The Visual Politics of U.S. Gun Culture

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter fosters understanding of core U.S. gun culture and how it promotes its political ideology through visual means.

Methodology

The research applies key visual theory concepts to investigate a selection of political representations made by gun rights advocates. The images analyzed include photographs, posters, and other ephemera posted on blogs and commercial websites located through informed keyword searches of Google Images.

Findings

Core gun culture in the U.S. aggressively promotes its libertarian and right-wing ideology through tactics of interpellation, intertextuality, and exhibitionism, often in tandem with humor, sarcasm, paranoia, and sex appeals.

Research limitations/implications

Although the findings are preliminary, visual theories and methodologies present a promising direction for further consumer research on American gun culture.

Social implications

U.S. gun culture produces levels of gun violence that far exceed those in other developed countries. Knowledge of how the core gun culture represents itself visually may deliver insights for mitigating this social problem.

Originality

Relatively little consumer culture research has addressed U.S. gun culture and visual theories have not been fully deployed.

Citation

Witkowski, T.H. (2014), "The Visual Politics of U.S. Gun Culture", Consumer Culture Theory (Research in Consumer Behavior, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0885-2111(2013)0000015001