Visual Media, Allegorical Consciousness, and Postmodern Culture
I think many of us would agree that we are living in an era of transition: generally, from one phase of modernity to another; more specifically, it is harder to say. Let's ask ourselves for a moment how this sense of change might guide the rhetorical study of visual media. Of the many possible answers to this question, there are two I want to put on the table.
The first consideration is that the study of visual media is likely to be occurring at all, or in a particular form, because our society now is moving beyond those media to other communication technologies. Here I am applying an observation from the history of communication: We know that the study of the forms and functions of oral speech emerged in antiquity just as literacy was being disseminated widely across and within the societies of the time. Although speech was featured, the formalization of speech became possible through writing. More important, perhaps, the knowledge produced was easily applied to both media. Indeed, there probably was a hidden bias toward what would work that way, and certainly the lore that proved most transmissible was that which was not limited to oral speech alone. Likewise, the next major transformation in communicative technologies--printing--was accompanied by the rise of the modern linguistic sciences. As writing became printing, language itself became an object of study. As printing became industrialized, the sciences of philology, hermeneutics, and linguistics flowered. In the twentieth century, philosophy and then all the human sciences took the linguistic turn, and natural languages became less interesting while meaning became the object of study (as in The Meanin...
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...g--and that would have to be a culture sustaining democratic polity. In any case, allegory seems to be a preferred mode of coding when living amidst a cultural sea change.
To summarize this last point: If we are to understand visual rhetorics, we need to situate them in respect to processes of cultural transformation, and consider how they operate as part of larger patterns for coding reality that are not themselves inherently visual (or verbal), and recognize how they may reflect fundamental changes in consciousness (that are more than a shift from verbal to visual cognitive operations, etc.). As I ask each of these questions, I get the same answer: visual communication is becoming increasingly allegorical. This answer may also reflect the bias I suggested in the first part of this paper, but we shouldn't assume that is the most interesting part of the story.
...become great and victorious. There is the concept of how everything that Charlemagne did was for his enemies to be converted to Christianity and nothing else. Through the different interpretations, the argument for religious motives was the strongest. Charlemagne used military tactics in a misguided attempt to further the kingdom of God.
Charlemagne was mostly known for being the founder of the Carolingian Empire, as well as uniting Western Europe. The son of Bertrada of Laon and Pepin the short, Charlemagne soon became ruler of the franconians after his father and younger brother’s deaths. While ruling he wanted to bring all Germanic people together into one kingdom and convert subjects into Christianity. After three-decades of battles against the Saxons, Charlemagne demanded the deaths of about 4,500 Saxons. Many have said that if the Saxons did not agree to
Hope, Diane S, et al. Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. SAGE Publications, 2008. Print.
The television's new “golden age” is now upon us. As the internet continues to make filmmaking more accessible to public, Hollywood will continue being one of the biggest and greatest influences on today’s society and politics. It is much easier to create and share your ideas through film than ever before. Independent studios before, greatly expanding the number of debates and arguments people have access to. Never has the power to express yourself and your views through film been so great, and we are better off for it.
Baseball remains today one of America’s most popular sports, and furthermore, baseball is one of America’s most successful forms of entertainment. As a result, Baseball is an economic being of its own. However, the sustainability of any professional sport organization depends directly on its economic capabilities. For example, in Baseball, all revenue is a product of the fans reaction to ticket prices, advertisements, television contracts, etc. During the devastating Great Depression in 1929, the fans of baseball experienced fiscal suffering. The appeal of baseball declined as more and more people were trying to make enough money to live. There was a significant drop in attention, attendance, and enjoyment. Although baseball’s vitality might have seemed threatened by the overwhelming Great Depression, the baseball community modernized their sport by implementing new changes that resulted in the game’s survival.
Rascaroli, Laura. "The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 49.2 (2008): 24-47. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014.
In Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, the Clutter family’s murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the reader to experience an intimate understanding of the murderer’s pasts, thoughts, and feelings. It goes into great detail of Smith and Hickock’s pasts which helps to explain the path of life they were walking leading up to the murder’s, as well as the thought’s that were running through their minds after the killings.
The blessing of the church helped to unify and strengthen the resolve of the Frankish people as they withstood or conquered the heathen Viking and eastern Germanic tribes. The fact that Charles was Christian and was backed by the Catholic church must have certainly helped keep other christian powers from allying with these barbarians. For Rome, there were suddenly new peoples to convert, and keep from direct opposition to the The Great Christian Emperor.
Newcomb and Hirsch propose that this characteristic of television is what allows it to functions as a forum in which important cultural topics may be considered. It promotes the various readings established by Stuart Hall that allow for the various interpretations of the text that are required of television as a cultural forum, in which its purpose is to raise questions and promote dialogue, without providing answers. It the texts were to provide answers in their
Sparking debate over the nature of its viewing, film is now being questioned in social, political, and moral arenas for its potential impact on an audience. Critics claim that watching films is a passive activity in which the viewer becomes subconsciously absorbed, and creates a reliance or "addiction" to the medium, and thus can be influenced by any perpetual concepts or images. Advocates, however, argue that viewing such programs is an active process in which audience members are able to choose to what they are exposed to, and interpret messages based on their individual needs and background. Perhaps both views are too extreme? Film from the 1950s to present, as will be explored in this essay, is an extremely useful medium, often underestimated within the label of "entertainment".
Charlemagne he made his wars of aggression definitely religious wars. All the world of north-western Europe, which is now Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, and Norway and Sweden, was in the ninth century an arena of bitter conflict between the old faith and the new. Nations were converted to Christianity by the...
"Photography." Understanding Rhetoric. A Graphic Guide to Writing. The Basics. Visual Rhetoric. Readings. Ed. Dore Ripley. Pleasant Hill: DVC, 2013. 93-95. Print.
Visual communication becomes increasingly important as computers, television, and film become the primary media of communication. Each of these is primarily a visual medium, in which messages are communicated through pictures. Words support the communication of those images.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.
...n able to reach otherwise. With unlimited possibilities and the creative minds in the world, the film industry is likely to consider seeing drastic changes. Like the world has in the past, peoples’ likes and dislikes will change with the ever-changing technological world. What we enjoy as a society in 2005 is likely to be considered as bland as we consider the black and white silent films, in the years to come.