ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY 52 (Fall 2015): 109-124

DISSOCIATION AND VISUAL ARGUMENTS: CREATING CUSTOMERS FOR LEVY’S REAL JEWISH 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 . 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 . 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

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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

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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. 112

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Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also note that there is an inherent valuation in the way the terms are laid out: “Terms II of the philosophical couples will normally, if possible, be related to that which has positive value . . . while terms I will be related to that which has negative value” (p. 422). Because term II is the more ideologically valued concept in the pair, it is not surprising that term II is the criterion for judging the relative merit of term I. Term I still plays an important role in the dissociation process. Olbrechts-Tyteca explains that although term I is the dependent term, it is also the concept that we are first aware of and the one from which the philosophical pair originates (p. 82). Term II is the underlying principle or value that impacts the way we view term I, even though we are often unaware of its existence until an incompatibility between the two terms appears. Indeed, it often isn’t until an incompatibility is recognized that we are even cognizant of term II and how it influences our understanding of term I. Drawing on a Western philosophical framework, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca use the philosophical pair appearance reality as a prototype for these ratios (p. 416). Reality, as term II, is the norm against which some schools of Western philosophy compare appearance, or term I. The relative values assigned to terms I and II apply to this philosophical pair, for within this framework, we value reality more highly than appearance. Further, Olbrechts-Tyteca’s observation that term I is the originating term also holds: generally, we are more conscious of the appearances around us than of our concept of reality, and we are often not aware of the distinction between appearance and reality until we are faced with an appearance that is not consistent with our concept of reality. Up to that point, appearances and reality seem to be united. When an incompatibility between the two arises, however, appearances that do not conform to our concept of reality are labeled erroneous through the process of dissociation. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca write, “[T]he effect of determining reality is to dissociate those appearances that are deceptive from those that correspond to reality” (p. 416). Dissociation is thus the process of changing and winnowing out term I so that the value of term II is maintained. It explains how differences between unequally valued concepts are acknowledged and recon ciled into a new construction. Olbrechts-Tyteca posits that terms I and II can have various types of relationships within the dissociative framework (pp. 83-85). Term I might be related to term II through the structure of the real, which is exemplified by the appearance/reality pair discussed above. Term I could additionally be a particularization of term II (Olbrechts-Tyteca offers the individual/type pair as an example), a relativization of term II (exemplified by opinion/ truth), a fragment of term II (such as subjective/inclusive), or the “banalisation” of term II (as in fungible/concrete). Term I can also be the alteration of term II (shown by impurity/ authenticity), the expression of term II (such as the myth/meaning pair), or even the representation of term II (as in substitute/reality). She asserts that the various types of relationships are like rhetorical commonplaces, and that the number of possible pairs is without limit within the particular types (92). Olbrechts-Tyteca’s point is that although dissociative relationships can take many forms, term I is seen through the lens of term II every time. They majority of scholars who have studied dissociation have noted its usefulness for defining categories by removing inconsistencies, essentially making those categories nar- 113

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY ANDERSON rower by separating out concepts that are not in accordance with the preferred term, term II. For example, van Rees (2009) places dissociation within a pragma-dialectical framework and emphasizes that through the process

a unity that up till then was considered to be an indissoluble whole is broken: a single notion that was considered a conceptual unity and that is referred to by a single term is split up into two notions, which are referred to by two different terms, (p. 4)

Van Rees offers the example of a Dutch letter to the editor that draws a distinction between “a solid sponsor” of the 2002 Dutch Olympic skating team and less-desirable “opportunist sponsors” (p. 6). The category of sponsors is split and the more limited category of solid sponsors is given preference. Schiappa (2003) similarly examines how dissociation can be used to narrow definitions, such as dividing the idea of death into things that are “dead” and those that are “really dead” (pp. 35-48). Zarefsky, Miller-Tutzauer, and Tutzauer (1984) trace a comparable move in Ronald Reagan’s division of the needy into the “true” and the “apparent” (pp. 113-14). Olson (1995) likewise follows the Shaker religious sect’s dissocia tion of the concept of success into temporal and eternal success, and the concept of growth into quantitative and qualitative growth (pp. 51-53). Schiappa (1985), Grootendorst (1999), van Rees (2005), and Cloud (2014), among others, additionally use dissociation to make definitional arguments. Indeed, narrowing the category represented by term I seems to be the main focus of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s explanation in The New Rhetoric, because in the dissociative process, some aspects of term I “will be disqualified and marked ultimately for disappearance” (p. 417). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca nonetheless acknowledge that the dissociative process is capable of doing more than narrowing rhetorical categories. They note that dissociation also generates new meaning by altering the original terms:

[T]he dissociation of notions brings about a more or less profound change in the conceptual data that are used as the basis of argument. It is then no more a question of breaking the links that join independent elements, but of modifying the very structure of these elements, (p. 412)

The generative nature of the process deserves more critical attention, as does the concept’s application beyond text-based discourse. When Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca introduced the idea of dissociation, they focused primarily on text-based arguments: “Our treatise will consider only the discursive means of obtaining the adherence of minds” (p. 8). Their exclusion of images is understandable because they were attempting to reclaim and reestablish the field of rhetoric; they were not focused on explaining visual arguments. A few scholars have, however, attempted to apply The New Rhetoric’s principles to images. Hill (2004) was perhaps the first to suggest using the concept of presence to examine the ways that images call attention to particular bits of information. More recently, Gross (2011) used presence to explain the visual argument in one of Darwin’s treatises. Regardless of the success of these theorists’ work, we have yet to consider what other principles from The New Rhetoric, such as dissociation, might contribute to visual rhetoric, particularly to helping us understand the relationship between texts and images in visual arguments like the Levy’s ads. With this in mind, I want to turn back to the Levy’s campaign and consider the ads in their historical context. 114

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D isso c iat io n and DDB’s Campaign for Levy’s Real J ewish Rye The advertising firm Doyle Dane Bernbach created the Levy’s ads to address a purely economic problem: not enough people were buying Levy’s rye bread. But to address this problem, the ads’ creators chose to first deal with what might be considered an ethnic problem: Levy’s rye bread was known as Jewish bread.3 In a 1979 interview with the New York Times, DDB copywriter Judy Protas described the goal of the ad campaign: “We had a local bread, real Jewish bread, that was sold widely in Brooklyn to Jewish people. What we wanted to do was enlarge its public acceptance” (Ferretti, 1979). Protas indicates that the ad campaign was necessitated by public assumption that one must first be a Jew in order to be a Levy’s customer, or a “Levy’s rye bread lover,” to use the language of the ads. As the main market for the rye, Jews were practically equated with Levy’s rye bread lovers. Protas’s remark highlights the strategic rhetorical work that DDB did to re-vision the public market for the bread. By suggesting that the bread lovers could include more than Jews, DDB recognized an incompatibility between the two groups: Levy’s lovers and Jews might overlap, but they were not necessarily equivalent. Once the groups were differentiated, it was the latter (Jews) that played a dominant role in determining public perception of the former (Levy’s lovers). Protas’s statement reveals that DDB understood the pre-campaign customer base as a dissociative philosophical pair with Jews in the position of term II, the more normative and valued term in the pair:

Levy’s rye bread lovers Jews This pair falls into Olbrechts-Tyteca’s particularization category, with Jews as a general type and Levy’s rye bread lovers as an individual example. Until DDB decided to expand the market for Levy’s beyond Jews, the dissociative framework through which the public understood Levy’s customers wasn’t apparent. Once the ad agency saw the pre-campaign market in these terms, however, the possibilities for expanding the market became clearer. In order to increase the sales of Levy’s, DDB had two options: they could either expand the current Jewish market to create a larger pool of potential customers or they could approach new markets. Protas’s comments reveal that they chose the latter. DDB also opted to capitalize on the bread’s ethnic association and take advantage of the growing multicul tural awareness of the late 1950s and early 1960s. As Lawrence H. Fuchs writes in The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and Civic Culture (1990), “The Levy’s ad aimed at selling more rye bread by tapping into the growing multiethnic consciousness of Americans. An invitation to cross boundaries was reckoned to enhance profits” (p. 325). Advertisers at this time were becoming increasingly aware of the power of ethnic images: some of the first studies demonstrating a positive correlation between ethnic ads and sales in ethnic markets were released in the early 1960s (Brumbaugh, 2009). Although DDB decided to work with Levy’s Jewish connection, the ads that they created challenged the public’s dissociative perception of Jews and Levy’s bread lovers. Olbrechts- Tyteca (1979) posits that inverting a philosophical pair is one means of combating it. If

! I am consciously using the term “ethnic” here. There has long been deliberation over whether Jewishness should be categorized as a race or a religion. The Levy’s ads purposefully avoided entering into this debate, as I will discuss later in the essay. “Ethnic” is a more neutral term that also avoids the race/religion dichotomy, so it is useful for discussing the ads. 115

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY ANDERSON dissociation is used to narrow term I, then it stands to reason that inverting the philosophical pair might be a means of opening up the term by challenging the values at the base of the narrowed definition. This rhetorical move maintains a dissociative relationship between the two terms, but counters the work done in the original philosophical pair by generating new associations between the two terms. The text and images combined in DDB’s ad campaign make precisely this move. The text of the ads-“You don’t have to bejewish to love Levy’s”-changes the relationship between the two groups of consumers by flipping the philosophical pair that represents Levy’s customers. Levy’s lovers becomes the broader, more inclusive term, the frame through which term I is seen. Jews are now subordinated to the Lovers and became just one of many groups who can enjoy the bread. Levy’s lovers move into the space of term II, and Jews take the place of term I:

Levy’s rye bread lovers Jews ------j------becomes 7 ----- ;------:------77------Jews Levy s rye bread lovers The inversion of the pair is significant because it indicates a change in the value of the terms. DDB decided that customers’ appetites were more important than their ethnicities, so Levy’s lovers moved into in the more valued position of term II. Upending the dissociative hierarchy that shaped public perception of Levy’s lovers was the key rhetorical move that allowed for the expansion of the market. Olbrechts-Tyteca’s particularization relationship is also maintained in the inverted pair, with Jews as an individual example of a broader type of rye bread consumers. By inverting the philosophical pair, DDB challenged the original dissociative definition of the customers and presented a new, more inclusive consumer base. Reversing the pair also indicates that dissociation has generative applications beyond narrowing definitional categories; in this case, the customer base was actually broadened. Once the ads’ words do the work of flipping the terms in the philosophical pair, the ads’ images step in to complete the argument, once again using dissociation. As I mentioned earlier, the first series of ads from the early 1960s contained images of a young Black boy, a Native American man, and a Chinese man (see Fig. 1 ). These ethnic groups, the ads argue, can also enjoy Levy’s rye bread. When the campaign ads are viewed together, it seems at first that these images simply allow viewers to substitute other ethnicities for term I in the equation. The argument seems to imply that Blacks, Native Americans, and the Chinese can all enjoy Levy’s alongside Jews:

Jews, Blacks, Native Americans & the Chinese Levy’s rye bread lovers In reality, however, the assumptions underpinning the ads are more complicated and problematic. Brettschneider (2006) critiques the campaign’s approach, arguing that the ads “reinforced essentialist and static notions” of ethnicity: “The ad campaign worked because it assumed consumers would see the face of an African-American looking boy and presume that he was not himself Jewish” (p. 41). While the campaign encouraged consumers to look-and buy- beyond stereotypically Jewish bread, it relied on ethnic stereotypes to make its argument. The assumption was that people belonging to the pictured ethnic groups are not, and cannot, bejewish. Viewers infer that the Black child enjoys Levy’s even though he is not Jewish, in 116

DISSOCIATION AND VISUAL ARGUMENTS FALL 2015 accordance with the ads’ slogan: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.” The same logic underpins the ads depicting the Native American and Chinese men. Native Americans and the Chinese can also enjoy Levy’s even though they are not Jewish. This sets up further philosophical pairs for representing the ethnicity of Levy’s customers:

Black Native American Chinese Jew Jew Jew These pairs are also based on Olbrechts-Tyteca’s category of particularization, mirroring the individual/type example (pp. 83-4), but they are false pairs. The ads’ designers assumed that consumers would recognize that the relationships between these pairs do not hold. The Black child is not an example of a Jew, just as the Native American and Chinese men also are not individuals exemplifying the type. Indeed, the entire ad campaign hinges on viewers’ ability to recognize that Jews are not Black, Native American, or Chinese, and to dissociate these ethnic groups fromjews. The philosophical pair that DDB used to represent Levy’s custom ers now becomes more complicated, and term I is subdivided into a pair within the larger pair:

Black, Native American, or Chinese ______Je'v______Levy’s rye bread lovers

Even though Jews are not directly visually represented, the ads assign them a visual stereotype as well. Brettschneider (2006) points out that the Levy’s brand was particularly connected with “Euro/Ashkenazi Jew(s),” or Jews with Eastern European roots (40-41). In fact, the starter and recipe for Levy’s rye were brought to America in the late 1800s by Harry S. Levy, a Russian Jewish immigrant (Ferretti, 1979). As the predominant Jewish group in New York in the 1950s and 60s, Euro/ like Levy’s descendants were characterized by pale skin and dark hair. DDB’s ads ignore the actual wide range of possible Jewish appearances, and instead focus on an essentialized Euro/Ashkenazi (E/A) Jew who is recognizably not Black, Native American, or Chinese. The philosophical pair that represents Levy’s customers thus becomes:

Black, Native American, or Chinese E/A Jew Levy’s rye bread lovers

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca call such subdivided philosophical pairs “fan-type” dis sociations (p. 431), and the construction indicates that more than one dissociative process is taking place at the same time. When viewers follow the argument of the Levy’s ads, they practice a double dissociation. Not only must they dissociate Blacks, Native Americans, and the Chinese from Euro/Ashkenazijews (represented by the pair taking the place of term I), but they must also dissociate those results from the reality of Levy’s bread lovers (term II). When the ad campaign is considered as a whole, viewers are left with the idea that Blacks, Native Americans, and the Chinese can love Levy’s even though they are not Euro/ Ashkenazijews. In fact, the actual ethnicities of the people in the images matter less than the fact that they are not Euro/Ashkenazijews. The relationship between the terms in this top equation is reduced to 117

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not-an-E/A-Jew E/A Jew

As long as this dissociative relationship is maintained, any ethnicity that is not Euro/ Ashkenazi Jewish can be substituted for term I, and the message of the ad is unchanged. Indeed, later iterations of the ad simply swapped in images of models from other ethnic groups. The campaign as a whole thus represents Levy’s customers as

not-an-E/A-Jew E/A Jew Levy’s rye bread lovers

Within this dissociative framework, it is evident that the ads make a distinct argument with a claim and support. The claim: You (the viewer) should buy Levy’s bread. The support: Everyone-even those who are notjews-can love Levy’s bread. The warrant: Viewers can identify with the nonjews enjoying the bread because the intended viewers themselves are also not Jews. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) note that dissociation causes a “pro found change in the conceptual data that are used as the basis of argument” (p. 412), and it is this change that clears the way for a new associative link between those who are not Euro/Ashkenazi Jews and Levy’s bread. The dissociative process, then, is capable of doing more than narrowing the represented terms; it actually becomes a pathway for creating new associations. Tracing out the ads’ dissociative argument also brings to light the irony behind the early images in the campaign: Brettschneider (2006) writes, “At the same time that the ad campaign appeared, a tribute to the newly celebrated diversity and ethnic boundary-crossing characteristic of the 1960-70s, it simultaneously reinforced essentialist and static notions of those very same identities” (p. 41). Despite proposing that rye bread can facilitate contact between ethnicities, the early Levy’s ads are reductive. The various depicted ethnic groups are relegated to quickly recognizable essentialized images. Later Levy’s ads, on the other hand, paint a more complex picture of Jewishness. A campaign poster from 1967 depicts an Italian woman surrounded by props that distinctly mark her as Italian, such as salami and a red-checkered table cloth (see Fig. 2). Her physical appearance alone is not sufficient to label her as non-Jewish, so the props evoke Italian culinary traditions. These traditions are not set in direct opposition to Jewish culinary traditions, however, because the Italian woman is enjoying her salami sandwich on Levy’s rye. Taken in the larger context of the campaign, this ad moves beyond physical stereotypes to highlight the cultural-and culinary-side of Jewishness. A later ad shows a young child in a white robe with a red bow, the garb of a Catholic choir boy (see Fig. 2). The child stands in for an entire religious group, calling on viewers to associate Jewishness with religion. These later ads work together to expand notions of Jewishness beyond physical appearance, although they still rely on reductive images. Brettschneider (2006) believes that despite the problematic stereotype images, the ad campaign contained socially constructive elements because it changed the way people saw Jewish culture:

The Levy’s ad suggested that non-Jews can participate in and enjoy some of the more worthwhile contribu tions of thejewish culture in the United States .. . This meant that nonjews were being invited into ajewish world. It also meant that Jewish things can be a part of life beyond thejewish community (p. 40). 118

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You don’t have You don’t have to be Jewish to be Jewish

to ^ir^y’s"M M ***** to love Levy’s a * ^ Figure 2: Levy’s ads featuring a Catholic choir boy and an Italian woman4

The ad campaign not only allowed viewers to see Levy’s rye as something those outside the Jewish community could enjoy, but it also madejewish ethnicity more accessible by granting consumers access to a piece of “real” Judaism. Even as the ads reinforced the line between Jews and nonjews, they offered Levy’s bread as a vehicle for crossing the line. Brettschneider’s analysis agrees with that of Nathanson-Moog, who contributed to the catalog for the 1984 Ethnic Images in Advertising exhibition at the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. The exhibition was co- sponsored by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and featured the Levy’s campaign. Nathanson-Moog (1984) writes,

On the way to the bank, the Levy’s series did an extraordinary bit of public relations work for Jewish ethnic identity. . . By using clearcut ethnic images of other groups, such as the Native American .. . the negative stereotype of Jews as an exclusive, clannish lot is blasted apart, (p. 21)

Rather than focusing on the problems with the ads’ essentialized ethnic images, Nathanson- Moog highlights the negative Jewish stereotypes that the ads break down and the possibilities that they create. Her assessment by no means negates the ads’ problematic stereotype of Jewish identity. Instead, the tension between identity creation and commodification reflects the complicated nature of ethnic stereotype images and the dissociative process. It should come as no surprise that the dissociative argument presented in these ads opened new ways for the public to perceive Jews. After all, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) point out that concepts that undergo dissociation do not emerge unscathed, but are funda mentally altered. What they once were is redefined, and something new takes their place. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also note, “on the theoretical level, it [the dissociation of notions] leads to a solution that will also be valid for the future, because, by remodeling our conception of reality, it prevents the reappearance of the same incompatibility” (p. 413).

4 Images, in order from left to right, retrieved from: http://www.intemationalposter.com/poster-details.aspx?id= USL10480 http://artatthecenter.com/product/you-dont-have-to-be-jewish-5/ 119

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Figure 3: Subscription advertisement in the first issue of Heeb magazine

Dissociation is thus also productive, for it constructs new future possibilities and offers an alternative to our past mistakes. In the case of the Levy’s ads, new possibilities for Jewish identity were created.

L evy’s Parodies and Dis s o c ia t iv e Dis r u pt io n Over fifty years after the Levy’s campaign first appeared, parodies of the ads still crop up, and the majority of them are linked to ethnic identity. Brettschneider (2006) points out that one such parody can be found in the 2002 inaugural issue of Heeb magazine (pp. 41-42). Subtitled “The Newjew Review,” this hip publication took on all aspects of urbanjewish life and included articles ranging from an interview with a pom star to an undercover look at Jews for Jesus. Interspersed throughout the first issue are tongue-in-cheek ads for stereotypi- cally Jewish products, like kosher wine, as well as a full-page ad for a subscription to Heeb itself (Fig. 3). “You don’t have to be Jewish ... to love Heeb,” the ad reads. In the center is a picture of a middle-aged man of vaguely African American or Middle Eastern ethnicity. He wears a button-up shirt, a vest, and a cap cocked to one side, and he is reading an issue of Heeb. Brettschneider (2006) calls attention to the man’s ambiguous ethnicity: he could be Black, Middle Eastern, or of mixed descent. He could Jewish, or he 120

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could not. His clothes slightly resemble those of a stereotypical Jewish shopkeeper, but he has no other visual markers of a Jew (pp. 41-42). The ambiguity is not lost on the ad’s audience: Heeb is targeted to modern, young adultjews who know that their ethnicity cannot be reduced to a visual stereotype. This parody ad relies on the same dissociative framework used in the original posters, and it underscores dissociation’s creative potential for opening up new associations. The Heeb ad represents those who enjoy the magazine through a dissociative philosophical pair patterned on the one constructed by the original Levy’s ads:

Ethnically ambiguous male ______Heeb readers

Admittedly, when I first saw the ad, I was confused. This is probably because I was unable to complete the dissociation required by the top pair before I could move on to the bottom term. I didn’t know where the man fit in relation to stereotypical concepts of Jewishness. He isn’t a Euro/Ashkenazi Jew, but is he still an example of Jewishness? The ad’s copy would suggest no (“You don’t have to be Jewish . . . ”), but there is nevertheless something faintly Jewish about him. This ambiguity disrupts the ad’s dissociative process. It does not, however, mean that the ad’s argument fails. In fact, Femheimer’s (2009) concept of “dissociative disruption” clarifies how a breakdown in the dissociative process can ultimately construct new associations. Fernheimer notes that dissociative disruption is rooted in The New Rhetoric’s notion of the universal audience, a theoretical audience with assumed beliefs that is imagined by a rhetor. When the actual audience does not share the beliefs of the constructed universal audience, space is opened up for dissociative disruption (p. 64). Fernheimer writes that “some con ceptions of the universal audience carry more weight, because they embody hegemonic values that are privileged and accepted by a dominant group; therefore other groups’ alternative understandings or interpretations by default are less likely to be accepted” (p. 64). When the values of an actual audience differ from the dominant values of the rhetor’s presumed universal audience, the argument is disrupted and the actual audience’s interpre tations of the rhetor’s message may differ from the rhetor’s intentions. The creators of the Heeb ad assumed that it would be viewed by an audience of hip young Jews who are aware of the multicultural side of Judaism. Because I fall outside that target audience (being neither Jewish nor, it seems, sufficiently hip), I failed to interpret the ad as intended. Yet through dissociative disruption, the ad accounts for viewers like me. Fernheimer posits that the space opened up by dissociative disruption permits alternative readings: “Dissocia tive disruption allows for new concepts or revised understandings of already accepted concepts to enter the discursive imagination” (pp. 68-69). At times, as in the example of Israeli Black Jewish identity that Fernheimer presents, these alternative readings can be productive because they open up fresh interpretations of national citizenship and Jewish identity through the new concepts that they introduce. In the case of the Heeb ad, dissociative disruption again forces a reconsideration of Jewish identity. Being faced with the ethnically ambiguous man made me consciously broaden my conception of what it means to be Jewish. The man in the image could be a non-Jew, but then again, he could also be a Jew because, the ad wants viewers to think, Jews can be from all ethnic groups. The complicated 121

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY ANDERSON dissociation process created by the Levy’s ads and their parodies is particularly prone to disruption, which makes it suitable for Heeb’s hip Jewish identity recreation. When DDB ran the Levy’s ads nearly fifty years ago, their intent was to sell bread, but they accomplished something much more powerful. The ad paradigm created by the campaign reflected the shift that Jewish identity was undergoing in the early 1960s. Although they relied on a problematic essentialism, DDB’s subway posters allowed bothjews and nonjews to see Jewishness in a new light. The ads’ clever use of dissociation makes them an ideal forum for Jewish identity politics, so the ads and their parodies ultimately accomplish much more than selling bakery goods. Examining the structure of the argument behind the ads also leads us back to the complexities of visual argumentation.

D is s o c ia t io n and Vis u a l Rhetoric The Levy’s campaign yields two useful insights for visual rhetoricians. First, the ads point to the functionality of essentialized or stereotype images in visual arguments; and second, they show the dissociative relationship between texts and images when the two media are brought together in visual arguments. In her assessment of the Levy’s campaign, Nathanson-Moog (1984) addresses the com plicated role that visual stereotypes play in advertising:

While the enlightened position has always been to abhor stereotyping as a caricatured representation of many by the qualities of a few, to some degree advertising must present stereotypes in order for specific market segments to be recognizable as distinct groups, even to themselves, (p. 19)

Despite their overgeneralization and problematic nature, stereotype images are useful be cause they provide the viewer with a visual shortcut. While the images in the Levy’s ads do not convey many of the negative traits common to racial stereotypes, their essentialism operates similarly. The complicated nature ofJewish identity is sacrificed in favor of a highly suggestive image so that the ads’ argument can be conveyed more efficiently. Such essentialized images act as visual commonplaces: they can reference any number of ideas and beliefs about a particular people group, some of which may be drawn upon in a particular visual argument and some of which may not. They are thus locations for numerous possible arguments, much as Aristotle’s common topics (degrees of magnitude, relationships between entities, division, etc) and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s types of philosophical pairs (particu larization, banalization, etc) can serve as tools of rhetorical invention. These commonplace images are context-based: their degree of functionality depends on the audience’s mindset (What does the audience associate with the image?) and the context of the argument (Which qualities of the commonplace are invoked?). As a result, commonplace images can be both a useful and a tenuous part of a visual argument. In the case of the Levy’s ads, the syllogism created by the words and images requires that the images be interpreted in a specific way. Other possible arguments that the images could make are pushed aside because they are not needed for the campaign’s purposes. The fact that the text in the Levy’s ads determines how the images should be interpreted points to an interesting facet of the relationship between the two media in similar visual arguments. Although a Levy’s ad at first seems to be a unified whole, with text and images blending into one master argument, the argumentative strategy requires the media to make distinctive contributions. The essence of the Levy’s ads’ argument is in the words. Indeed, the words do the majority of the work by limiting the argument to a particular product and 122

DISSOCIATION AND VISUAL ARGUMENTS FALL 2015 a particular audience. The slogan “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s” redefines the bread’s target market by itself. On the other hand, when the ads’ images stand alone, they simply show someone enjoying a sandwich. The argumentative function of the images is highly contextualized because the images are interpreted through the frame of the surround ing text. The relationship between the two media in these ads is thus itself dissociative. The text in the ads is normative; in a dissociative philosophical pair, text would take the place of term II. Because the meaning of the images is dependent on the text, the images take the place of term I:

image text

Support for this dissociative relationship is found in a March 2012 NPR interview with George Lois, one of the art directors at DDB shortly after the Levy’s campaign was created. Although Lois was not personally involved in the development of these ads, he remarks that the campaign was successful because it combined a strong tag line with interesting visuals. At the same time, Lois (2012, March 19) asserts that the words and visuals are not created equal in the advertising world:

When I talk .. . to young people I say that when you want to create advertising, you should think in words first. They look at me stunned. They say, “No, no, you create these powerful visual images. Why would you think of copy first?” I say because a line, a slogan, should be famous, (n.p.)

Lois (2012) again asserts his preference for text in a book published around the time of the interview, Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!), claiming that a good tagline drives the surrounding images: “My first commandment: The word comes first, then the visual” (p. 10). It should be no surprise that the agency where Lois built his career also produced the Levy’s campaign, where text takes the dissociative position of term II. Visual theorists have proposed various expressions to demonstrate the nature of the interaction between texts and images. When Mitchell (1994) and Fleckenstein (2003) wanted to emphasize the interconnected nature of images and texts, they respectively offered the terms “imagetext” (p. 9) and “imageword” (p. 4). Birdsell and Groarke (1996) used the term “image/text” (p. 5) to refer to the combination of words and images that occur together in visual arguments. They were not, however, thinking about the dissociative potential of the backslash. With respect to the previous offerings, I want to suggest that Birdsell and Groarke’s term “image/text” can be used to represent the dissociative relationship between the two media in visual arguments like the Levy’s ads. This term combines the two media without conflating them, preserving the unity of the visual argument while acknowledging that the two make unequal contributions to the whole. The backslash places text and image in a philosophical pair, which indicates that the medium in the position of term II (text) is the frame through which the other medium (image) is interpreted. In the case of visual arguments that rely more heavily on images than texts, “text/image” might be the more appropriate term. Even further, when texts and images are linked dissociatively, we can also turn to Olbrechts-Tyteca’s categories of philosophical pairs for more insight into the relationship between the two terms. Olbrechts-Tyteca’s categories distinguish the different contributions each medium makes to the overall argument. In the case of the Levy’s ads, the images act as particularizations of ethnic groups that contrast to the Euro/Ashkenazi Jews suggested by 123

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY ANDERSON the text, following Olbrechts-Tyteca’s example of individual/type. Because the ads exem plify the particularization relationship, their involvement with ethnic identity politics is made clearer. Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical pair types have great potential for shedding light on the nuances of how the two media might be connected in other visual arguments. When Levy’s turned to DDB to increase their sales of rye bread, they accomplished more than increasing their profits. Not only did the ads become cultural icons, but they also point the way to a deeper understanding of visual arguments through The New Rhetorics dissoci ation.

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