Debbie and I met today and discussed the summer project. We agreed that we should start by reading Gunther Kress' Literacy in the New Media Age.
It would be interesting to see how the kids use traditional literacies in their fast literacy production, but it may not be productive to look at that question in this camp. Much of the traditional literacy use is directed by the camp counselors and does not originate with the kids.
We can look at their products and conduct memetic and structural analyses, possibly visual discourse analysis. We can also observe their process, ask questions, look for evidence of transmediation and use of media strategies (transitions, etc.)
We also decided to create this blog as a means of recording and communicating the experience. To begin, we'll use the blog to comment on the reading.
James
6 comments:
Hi Guys,
Not sure how to start a new thread on the blog for rose text so I will post here and maybe you can copy paste and move to a new thread.
Rose, G. Visual Methodologies.
first and foremost. what is wrong with us that Rose tags the book as for undergraduates? Who are these freaks of nature? I actually had the thougths that she wrote the book at a high level, and then suggested it for undergrads to intimidate readers. HMMM
My plan here is to construct a response text by revisiting the marginal notes that I recorded while reading.
On page 2, R make the point that pictures, like words, do not contain truth. Rather "truth"whatever one takes it to mean, is a product of interpretation. this is in complete agreement with Kress and the notion of ambiguity he presents regarding words. But if I remember rightly, images for Kress were not ambiguous. This was one of his binaries, that words were ambiguous and images were explicit. so if I am remebering correctly, this is a point of disagreement re: images.
The definition of critical theory on page 3 is consonant with the work that Deb Steve and I did last year. Fairly mainline, Frankfort school.
Chapter 1: on the centriality of the visual. Well this is it. I love this stuff. on page 7, R starts to provide some metaphors for this construct. Se has looking and seeing, and on page 8 the metaphor of the spectacle. [note: unrelated crazy connection--if the spectcle and the carnival (from Bhaktin) are conjured in the same time space, what might we have as a result. Order breaks down during carnival, voices disrupt, chaos and heteroglossia reign. If we go to this spectacle with an expectation of carnival, what do we get Altamont. If we go to spectacle with the expectation of order and hierarchy, what do we get - Disney)
To Rose's list, I add "the gaze", the surrveilance, voyeurism, My background on this is from reading Foucault's Discipline and Punish. the intent and the right to gaze is based on a power differential. From feminist readings, the implications are too obvious, men leer, women are leered at. Men are actors (looking), women are objects (looked at). R brings this out later in her treatment of examples of crit. analysis. For me it is sensible, not controversial and not new. In some ways, the kids could be seen as building simulacri of the real world in their movies. On the other hand, as media products, they are authentic objects. the existance of this duality (simulacrum vs. authentic object) will impact our analytic schemes, and will probably end up in the ways that we contextualize our eventual findings. A rough analogy would be inside/outside perspectives on the product. I will be right back woth comment #2
Back to Rose, Part 2:
seeing doe not equal knowing.
On page 9: Simulacrum affords unqual social relations. HMMM Simulacra are offered to the masses as a substitute In this way visual images (seen as simulacra) are the opiate of the masses, but only if the elite see the "real thing" as somehow beter, more valuable. If a diamond ring is bought as an investment, then the real thing is desired. If it is bought to wear, then it might be better to buy a cubic zirconia. I love the sentence from Donna Haraway "vision in this technological feast becomes enregulated gluttony." [but only if small amounts, parsimony, and quality of consumed are better than lots of the low quality stuff] Conceivably, we now have the "god-trick" of seeing everyting, but being god is still a privilege that is largely reserved for rich white straight men [what a waste] as a result, the very power of the visuality is narrowed by teh patriachy that controls it,a nd according to Haraway, we overlook the possibilites of seeing differently or as she wrtes "viusalizing socil difference"
Ndw word for me: the punctum of a photograph is its uniqueness, particularity, strangeness. It is an intentional focus.
A reminder on page 10 "I find the debates about the precise difference betwen words and images rather sterile." She is more concerned about establishing the legitimacy of images (in relations to the more legitimate text, I guess) I think that the three of us have already hurdled that fence. From her perspective, and in quoting Fufe and Law to make her point, depiction (visual data) is never just an illustration (an example of the data set). it is an interpretation (meaning) for constructing and representing social difference.
On page 11, I found a way to articulate something that I have been carrying around in my mind for some time. In a book by Tibor Kalman (a graphic artist and social critic) I have an image of Queen Liz II in black Face. It has always haunted me and I didn't know why. this page is an example of what I was trying to do mentally with this pic. I can show it to you when I return, or it is on the shelf on the desk side of my office, yellow and white spine on the dustjacket.
On page 19, there is a discussion of genre that is at some odds with Kress. On this page R approaches genre from a compositional aspect, what is in the image, or a bottom up perspective. Kress approaches genre from a top down perspective, that is, what was the intention of the author/creator relative to an imagined, specified audience when he/she created.
At the top of page 20, R talks about the connections of a paticular photo to others. I hear this as intertextuality. from her statement I wonder if the richness of an image is the degree to which it evokes intertexual links to other images or texts. the last sentence in this first paragraph (This constraint...") is more like Kress approach to genre. As R. talks about David Harveys book later on this page, think of the velvet elvis painting as a metaphor for postmodernity. how many points of similarity can be conjured? The harvey book also details the Piazza d' Italia in new orleans as an example of pm architecture. It is now a home for homeless, winos, and street people. this is in line with the theory.
enough for now.
Rose, Chapter 3:
Page 56: I think I disagree with her here on replicability. My notes say "Nope, its not replicability of results, it is replicability of methods. Even if we could control the methods exactly, subjectivity still intervenes, it is always there, and we get subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) different messages. So same results (ie replication of results) is not the goal. I have a set of teaching articles from the RRQ on a data set that was first analyzed by Deborah Dillon and then by Donna Alvermann (Dillon's advisor). Cathy Roehler (more quantitatively oriented) wrote a letter to the editor objecting to the differing results on the same data set. Donna and Deb wrote back and pretty much blasted Cathy out of the water. Let me know in July if you want to read.
At the bottom of this page is a bit about choosing your images. With apologies to James who has not read the Spivey book, this choosing is like the selection stage of the discourse synthesis model.
the remainder of this chapter is a primer on using general qualitative methods. nothing new here.
Rose, Chapter 4:
Page 70: depend on a definition of science that contrasts scientific knowledge with ideology. I think that this assertion requires some delimitation for what I assume Rose is referencing with her labels. First, for Rose in these discussions, ideology is always "bad" It is the hegemony and oppression used by the elite and ruling classes to keep the lower classes in their places. While I can see the valency on hegemony as always negative, I see ideology working in multiple ways. teh oppressed may also have a lberatory ideology. Is this any less or more corrupt than an ideology of domination? From a social justice perspective perhaps so. but that requires a liberatory stance. Post structuralists would see all of these as ideologies. Her recant is at the bottom of page 71: "...the critical goals of semiology are must as ideological as the adverts..."
Not much surprizing in the text on Saussure. On page 77, Sausurre is critqued by other authors, because for Saussure signs did not have intention. but according to Kress this intentionality is required for visual signs but "motivated"
On page 78 here is the paradigmatic and syntagmatic that I referenced in an earlier post.
OK, not yet finished with chapter 4. More later
Rose, Chapter 3:
Page 56: I think I disagree with her here on replicability. My notes say "Nope, its not replicability of results, it is replicability of methods. Even if we could control the methods exactly, subjectivity still intervenes, it is always there, and we get subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) different messages. So same results (ie replication of results) is not the goal. I have a set of teaching articles from the RRQ on a data set that was first analyzed by Deborah Dillon and then by Donna Alvermann (Dillon's advisor). Cathy Roehler (more quantitatively oriented) wrote a letter to the editor objecting to the differing results on the same data set. Donna and Deb wrote back and pretty much blasted Cathy out of the water. Let me know in July if you want to read.
At the bottom of this page is a bit about choosing your images. With apologies to James who has not read the Spivey book, this choosing is like the selection stage of the discourse synthesis model.
the remainder of this chapter is a primer on using general qualitative methods. nothing new here.
Rose, Chapter 4:
Page 70: depend on a definition of science that contrasts scientific knowledge with ideology. I think that this assertion requires some delimitation for what I assume Rose is referencing with her labels. First, for Rose in these discussions, ideology is always "bad" It is the hegemony and oppression used by the elite and ruling classes to keep the lower classes in their places. While I can see the valency on hegemony as always negative, I see ideology working in multiple ways. teh oppressed may also have a lberatory ideology. Is this any less or more corrupt than an ideology of domination? From a social justice perspective perhaps so. but that requires a liberatory stance. Post structuralists would see all of these as ideologies. Her recant is at the bottom of page 71: "...the critical goals of semiology are must as ideological as the adverts..."
Not much surprizing in the text on Saussure. On page 77, Sausurre is critqued by other authors, because for Saussure signs did not have intention. but according to Kress this intentionality is required for visual signs but "motivated"
On page 78 here is the paradigmatic and syntagmatic that I referenced in an earlier post.
OK, not yet finished with chapter 4. More later
Rose, Chapter 5, Psycholoanalysis
the most interesting aspect of this chapter for me is the differences that are seen in filmic realities by femiinsit critics. Once I understood about the idea of filmmakers creating spectator positions, it follows that there are differentiated positions for men and women. this common sense notion is later taken apart for its assumed heterosexuality, or more appropriately, its presumed heterosexuality. I sart to understand the the realtionship between visuality and the construction of subjectivities. It is one thing to know who you are, quite another to learn who it is you have been observed being. On to Freud:
The unconscious is created when drives and needs are sublimated. and becasue it is unconscious, not all reactions to visual images are operating on the surface level. To me this means that when we ask for confirmation on a pattern that we have observed in film production. our informant might not own what we have observed, or think what we observed means. this does not necessarily mean that we ar eworing in our hypothesis, It may mean that our informant is not aware, or is blocking. this gets tricky both ethically and methodolgoically on what to do. a further spin on the constructed unconscious, this is a discourse of discipline that we build inside of us. In therapy, I am constantly reminded that the intense emotion that I amy feel about a seemingly banal life event is actually connected to childhood event that were at the time serious and traumatic to me as a young child. therefore the current emotion is to mediated by that realization and I should be caomed, adult like and rational. OK, but isn't this what foucault would call a regulative discourse? that is the institution of pyschiatry is reshaping my emotional language and reaction???such action would defer my attention from the here and now to the past. Yes, on page 104 "...the constant disciplining of subjectivity...'
Psychoanalysis and audiencing. viewers are presumed to bring a certain subjectivity or stance to task of viewing. these stances are anticipated in the images that are presentdd and in teh way that they are framed. And this is what makes the filmmaker auteur.
From page 105, "...psychoanalysis is a searchlight theory, allowing specific features of an image to be illuminated.."
On page 106, there is a situating of psych. and feminism where psycho is no a recommendation for patriarchy, but analysis of one. the project of establishing sexual difference, and therefore viewing positions, and object positions. through filmic positioning, subjectivity is disciplined into form of sexual idfference. filmmakers as auteurs anticipate the audeince asa genrdered.
From page 110, voyeurism distances objectifies and controls, is sadisitic???? Ah, on page 115, sadism = action, voyeurism = gaze. Most of this theorizing seems to assume that looking is better than being looked at. I think that both are potentially pleasurable, and the way that we got it wrong was to associate one with male and the other with female. How boring .
the bottom line here is that while chapter 5 is very interesting, I don't think that it has much to offer us for data analysis and interpretation.
On to Chapter 6, dicourse analysis
Here Rose brings in a heavy dose of Foucault. I think of it as Gee on the heavy side. (D)iscourse by Gee is one shared by an insider power group. but from F. perspective, the discourse is also regulating and shaping those who use it.
In this intertextual field of discourses, an eclectic set of texts and images may be demanded by teh intertextuality of source materials. On page 1444, iconography recovers the elements that were placed in the image as signs and validate the selection through intertextual links to the disc. knowledge that gives the sign meaning beyond the image. The use of red in the Sixth Sense. There must be isseus of style, reserve and sublty in how this is accomplished in film. In medieval paintings, certain object functioned as objects in the painting, but also as signs for other constructs that wer deemed importnatn at the tiem. Objects that appear in dreams or occur in life are referenced in the King Tut book of dream interpretation so that they are associated with numbers in order to play bolita. Iconography depends on intertextuality.
New word residuum is the marginaized
Cahpter 7 in Rose focuses on discourse of institutions, mostly about Museums. Not much new here beyond common sense. Museums were to inculturate the residuum. using a Foucalut archealogy, she mentions how art displays (filling the walls vs. on line of paintings) changed as the prupose of the instituion changed.
AND THAT AS THEY SAY IS THAT. SILVERBLATT NEXT
ON SILVERBLATT:
Well , this is a different kind of book than what i've been reading. It is more basic, to raise consciousness and create method for being a critical reader/consumer of mass media. In contrast to Kress, S wants the definition of literacy to be expanded (p. 2). the claiim that visual and aural data register emotionally was an interesting perspective. but if non-print media engenders an affective response, how do we understand the aesthetic response proposed by Rosenblatt?
Another point made on the same page (5) was that non-print meda are consumed in more complex soical situations. With print media presumably read in isolated, attentive states. this begs teh question of what is happening when film viewers forget that they are in a theater. that is focussed non distracted attention. Maybe it is shared attention that characterizes the consumptions of media, and both print and non print can be consumed in solitary, focused ways, but print media cannot be read in chaos??
Perhaps because the US exports the vast majority of popular culture as a world commodity, all media based, we wouldn't be too careful to bite the hand that feeds us and critique too carefully our own product. Whereas, our market, in particular Canada, in danger of being annexed culturally, who may feel inundated, even threatened by the tidal waves of US trash/pop culture, would be at the forefront of media awareness/critical media literacy.
Random notes:
p. 66 must these values that characters personify be in binaries, what does it mean that these values are so this and that?
p. 86: implict use of iconographic analysis with the crucifix.
I have several dogeared pages that mark productive check lists for our rubrics. Other than the chapter on production values (chapter 5) there is little else of interest of import. (such a snob I am).
chapter 5: there is much here that James no doubt knows well that I am only coming to know. this chapter will be a good one to cite these "commonly known conventions" of production of film and video images.
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