Semester 2 lecture 8

Today is an introduction to Visual Culture which is a field of study concerned with the production, circulation and consumption of visual images in everyday life and how those impact on the subjectivity of people. Subjectivity has to do with the way that we experience ourselves and our lives; the term refers to the fact that who we are, or who we understand ourselves to be, is shaped by many forces that are exterior to ourselves – social forces, cultural forces, institutional forces.

For most people life is mediated through images  - our environment is saturated with visual imagery that communicates messages of one kind or another, most of which are urging us to consume; images have become part of a culture of near-compulsory consumption.

So, visual culture is a study of the visual in the broad sense of that word as a place where meanings are both made and contested. It is a tactic for studying the functions of a world addressed through pictures, images, and visualizations, rather than through texts and words.  

In order to understand that process of making and contesting meaning through images, there are two ideas in particular that you need to grasp. The first is representation, something that we have touched on before. Representation implies a system of meaning making based on rules and conventions specific to a culture or society.

Representation is often made up of three levels of meaning.

1.     Denotative meaning – literal descriptive meaning

2.     Connotative meaning  - cultural and historical context lead to other readings and interpretations

The myth of the image – the hidden set of rules, codes and conventions through which meanings that are in reality specific to particular groups of people, are presented as though they were universal and ‘given’. Myth allows the connotative meaning of a particular thing or image to appear to be denotative.

Rooney; The denotation of the image above are, Caucasian male, red paint over the face and across his chest, arms and mouth wide open, small eyes, and mascular and well built body.

While the connotations of this image are, the red paint across the chest and face symbolise England football club’s logo. The red paint itself symbolised blood (England blood), bravery, strong, anger and passion. Wayne Rooney’s body gesture shows that he is strong and undefeatable and his passion for the team he plays. His muscular and well built body connotes that he is fit and athletic (indeed a well known football player in fact one of the best.)

The soldier is in a corner made of brick with his gun drawn and he is facing something out of the frame. The image is part of a series of photos that Griffiths took in Northern Ireland, which served as a citizen resource at the time, going beyond being advertisement or entertainment.

Images are still able to create emotion, document the feelings of a decade, and show power. The man in the photo may not have been a shooter in the Bloody Sunday killings but he is still a representation of the tension, pain, and disdain of that era.

We are not necessarily entirely passive in this process. As a species we can and do resist this shaping of our subjectivity. Sometimes we contest very openly in a visual way, as in the Punk movement for example, and sometimes we do it more covertly through slightly illegal activity or practices that are not considered socially acceptable. In both of those cases I have used examples of dress; clothing is a visual communicative language as well as a practical form of bodily protection.  

“Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch”depicts three young boys smoking cigars in the early 1900’s, and was taken by Lewis Hine in 1910. These children in the photograph were assuming the positions of adults, and have the responsibility of supporting their families. Hine captures the reality of kids being forced to take on parental roles to survive. “Lewis Hine shocked a nation with images of child exploitation in packing plants, glass factories and cotton mills-at this at a time when child labor was widely accepted as a natural part of life” (Linfield 15).  In 1900 about 1.7 million kids under the age of 15 were working in factories that had dangerous conditions Many families considered it normal and even encouraged their kids to take on jobs at such a young age. Families were struggling and needed all the income possible regardless of the hazards and damage it did to the kids. It wasn’t until 1973 that the Child Labor Laws were passed in the United States restricting children under the age of 16 to work.

On one hand we see the object of the photograph, the two dimensional surface, the various degrees of lights and darks that make up the forms, and the material of the print itself. On the other hand we see the various messages or feelings being conveyed through the smug expression on the boys’ faces, their obvious attitudes and the idea that these three boys appear to have lived a life of independence and hard work, free from the confines of education and parental control, and that these boys are decision-makers and responsible US citizens contributing to their community as newsies.

The architects of 9/11 seem to have planned the event with the understanding that the real battlefield is actually the mediascape. 9/11 was an image-event, generating images as weapons of Shock and Awe for dissemination through the media. There is a consciousness of generating images as a form of capital to circulate in the social imaginary.

This brings us to the second idea that you need to grasp in relation to visual culture and that is spectatorship. This term implies many aspects and ways of looking – the gaze, the look, the glance, the practice of looking, surveillance and visual pleasure.

The Society of the Spectacle was a film and book written in the 1970’s by a French artist Guy Debord. He was a very early critic of the process by which people are fed so many images that they can no longer distinguish between the literal meanings, the suggested meanings and the hidden meanings of images. Images take the place of meaningful social and political relations in Debord’s critique; the free circulation of images masks an increasing lack of freedom for people.

The Abu Ghraib torture images emerged 3 years after 9/11. The fact that these actions of torture were set up as images – even with the soldiers posing – indicates the extent to which spectatorship and the circulation of the image has penetrated into every corner of human relations.

These images of brutality become normalised through their circulation in this way, which can produce a kind of numbness. In that context it’s worth looking at this fashion campaign by Steven Meisel - State of Emergency.

Denotation?

Connotation?

Myth of the image – what is being normalised?

Sexualisation of brutality. Myth: violence is sexy and women actually like it!!!!!

Today images shift from one context to another, which produces a change in the meaning of the image. This means that the visual image is not a stable entity, but has a changing relationship to exterior reality at any given moment. This means that people can use the spectacle as a site of resistance, which is known as culture jamming, also based on a technique first suggested by Debord to appropriate and change the meaning of images.

Culture jamming is the act of transforming existing mass media messages, using the original medium's communication method to produce a critical view. It is a form of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of corporate image. The aim of culture jamming is to create a contrast between corporate image and the realities of the corporation.

Sometimes culture jamming consists of making spoofs out of corporate or political advertisements, refiguring logos, print ads, billboards, websites and photos.