Page 153 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Visual Culture 137

images I absorbed from American culture explained the visual images
I encountered as I lived.
In a similar way, we experience our lives as if we are characters in a story
still in the process of being composed, and judge our experiences according
to whether or not they conform to certain narrative conventions. We feel
confusion and disappointment when someone who has conducted her life
honorably suddenly dies, while an individual who we ’ ve identified as a

“ bad ” person lives and prospers. This is not how the story is supposed go.
Likewise, when we are rewarded for doing the “ right ” thing, our expecta-
tions are met: we got what we deserved. But where do we acquire this sense
of what “ properly ” comes next? The answer to that question determines
how we, and society as a whole, make sense of and act in the world.
Increasingly, we look not to written texts such as books and poems for
the storylines that guide our lives, but rather to visual culture . This encom-
passes television, films, advertisements, photographs, comic books …

anything that relays its story primarily through pictures and images rather
than text and words. The study of visual culture proposes that if the world
is indeed a stage, as William Shakespeare suggested, and each individual a
performer, then when we evaluate the performance, we have to take into
consideration not only the script, but also the bodies of the actors, the
lighting and set design, the makeup and costumes, the layout of the venue,
the appearance of the advertising posters, and the printed pictures that
accompany reviews. All of these elements work together to produce
meaning, and people interested in visual culture attempt to tease apart how
images become saturated with discourses, ideologies, and power.
Many critics argue that the visual has even greater ability to shape
people ’ s beliefs than does written text and spoken words. Just think of the
folk wisdom surrounding visuality: “ A picture is worth a thousand words, ”
“ Seeing is believing, ” and “ Out of sight, out of mind. ” We tend to trust

that which we can see as immediate and transparent, whereas words arouse
our suspicion as potential tools for deception. However, the inherent faith
people have in visuality is the very thing that makes it such an effective way
of transmitting ideas meant to construct a sense of reality that favors some
and disadvantages others. In order to analyze and critique visual culture,
we must attempt to bracket our emotional response to images, to view
them with a skeptical eye and ask: why am I being shown these particular
images? Who selected them? What would change if I viewed this object
or event from another perspective? What story is being told through
the things I ’ m seeing? What behaviors and attitudes are being rewarded,