Finally, there was the American version of the giant Kitchener poster that had been so important to the British effort. Lacking a living personification of the cause, however, the Pictorial Arts Division substituted the allegorical Uncle Sam pointing his finger and declaring “I want YOU for the U.S. Army,” for what would surely be the most indelible instance of the recruitment genre. In another poster reading “Destroy This Mad Brute,” Germany appears as a giant crazed gorilla; this King Kong avant la lettre, clutches in one arm a beautiful woman naked to the waist—the ravaged Belgium—and in the other hand, a club emblazoned with the word Kultur. The appeal is right to the male amygdala, the brain's seat of violent emotions, shown in functional MRI to light up at such primal horrors.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 161