Representative form and the visual ideograph: The Iwo Jima image in editorial cartoons

Much has been written about the iconic power of Joe Rosenthal's 1945 photograph of the flag‐raising at Iwo Jima. This scholarship, however, insufficiently accounts for the rhetorical function of this image as it is appropriated in an unusual number of recent editorial cartoons. Building upon rhetorical theory addressing repetitive form and visual metaphor, we propose a concept of representative form. Exemplifying representative form, the parodied Iwo Jima image operates as an instance of depictive rhetoric that functions ideographically.