Images, Power & Politics

Lecture

Week 2

O.J. Simpson Trial

bell hooks on the trial

Interlude on Praxis

Review

Objective vs. Subjective?

Defined the two terms?

Denotative vs. Connotative Meaning?

Define the two terms?

Icons

Definition?

Examples?

Representation

What is the definition?

Examples?

Morgan Freeman Movies …

• Clean and Sober (1988), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Glory (1989), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Unforgiven (1992), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Se7en (1995), Moll Flanders (1996), Kiss the Girl (1997), Along Came a Spider (2001), Bruce Almighty (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Batman Begins (2005), Evan Almighty (2007), Gone Baby Gone (2007), The Bucket List (2007), Feast of Love (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), Invictus (2009)

vs. Eddie Murphy

• Beverly Hills Cop (84/87/94) – Cop

• The Golden Child (86) – Detective

• Coming to America (88) – King

• Harlem Nights (89) – “Good” Gangster

• The Distinguished Gentleman (92) – Cngrman

• Boomerang (92) – Fashion Director

• The Nutty Professor (96) – Professor

• Doctor Dolittle (98/01) - Vet

Ideology

Definition?

Examples?

Functions of Art?

1) Personal

2) Social

3) Physical

Personal

• Self-expression or gratification

• Communicate/Re-present: “make meaning”

• Aesthetic Experience

• Order to Chaos

• Entertain

• Money!

Social

• Aesthetics: enrich public/private space

• Status

• Entertainment

• Political (satire, expressionism)

• Social control (e.g., Nazis)

Physical

• Function: weapon, furniture, dishware, etc.

• Architecture

• Religious Services

x

x

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Photographic Truth?

Looking, Culture & Power

Looking as a Social Practice

• Looking always involves a producer and a receiver (whether it is of signs in real time or an image or series of images created in the past)

• Through looking we negotiate our social relationships and meanings

• How we look is influenced by our experiences and cultural background

Looking and Power

• To be made to look

• To get someone else to look at you

• Willfully look or not (choice)

• Exchange of looks

• Freedom to look

• Ideology

Power of Images

• Power to conjure an absent person

• Power to calm or incite to action

• Power to persuade or mystify

• Power to remember

• Power to expose

• Power to channel desire

De Saussure

• Semiotics is the study of signs

• Language is based on a

– Signifier : the word or thing

– Signified: the underlying concept

• Signs are largely arbitrary

Charles Sanders Peirce

There are three relationships between a sign (referent) and its meaning

• Icon (resemblance to actual thing)

• Index (connection of facts: often cause-effect)

• Symbol (depend on how interpreted)

Semiotics

Icon

Index

Index

Symbol

Group Activity

3 Examples Each of

Iconic, Indexical & Symbolic Signs

Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

• “The political, economic, ideological and cultural power exerted by a dominant group over other groups”

• The creation of a “common sense” that supports the interests of the dominant class while seeming to benefit all

• Through “civil society” (media, schools, etc.)

Bell Hooks Part 1 Rap Music Madonna

ON CNN FOX LIES

Jon Stewart

Audience Reception

Viewer

• Different from the “audience” – a collection of lookers that are grouped together

• Treats individual as social category that emerges through practices of looking (agency)

• Looking is a multimodal activity

– Relational

– Social

Stuart Hall: Encoding/Decoding

Interpretation of Media

• Dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the author(s)) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent';

• Negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions;

• Oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against).

• Wrong Reading

Interpellation

Louis Althusser (French Philosopher)

• Process by which ideology pre-defines individuals (constructs before they exist)

• Secondary status of subject as mere effect of social relations

• The way an ad draws you in and personalizes the product to make it seem like it is just for you: AT&T