Postmodernism

I would like to start off my blog by identifying all of the terms that were covered in the text. Postmodernity is, a term used to capture life during a period marked by radical transformation of social, economic, and political apects of modernity, marked by the flows of migration and global travel, the flow of information through the interent and new digital technologies, the dissolution of nation-states in their traditional sovereign from in the wake of the collapse of liberization, and the increased divide between rich and poor. It describes a set of social, cultural, and economic formations that have occured "post" or after the height of modernity and that have produced both a different window and different ways of being in the world than was the case of modernity. It has been referred to as a period of questioning of "metanarratives" by French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard and of the premise that unified accounts and theories could adequately capture the human condition. It has also been descibed by Fredric Jameson as a historical period that is the cultural outcome of the "logic of late capitalism".

However postmoderism has been characterized as a critique of modernist concepts such as universalism, the idea of presence, the traditional notion of the subject as unified and self-aware, and faith in progress. Postmodernism is often understood as existing in the detritus of modernity. The concept is also used to describe particular styles in art, literature, architecture, and popular culture that engage in parody, bricolage, appropriation, and ironic reflexivity, as if there is nothing truly new to say, no ultimate knowledge to reveal. In terms of its application to art and visual stlye, postmodernism is a set of trends in the art world in the late twentieth century that question, among other things, concepts of authenticity, authorship, and the idea of style progression. Postmodern works are thus highly reflexive, with a mix of styles. In popular culture and advertising, the term postmodern has been used to descibe techniques that involve reflexivity, discontinuity, and pastiche and that speak to viewers as both jaded consumers and through self-knowing metacommunication.

Reflexivity is the practice of making viewers aware of the material and technical means of production by featuring those aspects as the "content" of a cultural production. reflexivity is both a part of the tradition of medernism, with its emphasis on form and structure, and of postmodernism, with its array of intertextual refrences and ironic marking of the frame of the image and its status as a cultural product. Reflexivity prevents viewers from being completely absorbed in the illusion of an experience of a film or image, distancing viewers from that experience.

Simulacara or simulation/simulacrum are terms famously used by Fench theorist Jean Baudrillard that refer to a sign that does not clearly have a real life counterpart, refrent, or precedent. A simulacrum is not necessarily a representation of something else, and it may actually precede the thing it simulates in the real world. Baudrillard stated that to simulate a disease was to acquire its symptoms, thus making it difficult to distinguish between the simulation and the actual disease. For example, a casino or amusement park simulacrum of the city of Paris can be seen as a substitute for the actual city and can perhaps for some viewers seem to offer a more compelling experience of Paris than the city itself, which may be totally out of reach for the viewer. An example of simulacra in my own personal life would have to be when I went to Disney world as a child. I went on a ride called Around the world. You sit in a row of seats, and it takes you threw a whole set up they have of all of the different contenants, and countries, and what those particualr countires have to offer. This was soemthing that I enjoyed very much. And because I will probabaly never get a chance to go to Disney world again or anytime soon, and will never actually see these pleaces on the ride, they portrayed those countires much better than I could have imagined. The rise seemed more appealing to me at the time, more than the places that it was replcating, proabaly because I was so young.

Some of the factors that characterize postmodernism identified throughout the reading that I found were, pastiche, parody, and the remake, reflexivity, the media, irony, collage, and eclecticism.

Lastly, postmodernisn is differnet from modernity because Postmodernism means, after the modernist movement, while modern refers to something related to the present. The movement of modernism and the reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives. It is used in critical theory to refer to a point of departure of works of literature, drama, architecture, cinema, journalism, and design, as well as in marketing and business as well as in the interpretation of history, law, culture, and relgion. Postomodernism is the cultural and intellectual phenomanam in the 20th and 21st century. Modernity stirctly refers to the time period and worldview begining approximately in the 18th century with the Enlightenment, reaching its height in the late 19th and 2oth centuries, when broad populations of Europe and North America were increasingly concentrated in urban centers and in industrial societies of increased mechanization and automation. Modernity is a time of dramatic technological change that embraces a linear view of progress as crucial to humankind's prosperity and an optimaistic view of the future at the same time that it embodieds an anxiety about change and social upheaval. It is charachterized by an embrace of technology and progress, a sense of revolutionary change, and anxities about its upheaval.

Consumerism

What is commodity fetishism?
The process through which commodities are emptied of the meaning of their production( the labor that produced them and the context in which they were produced) and filled instead with abstract meaning (usually through advertising). In Marxism, commodity fetishism is the process of mystification that exists in capitalism between what things are and how they appear. Commodity fetishism also describes the process by which special life powers are attributed to commodities rather than to other elements in social life. For example, to suppose that a brand of car confers self-worth is to engage in commodity fetishism. in commodity fetishism, exchange value has so superseded use value that things are valued not for what they do but for what they cost, how they look, and what connotations can be attatched to them. For instance, a commodity (such as bottled purified water) is emptied of the meaning of its production(where is was bottled, who worked to bottle it, how it is shipped) and filled with new meaning (mountain springs, purity) through advertising campaigns.
How do you think the relationships of consumers with branding had changed in the past couple of decades?
I think that the relationship of consumers with branding has changed dramatically over the past few decades. People are all buying into advertisers. I am pretty passionate about stuff like this. People are not grateful for what they have and it makes me sick. They would rather spend $1,000.00 on ONE pair of shoes, then pick up a pair that will work just as fine, for $20.00!I think that this is one of the many reasons why our economy is at a downfall. People are destroying this world. All of the money in the world, it doesn't even matter what country anymore is being wasted on getting these meatheads to see that they NEED this specific brand of shoe, them paying the obsene amount of moeny for it, and the richer are getting richer, as the poorer, poorer. Like stupid young 18 year old girls, they get their credit card offers, literally on there 18th birthday, because credit card companies know that they fall into the trap much quicker than men. Back in the day, people didn't have a problem with wearing a coat, just a simple coat, most were grateful that they could purchase one, after the great depression. Now all these fat little American kids get a new designer jacket, every season! This stuff really gets to me. There are starving people in the world, people being killed by their own government because they don't have the money to buy an airline ticket to get out of there, and here we are, wasting money on matierialistic, stupid things. And these peole don't even know what they are doing, this is life for them. Even when I was a kid, in the 80's toys lasted. My baby sister and god daughter are playing with toys that I did, 20 years ago! You buy them a new toy, made these days, and your lucky if it lasts til the next Christmas. Some times I am so ashamed to be living in the same world as these people. Anway, my answer to the question is that advertisers are certainly doing there job right, making consumers feel the need for a brand. And the world is getting sucked in.
What is metacommunication?How do advertisers use this to their advantage?
A discussion or exchange in which the topic is the exchange taking place itself. A "meta" level is a reflexivelevel of communicating. In popular culture, this refers to texts in which the topic is the viewer's act of viewing the text. An ad that addresses a viewer about the ways that the viewer is looking at the ad is engaging in metacommunication. Advertisers use this strategy by, getting consumers to see what the person that buys the advertised item looks like. An example would be some man looking at an ad for a Jeep Wrangler or something. The man in the ad that is looking at the automobile is an adventureous, rugged, tall, dark, and handsome kind of guy. But everybody knows that men who drive Jeep Wranglers are adventureous outdoorsy, kind of men. The man looking at the advertisement sees himself in the man, and wants to be more sdventurous, or manly, or whatever and then buys the Jeep to feel more like himself, or more like the man that he longs to be.

Consumer Culture

1) What is meant by consumer society and how is it related to the rise of medernity?
Cunsumer societies emerged in the context of modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the rise of mass production in the wake of the industiral revolutiion and with the consolidation of populations in major urban centers that took place in the 18th and 19th centuries throughout much of the industrial world. In a consumer society, the individual is confronted with and surrounded by a vast assortment of goods. The characteristics of these goods change constantly. In a consumer society there are great social and physical distances between manufacture of goods and their purchase and use. In a consumer society, there is a constant demand for new products. old products are sold with a new look, added features, a new design, or simply new slogans and ad campaigns. In a consumer society a large segmant of the population must be able to afford goods that are not absolutelt necessary to daily life but that they may want for an array of reasons, such as style or status. Consumer societies are integral to modernity. The mass production of marketing goods depended until the late 20th century on large sectors of the population living in concentrated areas, such as the distribution, purchase, and advertising of goods had an available audience. Yet it has also emerged simultaneously with the expansion of global chain stores, such as the Gap, Victorias Secret, Barnes and Nobles, and many others, as well as the success of big-box retailers and massive discount stores such as Costco and Wal-Mart. This means that we find many of the same stores in central shopping districts of cities around the world. It has been argued that in consumer societies people derive their sense of their place in the world and thei self-image at least in part through their purchase and use of commodities, which seem to give meaning to their lives in the absense of the meaning derived from the clse knit community.
2) How is capitalism related to commodity culture?
Commodities fit the bill as things to aid in self improvement and promising self-fulfillment. as the theraputic ethos that undergirds consumerism emerged in particular ways in North America and in parts of Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century as those societies embraced industrial capitalism and consumerism, it would also emerge in the context of other societies that did not have the same tradition of Protestantism. For instance, the emergence of consumerism in post war Japan was driven by the country's painful emergence from the devastation of WWII and the loss of its imperial monarchy. In China, consumerism, and along with it credit cards, emerged in the late 20th century hand in hand with a socialist system that maintains values of communal good not unlike those of Protestant affirmations of community. Many aspects of Chinese society embrace values of self-improvement and self-fulfillment through consumerism, even though those values of communism that ave structured Chinese society since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Consumerism has taken hold quite differently in different societies precisely because of the social values and economic and political systems under which they operate. Cultrual critic Walter Benjamin set out to describe the gilltering seductions of commodity capiltalism, he concentrated on one city, Paris, and its arcades.
3) How is visual pleasure related to the concept of the flaneur, how has mobility (associated with modernity) affected this concept?
Visual pleasure was an enormous part of the arcades attraction, it was a place to look at the spectacle of glass and metal structures, the packaging of goods, and fellow strollers, In the late 19th century, this kind of visual pleasure in the experience of shopping as entertainment was manifested in the rise of the department store. These enormous "palaces" to consumerism were built in major cities as destinations for citizen-consumers, from residents of the sity to vistitors from the countryside. The department store announced itself as a site of both commerce and leisure and was constructed in order to display the largest possible number of goods to a consumer, who was imagined as strolling through its isles. With enormous staircases, luxurious goods on sumptuous display, and elaborate decor, the department store intended to be awe inspiring. With the emergence of a consumer culture in the 19th century that depended on visual codes for pleasure, philospohers and writes described the figure of the flaneur, a man who strolls the streets of cities such as Paris, observing the urban landscape in a detached way while moving through it. The flaneur is a figure who moves through the city in an anonymous fashion and whose primary activity is looking. This visual culture of flanerie and window shopping in the 19th and early 20th centuries was related to the more mobile vision of modernity. In the 19th century flaneurs were men because respectable women were not allowed to stroll alone in the modern streets. As window shopping became an important activity, in particualr the rise of the department store, it allowed what Friedberg calls the flaneuse, a female window shopper, to emerge in more contemporary contexts. There are many kinds of gazes at play in the visual culture of modernity, from the cinematic predecessors such as the panorama to the cinematic gaze to the gazes at work in the urban environment of pedestrians, commerce, and mall display. Thus the new ways of looking in modern society were not limited to shopping but extended into all areas of urban life. These cultures of visuality and mobility continued to change throughout the 20th century. With the increased distances traveled by people in automobiles in the city and countryside in the early to mid 20th century, billboards becamse a central venue for advertising. Although advertising had been painted in large scale on city buildings for decades and billboards were a part of the urban landscape, the development of the automobile in the 1910's changed not only the landscape of communites and idustires but also the experience of consumerism. Billboards were designed to be seen on the go, and the automobile was increasingly seen as a consumer product connoting freedom and consumer mobility.
4) What is presumption of relevance?
In advertising the manner of speaking that makes the presumption that the issues presented are of utmost importance. in the abstract world of advertisements, for instance, the statment that having sjiny hair is the most important aspect of one's life does not register with viewers as absurd because of the presumption of this as relevant within the ad's message.
5) " Advertising asks us not to consume products but to consume signs in the sematic meaning of the term?" Explain.
Advertising sometimes sells belonging to a family, community, generation, nation, or specific group or class of people, attatching concepts of the nation, community, and democracy to products. Hence the ideological function of many advertisements takes the form of speaking a language of patriotism and nationalism in order to equate the act or purchasing a product with the practises of citizenship. in other words, ads that use an image of America or Britain or toehr nations to market products are selling the concept that in order to be a good citizen and to properly participate in the nation, one must be an active consumer. Many advertisements depict the family as a site of harmony, warmth, and security, an idealized unit with no problems that cannot be solved by commodities. Indeed, commodities are often presented as the means by which the family is held together, affirmed, and strengthened. Advertisements affirm this meaning that people relate to each other on the most intimate levels through consumerism, depicting commodities as facilitating familial emotion and communication (such as the giving of jewelry or flowers and other commodities to signal affection and value.).

Realism and Perspective

To start off my blog, I am going to answer the following assigned questions.
In what way can approaches to and appreciation of realism in art have political implications?
What constitutes realism in a given historical, geographic, or natural context can be a charged politcal issue. Realist approaches have often been put forward as a direct means of politcal expression, sometimes to challenge the status quo of realist representation. The question for us is not which approach to realism has resulted in the most accurate representations of the world at any given time, but what do the different approaches to realism that we find in art and visual culture tell us about the culture and polotics of a given social context.
What is the realism represented in cubism?
Cubists were interested in creating not fantasy worlds but new ways of looking at the real. John Berger has written, "Cubism changed the nature of the relationship between the painted image and reality, and by so doing it expressed a new realtionship between man and reality." According to cubists, cubism is a way of depicting the restless and complicated process of human vision.
What does avant-garde mean and what are some examples given in the reading?
Avant-garde is a term imported from military strategy(in which indicated an expedtionary or scouting force that takes risks)into art history to describe movements at the forefront of artistic experimentation, leading the way toward major changes. Avant-garde is often associated with modernism and formal innovation and is frequently contrasted with mainstream or traditional art that is conventional rather than challenging. Examples from the reading include, 4.21. Thise stlyes that seem in the context of European American art to be particularly modern and forward looking were influenced by art traditions that had much longer histories of abstraction and that also has had long histories of defying or simply not observing the conventional codes of perspective.
How does perspective fit into the episteme of the Renaissance?
Each period of histry has a different episteme, that is a different way of ordering things or of organizing and representing knowledge about things. Perspective is a techinque of visualization that was popularized in Italy in the mid 15th century that is embelmatic of the Renaissance interest in the fusion of art and science. To use perspective to create a painting a painter would use a geometric procedure to project space onto a two-dimensional plane.

Orientalism

After reading pages 11-129, I learned a few key terms when talking about and trying to understand Orientalism. First off, Orientalism is defined as a term popularized by cultural theroist Edward Said that refers to the ways that Western cultures concieve of Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures as other and attribute to these cultures qualities such as exoticism and barbarism. Orientalism sees binary opposition between the West (the Occident) and the East (The Orient) in which either negative or romanticized qualities are attributed to the latter. For Said, Orientalism is a practice found in cultural representations, education, social science, and polotical policy. For instance, the stereotype of Arab people as fanatic terrorists is an example of Orietalism. Next I wanted to define the term binary opposition. In the book it is defined as the oppositions such as nature/culture, white/black, male/female, mind/body and so forth, through which reality has traditionally been represented. Although binary oppositions can seem immutable and mutually exclusive, contemporary theories of difference have demonstarated the ways in which these oppositional categories are interrelated and are ideologically and historically constructed. This leads to the exclusion of other positions in the spectrum between these binaries. For example, sexuality exists along a continuum and not soely in the form of two poles of identity, male and female. The historical reliance on binary oppositions points to the way that differences is essential to meaning and how we inderstand things.

However, binary oppositions are reductive ways of viewing the compexity of differnece, and as philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued, all binary oppositions are encoded with values and concepts of power, superiority, and worth.

The capacity of the photograph to establish both norms and otherness is highly evident in contemporary advertising, in which ads attach notions of exoticism to their products through images of places that are coded as distant and outside the world of consumptio the implied locale of the rice paddy and the use an Asian model give ordinary women's clothing a peasant quality. Here the hats worn typically by workers in rice paddies in order to shield their faces from the sun are recorded as signifiers of exoticism. We are not intended to think these women are actually performing the labor of working in the rice paddies . Rather the paddy offers an exotic location in which highly paid models and expensive clothing can be put on display.

In the Safari Ralph Lauren ad, the ad invites the consumer/viewer to assume the role of the liberated travler who moves through and unidentified exotic locale. The ad is arranged like a travelouge or scrapbook. The consumer is interpellated in these ads as a westerner who can buy an authentic exotic expierence. The consumer is also promised a virtually authentic experience as tourists in consuming the product.

One of the primary binary oppositions that is reiterated and debated in contemporary representation today is that the differences between Western and Eastern cultures. The difference formerly was captuered in the terms Occidental and Oriental, with Orientalism describing the tendencies of westterners who have fetishized, mythologicalized, and feared the culrues, land, and people of Asia and the Middle East. Photographs and other forms of representation are central elements in the production of Orientalism.

Cultural theorists Edward Said emphasized that the Orient is not strictly a place or culture in itself, but rather a European culture construction. Orientalism he expalined is about " the Orient's special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is alos the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of the deepest and most recurring images of the Other". Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.

Modernism

After reading pages 93-110,I can describe modernity as a term that scholars use to refer to the historical, culture, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment (an eighteenth century philosophical movement)the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism, and to the idea of controlling nature through technology, science, and rationalism. Modernity is associated with the belief that industrialization, human technological intervention in nature, mass democracy, and the introduction of a market economy are the hallmarks of social progress. The exact dates and conditions of modernity as a period are debated by historians. This is because not all countries became modern in this sense during the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries and because even those countries that did modernize in this way did not all embrace this same notion of the modern. Also not all countries embraced the same ideology of progress in the economy, thechnology, and military power. Whereas modernization was part of instituting a capitalist economy and a liberal democracy in the United States, for the Soviet union modernization in the form of industrialization and technological advacement was tied to Communist ethos of equal benefits and living conditions for all citizens . Imperial Europe played a role in instituting modernizing eneterprises in its colonies. The colonial strategies of modernization were justified by the Eurocentric belief that European practices and beliefs were objectively better than the cultural practices and ways of knowing and living in the world that had been in place prior to colonization.

The conditions of modernity were the grounds for the emergence of modernism. Modernism is a term that refers to a group of styles and movements in art, literature, architecture, and culture around the world dating from the 1800's through the mid to late 1900's. We use the term modern in an everyday sense to mean the present or recent times or to refer to contemporary views and fashions. In reltaion to art and culture, however the term modern takes on a differnt set of meanings .German scholar Jurgen Habermas explains that the concept of the modern has been used over and over again by socities since as long ago as the late fith century. In Haberma's terms the present culture sees itself as the product of a transition from old to new, modeling itself on a past era that is regarded as embodying timeless, classical principles. This all changed with the Enlightenment.

French philosopher Michel Foucault, in the twentieth century, argued that the human subject is constituted in modernity not through liberal human ideals but through the discourses of institutional life of the period. Foucault saw the subject as an entity produced within and through the discourses and institutional practices of the Enlightenment. Foucault's subject is never autonomous but is always constituted in relationships of power that are enacted through discourse.

The term discourse is defined as , in general the socially organized process of talking about a particular subject matter. More specifically, according to Michel Foucault , discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something. Although there is no set list of discourses, the term tends to be used for broad bodies of social knowledge, such as the discourses of economics, the law, medicine, politics, sexuality, technology, and so forth. Discourses are specific to particular social and historical contexts, and they change over time. It is fundamental to Foucault's theory that discourses produce certain kinds of subjects and knowledge and that we occupy to varying degrees the subject positions defined within a broad array of discourses.

Decoders

After reading the assigned pages I learned a great deal about encoding and decoding. In the book it states that all images are encoded with meanings in their creation and production that is decoded by viewers. Then in states that Stuart Hall wrote an essay explaining the three positions viewers can take as decoders of cultural images and artifacts.

The first position that i learned about was the Dominant-hegemonic reading. They identify with the dominant message of an image or text, such as a television show, in an unquestioning manner. According to Hall few viewers actually occupy this position at any time because mass culture cannot satisfy all viewer's culturally specific experiences, memories, and desires because viewers are not passive recipients of the messgae of mass media and popular culture.

Next I learned that Negotiated Reading means that they can negotiate an interpretation from the image and its dominant meanings.According to Hall most readings are negotiated ones, in which viewers actively struggle with dominant meanings and modify them in numerous ways because of their own social status, beliefs, and values.

Lastly I learned that Oppositional reading means that they can take an oppositional position, either by completely disagreeing with the ideological position embodied in an image or rejecting it altogether.

When trying to figure out which decoder I would label myself as I decided that I am most simialr to the definition of a Negotiated reading. I can see some of the dominant readings, but I object others. I struggle with most dominant meanings and modify them because of my own social status, beliefs, and values. I chose this one because I can see what most people see, and I see why the would see things that way and decode things a certain way. I can also see what TV shows and such would want me to see. But untimatly I do have a very different set of values, and beliefs and they do influence the way that I would see things and decode them.

Interpellation in advertisements

After reading the assigned pages, I learned that interpellation is a term used by Marxist theorist Louis Althusser to describe the process by which ideological systems called out to or "hail" social subjects and tell them their place in the system. In proper culture, interpellation refers to the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into particular ideological position. Images can be said to designate the kind of viewer, they help to shape us as particular ideological subjects. If you flip threw a magazine, you will see this all too much. Advertisements are all about interpellation.
The role interpellation plays in advertisements is, crucial to good advertisements. If you find your favorite beauty product for example, you will see that their is most likely a model, and she is probably looking happy, young, and beautiful. Womens place in the system is to be beautiful, happy, and of course she has got to look young, even when she is sixty years old, advertisement comapnies target women around the ages of 30-50 to start making them think about getting old, wrinklkes, grey hair, and how to prevent it from happening. Even men for that matter, are targeted to make them self concious about getting old, greying, balding or thinning of the hair, and wrinkles are all things that are taken into consideration when trying to sell beauty products to anyone. When advertisements interpellate images, they target them at individuals. They make them easy for people to understand, and make them seem as if that ad were specifically for them. They do not try to aim for a group of people, they seek individuals. They make things very personal for the consumer. It is a known fact that images interpellate viewers. Images and media texts seem to call out to us, and catch our attention.
As I continued my reading, I learned about aesthetics and kitsch. I learned that aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with judgements of sentiment and taste. The term can be used to mean the philosophy of art, which considers art's meaning and value in light of standards such as beauty and truth. Postmodern theorists questioned the universalizing claims of aesthetic judgment. I then went on to read about how kitsch comes into play with all of this. i learned that the meaning of the word kitsch is art or literature judged to have little or no aesthetic value, yet that has value precisely because of its status in evoking the class standards of bad tatse. Afficionados of kitsch thus recode kitsch objects, such as lava lamps and tacky 1950's suburban furniture, as good rather than bad taste. Kitsch can also refer to cultural objects and images that interpellate viewers in easy codes of sentimentalism.
After reading about the relationship between tatse and kitsch I understood it much more. And the relationship between the two is, tatse, is known as the shared artistic and cultural values of a particular social community or individual. Everyone known about tatse. But kitsch on the other hand, I believe is someone who find the things that are labeled with bad tatse, intriguing. Kitsch is bad tatse, or cheap tatse in a way. Someone known that not everyone likes it, some may find it to be tacky, but they enjoy it and find that to be good tatse.An example would be the old lady that loved leopard print, or animal skins. Most find it to be tacky, but she thinks it shows good style and loves it and wears it any way that she can.

Picture for Images and Ideology

I thought that this image was a perfect icon for hatred. I picked this photo in particular because I thought that it showed a great deal of emotion and meaning. I like photo or images that have meaning to them and this one shows what hatred can do to individuals first hand. I like how it shows the aftermath. And what extremes humans will go to when emotion such as hatred is involved.

Images and Ideology

From reading Images and Ideology, I learned alot about things that I wasn't aware beforehand. I learned that Ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures. Images are an important means through which ideologies are produced and onto which ideologies are projected. Ideologies are thought of as propoganda. I also learned that Ideologies were like Barthe's concept of myth, connotations that appear to be natural. Also, ideologies premeate the world of entertainment. Also the more everyday realms of life that we do not usually associate with the word culture:science, education, medicine, and law. I read that images are used for the categorization and classification of peoples for identification, as evidence of disease in medical screening and diagnosis, and as courtroom evidence. I found it interesting to hear how after photography was developed in Europe in the eraly nineteeth century, private citizens began hiring photographers to make individual and family portraits. Back then portarits often marked special events such as births, marriages, and deaths.
This bit of information lead to the first image to appear in this reading assignment. Carte de viste of George Armstrong Custer, 1860's. I read how this was pretty much like a post card now days. I then learned how important photographs were back then. And what different rolls they played. they were used as toold for science and for public survelliance. They were also used in hospitals, mental institutions, and prisons to record and study populations and such. Today they do similar things by recording our fingerprints for personal identification on our passports, drivers lisence, credit cards and ID cards in school and for welfare programs.
I then went on to read about OJ Simpson and how Newsweek and Time magazine used the same photo but Times altered the color of OJ's skin to make him appear more evil, as many people did often times back then.
I then went on to read about how we negotiate the meaning of images. I thought it was interesting to learn how comventions are like road signs, we must learn their codes for them to make sense, and the codes we learn become second nature. Company logos operate according to this principle of instant recognition, counting on the fact that the denotative meaning (the swoosh sign equals Nike) will slide into connotative meanings (the swoosh means quality, coolness) that will then boost sales.
I then read about image codes, which lead to the image of the smiley face. Which then lead to the painting BUTTERFLY. The painting kind of creeped me out I have to be honest.
The next image was the antismoking ad. Which I liked the whole idea about masculinity and marlboro. But I really liked this ad I found it to be entetaining. I liked how they both looked so serious and manly and they were supposed to be talking about there health.
The next image was THe Veil. A comic strip which I liked alot. This went on to explain about representaion, and iconci signs. I like when artists take serious problems and make them somewhat comical. It also hleps some people understand the situation more I think.
The next image was the car advertisement. Which then went on to explain about symbolic signs. I found it very helpful in understanding how the book explains it as this, someone who does not speak English can probably recognize an image of a cat(an iconic sign), whereas the word cat (a symbolic sign) will have no obvious meaning. I think anyone who has difficulties understanding this concept should read this segment from the reading and it will help them to understand it alot more easily.
The next image was a painting by van Gogh called Irises. I enjoyed this one the most simply because I adore van Gogh, I have a Starry Night purse, as well as a big display as my wallpaper on my computer. But this was used to describe the value of images. Which I cannot believe that some people are willing to pay so much money for soemone elses art work. It also went on to explain authenticity. I found it crazy that someone tried to throw a rock at the Mona Lisa! But the next imkage is one of a group of tourists who are seeing the Mona Lisa. Which by the way is kept in a climate controlled room behind bulletproof glass to protect it from any potential vandals among the six million or so people who view it annually.
I then went on to read about image icons. The images of the student at Tiananmen Square were so powerful. This is my favorite type of pictures, ones that either capture something historic, powerful, or meaningful. It goes on to explain how powerful this one picture is and how this image has worldwide recognition, befor they even had TV.
The next few images were paintings, or pictures of mothers with their children. This too explained image icons. The photo of the mother and children struggling threw the great depression in California is much more meanignful to me than the paintings. This captures so much feeling and emtion, you can see how the mothers is feeling and how everyone in that time period must have been feeling.
Next I went on to read about Andfy Warhol and his images of Marilyn Monroe. Marily Monore was well known to be an image icon so this was a good way to show the power of images
The next image was a black women nursing a white baby. I personally love this picture and found it to be ridiculous that it was banned from American magazines. Because Americans are the ones who abused others, and actually had wet mothers.
Lastly there was a photo of Madonna, a true icon to many. Not to me personally though. I understand that she wanted to be a sex symbol of whatever and she got that title. But some may see her as the title of the photo Blonde Ambition.
After reading I can say that an image icon is connected to ideology by how people view both things. An icon is an image (or person) that refers to something beyond its individual components, something or someone that acquires symbolic significance. Icons are often percieved to represent universal concepts, emotions, and meanings. Ideology is the shared set of values and beliefs that exist within a given society and through which individuals live out their relations to social institutions and structures. Ideology refers to the way that certain concepts and values are made to seem like natural, inevitable asects of everyday life. Image icon is soemthing that is learned, and so is ideology. They are both taught to us the same way, as we are children. Like how we are taught that the image of a red octogon with the word stop on it means to stop when you are drving a vehicle. Or when you are taught that our photograph, our image of our face is to represent us on our ID. These are just things that you are taught when you are young, the concept sticks and you don't think about it too much anymore throughout your life. Until now of course.

Myths

As I began reading 10-22 i was impressed with the pictures that they had in the reading. Normally when you have to read something from a textbook for school the picures in the textbook are cheesey or lame. But the pictures in the reading, every one seemed to be real, true, and they showed great emotion. The first picture, of the women and children seeing the dead gangster wasminteresting because of all the different reactions in the photo.Some looked disgusted, others looked sad, others look shocked or excited.
As I went on to read, about Weegee, the man who captured this photo you learn that he actually has a portable dark room in his trunk. I thought that was very neat. i went on to read about Emmet Till. Hearing stories about hate crimes or prejudices always give me a stomache ache. In this photo you see a picture of a black man after a group of white men were done beating his to death for whistling at a white women. When I was reading this i couldn't help but wonder, where was the white women when all this went on? Why didn't she try to stop it? Anyways, so The picture of Emmet Till goes to show that pictures hold truth, and they can show you things or let readers know way more then just simply telling story.
On a happier note, I went on to read about still life and saw the beautiful paintin by Henri-Horace Roland. Still life is one of my favorties and this picture is just gorgeous. But as I went on to read I saw how Marion Peck had done a little spin on it and I loved the outcome. I thought that this painting was awesome! i loved the detail and all the little faces on each object on the table.
I then went on to read about the pipe. I thought that this is true, the painting is not a pipe, but this is why I am not an artsy person, because I don't see the menaing in going threw all the trouble of painting a picture perfect pipe, and writing on it "this is not a pipe". I just this it is silly. Of course we should all know that it is not actually a pipe.
I went on to read about the myth of photographic truth. "he french theorist Rolnad Barthes noted that the paragraph, unlike a drawing, offers an unprecedented conjunction between what is here now (the image) and what was there then (the referent, or object, thing, or place)."page 17, last paragraph. As you read you begin to learn that sudium, a term Barthes used , means to descibe this truth function of the paragraph. It goes on to explain how photographs hold truth. a statement which i agree with. However some people may see things differenlty and this is why photographic truth is said to be a myth. Then you go on to see one of your last pictues. By Robert Frank, Trolley. It is a picture of a trolley with half white people in the front and the rest are back, in the back, you get to see segregation at its finest. All of the white people look miserble, and the blacks terrified. it is really a scarey picture to me because you can see the truth on everyones faces. how everyone actually felt at the time,and how they were treated.
To answer the question What is the myth of photographic truth? I think that the myth to photographis truth is that people will see what they want to see. Two people can look at a picture, and see different things. If a old rich white women looked at the photo Trolley, she say see nothing wrong with is . Where as if a black man or women looks, they may see segregation. I think that people block what they really see with their own thoughts and feelings.
Lastly, the different ways tht theorist Roland Barthes uses the term myth is, torefer to the cultural values and beliefs that are expressed through connotation. To Batrthes, myth means a hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are specific to certain groups are made to seem universal, and given to a whole society. Myth allows the connotative meaning of a particular thing or image to appear to be " denotaive, literal, or natural"pg 20, last paragraph.

The Power of Pictues

I think that the power of pictures is incredible. The messages you can get across using pictures is more powerful and shocking then that of words. I am a firm believer in the sayings "a picture is worth a thousand words" and "actions speak louder than words". Pictures are simply a moment of time within an action. If you think about it whenever someone is successful in making there point or explainging something they always use some form of media.