which are not” (p. 127). Term II is also considered the more stable of the two terms; it does not change, but serves as the constant against which term I is judged and refined.

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