"""You can fool some of the people some of the time"": perspective by incongruity in Ballyhoo magazine, 1931-1932"

Cooper, Troy

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Description

Title

"""You can fool some of the people some of the time"": perspective by incongruity in Ballyhoo magazine, 1931-1932"

Author(s)

Cooper, Troy

Issue Date

2015-01-21

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Finnegan, Cara A.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Finnegan, Cara A.

Committee Member(s)

• Ono, Kent A.
• Murphy, John M.
• Stole, Inger L.

Department of Study

Communication

Discipline

Speech Communication

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Perspective by incongruity
• Ballyhoo
• Parody
• Visual rhetoric

Abstract

This study analyzes two years of images from Ballyhoo magazine (1931-1932) as a form of visual rhetoric. I analyze the visual rhetoric of Ballyhoo to illustrate how it treated three important issues of 1930s America. First, Ballyhoo portrays Prohibition as a detrimental policy and scapegoats its creators and maintainers. Second, Ballyhoo comments on the Great Depression by both ridiculing the wealthy and powerful and identifying the ironies of living poor amid the Depression. Finally, in its critiques of consumer culture, and especially advertising, Ballyhoo employs parody to rhetorical effect by mocking the entire advertising enterprise. This study contextualizes, analyzes, and interprets Ballyhoo’s production of perspective by incongruity on the most pressing issues of the early 1930s. Ultimately, Ballyhoo succeeded in constructing a critical rhetoric of incongruity that was both timely in the 1930s and foundational to contemporary critiques that employ perspective by incongruity.

Graduation Semester

2014-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/72796

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 Troy Cooper

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