Undress the Ads: The Carnival of American Atheist

This ads is the most recent billboard on American Atheist “You Know It’s a Myth” 2011 Campaign. In 2010, the atheist group conducted the campaign by placing billboard with the theme "You Know It’s a Myth, This Season Celebrate Reason" in Christmas time.  

 I think the most interesting words are the words “37 million of Americans know Myth when they see them,” which show the involvement of the communicator in the advertisement. Those words also provide the statistical data about the number of Atheist people (the 37 million Americans). According to New York Times (Otterman, 2011), the Billboard with the dominant color of orange and black, have cost $ 25.000 for the placement price. Fantastic!!! Just wonder, with that much money, I can study in the USA for a year or eat Thai food for 10 years! David Silverman, The President of American Atheist argued that the purpose of this billboard is to “call out” the atheist to confess honestly about who they are. He says, “We want people to realize that there may be atheists in their family, even if those atheists don’t even know they are atheists” (Otterman, 2011). Hmm… just makes me think about ‘gay’ movement, isn’t it similar?

The billboard shows the carnival approach by questioning the hierarchy in social perception. Both Jesus and Satan are together in one line, is the typical approach of deconstructing the social structure or decoding dominant structure (Hall, 2006). The advertisement also bravely encourages people not to have fears on sanctify things (Bakhtin, 1984), such as “god,” “devil,” monster underneath your bed,” or whatever you called as sanctified.   

Now, let me play more: the words “What do you see?” in the middle of the four figure shows the “soft” approach by giving options to the audience on how they want to interpret the four figures. The atheist group did not say “You see them as myth” to the audience or “dictating” the audience to perceive the four figures as myth. Instead, they give question to the audience by a reflective and descriptive question of “what do you see?” The open question towards the sanctified figures provides spaces for the audience to believe in their own interpretation. It also allows different interpretation that challenges the dominant construction (Martin&Renegar, 2007; Hall, 2006).

The word “you” show the emphasize value of human power. The combination of an implicit approach and a deep meaning by playing the font of the words also bring atheist’s objective to value intellectuality and human power in constructing the existence of mystical objects (Dawkins, 2006). Simple way for example: human create “god” through their own thought (I did not mean to persuade you in this value, just an example, ok babe!)

How amazing it is to “undress” an ad! Let’s find another ads and discuss!

“HOT” IDEAS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:

a.   Research on “the Ads war” between Atheist and Christians group in the Christmas season in the USA.

b.    Exploring the pattern of Ads approach from Atheist group by looking at Kenneth Burke’s frames or other scholars.

c.    A textual analysis on movies about the atheist or God discourse such as “the community” TV show