Appropriating visual form: The iPod “silhouette” campaign as representative form

The iPod “silhouette” advertising campaign is a highly visible and very successful visual form. In this essay, I argue that this form constitutes a representative form, reducible to its component parts, through which myriad appropriations are made possible. Drawing on the theories of form from Kenneth Burke, and Janis Edwards and Carol Winkler, I demonstrate the rhetorical potential for visual argument through appropriations of the visual form of the iPod ad campaign. I argue that this powerful visual form allows authors to both assert and subvert intended messages and to produce new and powerful arguments, with goals ranging from political awareness to commercial appeal.