Consuming Images

You were asked to watch "Consuming Images" from Bill Moyers' The Public Mind, which aired in 1989/1990. This documentary illuminates how the power of visual images, especially in contemporary advertising calls into question what we perceive as truth and influences how we see the world and ourselves in it.

According to Moyers, "our most prolific visual form is the commercial. The average American, we’re told, sees more than 32,000 a year. Commercials now shape the way our politicians think and the way we get our news. Seeing is believing. A picture is worth a thousand words. And, of course, the camera never lies. With the invention of the photograph a century ago, the great American essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that we were moving into a time when the image would become more important than the object itself, when appearance would be preferred to reality, and it would be ever harder to know the truth. He should see us now."

And of course, news organizations also edit and later photographs. "If one purpose of journalism is to give us a picture of reality, is [it] journalism once the picture is altered? Just what is reality?"

"Soon after the camera was invented 150 years ago, the photograph was considered legal reality. Then the power of the picture to move human emotion was discovered by documentary photographers at the turn of the century. Lewis Hine in particular believed that if you could show people the true conditions of misery and of exploitation they would be moved to change those conditions. And it is that ethos, capturing reality with an image that communicates through feelings, that has inspired our most memorable documentary and news photographers. Throughout [the twentieth] century we have witnessed such a proliferation of photographic images that they often seem to overwhelm us. Image-makers counter by increasing the intensity. Nowhere is this more potent than in advertising’s appropriation of the photograph."

Photo Source:  Associated Press, Photographer Nick Ut

Several weeks ago, I shared the famous Vietnam War image of "Napalm Girl" and explained how this image, along with others, influenced public opinion and helped erode support for U.S. involvement in the war. Part of the reason this image was so powerful was the emotions it evoked. This image was very persuasive in that it showed the realities of war in a way most Americans had never seen nor experienced it.  Stuart Ewen insists, "images have built into them a strategy of persuasion."  And this is true whether we're talking about news or advertising.  The appeal is to feelings, and this discourages thought.  I have said before, in this course and elsewhere, that emotions are irrational. 

For this week's blog post, you are asked to find two images--one an advertising image and one a journalistic image (from a print or online newspaper or online news site) and try to identify which emotions the images are evoking and what sort of reality or worldview they are selling.  Yes, the advertising image is explicitly designed to sell a version of reality, but so too, if we are to believe the scholars, journalistic images.  Dig beneath the surface.  You don't have to agree with the worldview or version of reality to be able to identify it.  But be specific and point to specifics within the images themselves to support your claims.  Most of all, have fun with this.