The highly controversial Anti-draft poster was created by Kiyoshi Kuromiya, an important civil rights and gay rights activist who was born in a Japanese-American internment camp in 1943. According to Kuromiya, the man on the poster was a young person from the Detroit who was doing prison time for burning his draft card. Kuromiya's ethos in this poster was extrinsic because this poster appeared in an underground radical newspaper made specifically for his counter-cultural audience. Before even knowing what his intention was in this poster, Kuromiya's audience already was aware of his experience in anti-war and political activism, therefore making his appeal to ethos extrinsic. This poster was used alongside a call for people to send the picture to famous mothers in politics as a political message against the Vietnam War. The text's ability to call for so much action and to garner so much attention with so little features speaks to Kuromiya's persuasiveness and the text's efficacy. I believe this text is so effective because of its shock value. The text's bold caption catches the eye and draws the viewer's attention towards the image. The poster's efficacy is high because the bold statement it makes causes people to question the draft and its purpose as well as the war itself and who it is affecting. This text brings into the question the ethics of the draft and of the war itself.
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/fuck_the_draft_the_amazing_story_of_kiyoshi_kuromiya_creator_of_the_iconic
I think that while Kuromiya is very qualified and has a strong appeal to ethos (to those who know who he is), it is important to recognize that he isn't really attempting to appeal to ethos in this poster. The point of this poster (and most all posters) is to grab the viewers attention and convey its message to them quickly. No one is expected to know who designed this poster, as there is no name or signature on it, therefore ethos is irrelevant to most viewers.
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