Visual Literacy:
Slide Show / Discussion on Advertising and Visual Literacy
Introduction
Are there legitimate
outlets for adolescents to question and challenge authority? Look
at inside and outside of schools? What can we learn from what
students do outside of school to change what we address inside
of schools? Describe how the adolescent is characterized by an
increased tension between individual desire (one's own unique
take on reality) and the desire to belong to a much larger group.
The latter is easily manipulated in public space through advertising
because corporations own public space. How can one cause adolescents
to question this control? For example ask: Are you willing to
give up your individuality to believe in a larger reality created
by advertisers?
I want you to think of these images in terms of concrete language
codes like hieroglyphics: gestures, stance, formulas, stereotypes.
The contradiction in the reading of images or hieroglyphics is
that on one hand it is an enigmatic language - there is not a
single reading - yet at the same time images have the potential
to be the most universally understood language. Also images have
the most staying power in their ability to become imprinted in
our memories. I'm reading a book called the Art of Memory and
it is all about the ability of the visual image to imprint itself
in memory. Ask students to close their eyes and think about a
memory of something they either read or viewed last night. How
many people remember a book? A movie, an ad? If it was a book,
do they have a visual memory or do they think of the words?
Ads are situated
within a much large network of representation: the cinema and
art history. I've included some images from art history to show
the origins or persistence of certain stereotypes over time. Ads
have to resort more and more to shock value to gain attention.
Distortion is so possible now with image processing software such
as photoshop. This makes it even more possible to construct images,
yet people still tend to believe the photo as a "truth"
when it has become like a painting in the way reality is manipulated.
Looking at the poses
and gestures of the conventionalized undressed to some dgree nude
woman, what do these images signify? (Submission, passivity, vulnerability)
What do these conventions mean? In the image Judgement of Paris,
Paris awards the apple to the woman he finds most beautiful. Beauty
is competitive. If you are not judged beautiful, you are therefor
not beautiful. Those who are, are awarded the prize. What is the
prize? To be made available to the judge?
What does it mean to be objectified? (The sight of an object stimulates
the use of it as an object).
End slide show with
examples of Ad Busters of "Shock Ads". Advertising is
now trafficking in paradox and postmodern irony. Viewers are becoming
more sophisticated and aware that ads are bogus. Therefore some
ads are now communicating: "be suspicious of ads. On the
other hand, we've been honest, so you can trust us." Increasingly,
as young people are targeted, they are becoming compassion fatigued.
Slides
from Advertising shown next to Images from Art History
See the Ad Busters Ads
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