The Role of Visual Rhetoric in the Vegetarian Movement: â€œMeet Your Meatâ€ Video of Animal Torture on the PETA Website

: Images have the power to create natural representation of reality, vividness in human memory and have rhetorical effect. However, visual rhetoric can create positive and negative feeling to persuade people. Negative feelings can be designed to make emotional reactions and spark action. Consequently, humans will consider ways to deal with the negative and discomfort feelings. In this paper, the writer analyzes the connection between visual rhetoric and emotional appeal by examining the controversial PETA video â€œMeet your Meatâ€. The writer will use the visual rhetoric, emotions, and cognitive dissonance theory to analyze the video and increase the understanding about the human emotions, especially disgust and guilt.

However, the writer takes the two main emotional appeals to understand how the combination of psychological emotion and social construction create standard on human behavior. Finally, the writer will apply the theories to inform the case study.  (Olson, 2008). Van Eck (2007)  Currently, the growth of technology and public interaction has focused on the optical power especially in meaning making process about the world (Ott & Dickinson, 2008). Those visual objects consist of cultural tradition of seeing and looking as well as the artifacts produced in various forms and media (Olson, 2008). People associate the visual object with expression, pleasure, and emotional response (Olson, 2008). This is the moment where visual rhetoric is noteworthy because visual rhetoric helps people to constitute the way they know, think, and behave (Olson, 2008). Visual UKHWRULF LWVHOI FDQ EH GH¿QHG DV ³V\PEROLF actions enacted primarily through visual means, made meaningful through culturally derived ways of looking, seeing, and HQGHDYRULQJ WR LQÀXHQFH GLYHUVH SXEOLF´ (Olson, 2008:2). Visual rhetoric also enables us to discriminate between various forms of purposive image such as the "commercial from the civic, propagandistic from democratic, sentimental from memorable" (Olson, 2008:2 is an aspect in classical rhetorical theory which emphasized the resemblance between paintings or the visual arts to rhetoric because it refers to the author's competence to produce a vivid description, or to present evidence in the eyes of the audience (Gallagher, 2011). Cicero explained that enargeia make the image not speak but show, it involves "visual clarity, immediacy, self-evidentia, and strong emotional appeals" (Gallagher, 2011:30).
An individual may feel confronted by the visual object and take it as a 'disturbing' experience, but another individual may enjoy the image. The audience emotional appeals depend on the application of the persuasive message.  Festinger (1957), cognitive dissonance is a condition of human cognitive processes, when imbalance happens between the cognitions and ways of knowing, beliefs, and judgments. Festinger suggested that dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling that motivates people to take steps to reduce it (Turner, 2007). Brown (1965:584) also supported this argument by mentioning that "a state of cognitive dissonance is said to be state of psychological discomfort or tension which motivates efforts to achieve consonance. Dissonance is in the name of disequilibrium and consonance is in the name for equilibrium".
According to Festinger (1957) Another interesting point from Festinger (1957) is about the dissonance UHODWLRQ ZKLFK KH GH¿QHG DV WKH DPRXQW of dissonance cognitions relative to the amount of cognitive dissonance. Thus, the degree of consonance and dissonance will create various reactions in the level of cognition. The reactions will create coping strategies from individual towards the issue which discomforting their cognition (Benoit, 2000). The coping strategies are (1) individual has the possibility to change their behavior to reduce the dissonance factors, (2) individual can ignore or avoid the issue,  (Benoit, 2000).
Those reactions also can continue to other human psychological process such as emotions. The writer argues that emotions in the context of language refer to the human processes of feeling and WKRXJKW ZKLFK DOVR LQÀXHQFHG E\ VLWXDWLRQV or social constructions around them. Nabi (2003) argued that emotion exists within human nature especially connected with the mental condition and, reactions to certain stimuli (action, cause, or other matter). Nabi (2003) also argued that emotions are temporary but sometimes intense to some external stimuli.
Emotions can lead into the state of willingness. Emotions also involve perception to an object or event, and then human connect the perception to the previous emotional experience. This SURFHVV ZLOO LQÀXHQFH IXWXUH SHUFHSWLRQ cognition, and behavior (Nabi, 2003).
Thus, the emotions that appear now may have a connection with previous experience or previous perception. The writer takes disgust feeling and guilt as the samples. The reason is that, these two negative emotions often have a function to persuade the audience, especially to create dissonance in human cognitive process (Rozin and Fallon, 1987;Ausubel, 1995). These emotions also related closely to psychological process and the social construction.

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According to Rozin and Fallon (1987), disgust is a basic sense, but it also depends on the social construction. The arousal of disgust can be caused by either organically or psychologically spoiled such as foods, products, or other actions (Rozein, Haidt & Mc Caulet, 1993). Some researchers found out that disgust can create nauseous feeling and can encourage individual who experience disgust to turn away from the object or defend against the object (Izard, 1993). However, the cultural construction of disgust could also be meant as a defense mechanism of body, soul, and social norm (Izard, 1993). Nabi (1998) in her research on message-induced animal experimentation argued that a negative correlation exists between disgust appeals and attitude change. Hutcherson (2011) supported this argument by suggesting that an individual who feels disgust toward a certain object will tend to avoid it, however, he also realized the possibility of an individual reducing the risk to expose the disgusting object.

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Guilt is a psychological feeling, which connects strongly with social construction and culture. Ausubel (1995) explained that guilt is also a tool for cultural survival since it works as a personal watchdog within an individual, to keep his or her behavior in line with the moral values in the society.
Again according to Ausubel (1995), guilt creates negative feelings, which make individuals assess their behavior with their moral value, and try to conform to this moral value in order to reduce the guilt. argued that guilt relies on both internal and external sanctions. Gaylin (1979) suggested that guilt can give human signals when human violate his or her standard of behavior which individual personally decide to commit to do it.
The guilty feeling will give personal alarm that indicates human may fail to achieve the ideal personal standard. Wolman (1973)  individual will re-assess their decision, which occurs many minutes after an individual take a decision. However, many researchers still optimist and suggested that WKH ELJJHU FRQÀLFW RI SHUVXDVLRQ PHVVDJH with self-relevance, the more it will lead to greater attitude change (Aronson, 1968).
Here, the writer can argue that in the slaughter, perhaps the image on the video will not shock them; thus they do not feel too much dissonance. However, for the audience who did not know and see animal VODXJKWHU SURFHVV IRU WKH ¿UVW WLPH LW PLJKW shock them and disturb them, (c) the action necessary to overcome the dissonance will vary on the magnitude of dissonance VOLUME 9, NOMOR 2, Desember 2012: 123-136 Jurnal ILMU KOMUNIKASI 132 (Festinger, 1957 human hands that want to cut their ears.
The sound of the piglet cry painfully also strengthens the illustration of animal torture DQG ¿QDOO\ WKH PDQ FKRSSHG RII WKH SLJ ¶V ear. Lastly, the narrator says, "Please, choose vegetarian for the animal", while a pig is hanging in the slaughtering place with ÀRZLQJ EORRG DQG ÀRXQGHULQJ 7KH LPDJH RQ the video may create guilt, for example, when the video showed the pain of small piglet.
The feeling of guilt could be a powerful mechanism that prevents individuals from transgressing and motivates individuals to rectify their transgressions (Keltner, 1995).
However, the writer also argues that the guilt effect depends on the context of individual standard. Coulter and Pinto (1995) argued that comparable message manipulations may create different levels of guilt, depending on the context in which individual used to assess certain issue or visual object.