Sunday, November 17, 2013

TOW #9: Visual Text (GM Advertisement)



The above advertisement appeared in some sort of race car magazine (I could not, unfortunately, find the name of the publication) in 1988. General Motors published it with the goal of convincing car enthusiasts to buy the 1988 Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Trans Am. The most prominent rhetorical device used by GM is a literary allusion to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a novel in which the good Doctor Jekyll periodically transforms into the evil man usually trapped inside himself, Mr. Hyde. The theme of the novel is that all human beings have a well-suppressed wild side. GM uses this theme to its advantage, implying that the reader has a business-like persona and an excitement-loving one, and that the Trans Am and Camaro would cater to both of those interests. In this respect, GM also utilizes juxtaposition to show that most cars would suit either Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, but GM cars have the ability to combine the two.

I imagine the ad achieved its purpose very well. Its target audience was already obsessed with both racing and owning cars, and learning that they could participate in both would have been a massive advantage to owning one of the two featured GM cars. The only issue would be whether the audience would be able to afford the product. In many cases, these were probably just fantasy cars for the teenage gearhead, in which case they would not purchase the car no matter how well it was advertised.

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