The Power Of The Image Within The Realm Of Media And The Digital World

Visual rhetoric plays a significant role in the modern-day world. Everyone and everything is in some way, shape, or form trying to convince everyone else to think how they think, or believe what they believe. This is achieved through numerous methods, such as: commercials, advertisements, television shows, and even political cartoons. While everyday television is a huge arena for visual rhetoric, the “Mecca” of advertisement would arguably be the commercials during the Super Bowl. If one were to watch the Super Bowl, particularly in 2015, they would likely remember the Budweiser campaign centered around a Labrador retriever puppy. This pathos-filled commercial contains all of the necessary aspects of visual

"Never Just Pictures" by Susan Bordo, is about how today's society looks at different types of media to get an idea of what they should look like. In this essay, the author tries to get the readers to take a closer look at today's

For the longest time now, advertising has played a huge role in how we identify ourselves in the United States with the American culture, and how others identify themselves with all the cultures of the rest of the world as well. It guides us in making everyday decisions, such as what items we definitely need to invest our money on, how to dress in-vogue, and what mindset we should have to prosper the most. Although advertising does help make life easier for most, at the same time it has negative affects on the people of society as well. Advertisement discreetly manipulates the beliefs, morals, and values of our culture, and it does so in a way that most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happened. In order to reach our main goal of

Every minute of every day, millions of people are exposed to advertisements. They plague televisions, streets, radio waves, and all means of communication. These advertisements employ many methods of persuasion and their influence is irresistible. Just like prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are told every day to invest our time and interest into the subject of these advertisements, and to accept the forms of reality they serve us. Whether it be a commercial for a must-have new car, to a spot featuring desirable fast food, or to magazines with photoshopped models; we are seduced to accept these false

Images everywhere! On the billboards, in magazines, newspapers, books, advertisements, on the internet. OH GOD! These days we are bombarded by images. But why? Most people are visually impressed, and quite strikingly, the human “brain is mainly an image processor, not a word processor.” This is due to the fact that “visuals are concrete and more easily remembered, whereas words are abstract and rather difficult for the brain to retain.” Nevertheless, rather surprisingly human beings tend not to analyze images as they would scrutinize a text. The very moment a text is written, it flies from the hands of the writer and moves to the eyes of thousands and thousands of readers to be evaluated and criticized.

Through visual anthropology, images, ads, and cartoons are constantly changing individual’s views and the world in which they live in. Images are not merely pictures to state the obvious, they are pictures that have a deeper meaning. Whether the meaning is shown or not shown, they convey representation of something more meaningful in the end. Stuart Hall

In Robert Scholes essay, “On Reading a Video Text” Scholes asserts that modern visual media or “video texts” provide a powerful vehicle for “cultural literacy.” By making use of “visual fascination” in mass media and in particular, commercials, these “video texts” use this part to bring viewers out of boredom and pique their interest. Following this, “narrativity” comes into play not only giving viewers the story but providing them with the ignition for their on context using their own cultural knowledge and experience on the commercial. The final step in the process is the ideological confirmation that is “cultural reinforcement,” the securing of one’s place in a body or group. With “video texts” more widely seen than traditional forms of

Marcel Duchamp stated that "It was his achievement to treat the camera as he treated the paintbrush, as a mere instrument at the service of the mind” (Biography.com, 2017). In addition, the photogram might seem expressive and abstract, yet on the contrary, it is the precise medium to document the everyday objects in an unrepeatable and somehow uncontrollable way. The artist cannot predict how the selected objects will be recorded under the light sources that were tampered with. From the first glance, the image completely dissociated from its original subject, allowing one’s memory to fill the gap. Yet below its surface, the image is an accurate documentation that captured a moment of psychical intensity. It revealed a new visual experience, using objects in the simplest way. One can say that the use of this medium disclosed reality more preciously due to its invisibility and mysterious representation (The Museum of Modern Art, 2017).

In Stuart Ewen’s All Consuming Images, the preface “Introduction to the New Edition” opens by giving the audience varying progressing images, from break dance to Madonna to Windows 95. This demonstrates a fast change in society: what matters in the history may not be an important issue now. Ewen then questions how a book written earlier still remains important and deserves republication. The book is durable because of the fact that it was written when the idea “images are everywhere” begins to develop. From political stand point, all the images, or specifically propaganda, that people see are to manipulate people’s emotions. In economic sphere, due to the ubiquitous advertising, marketing

As people make inferences about what they read, people also make inferences about what they see (Cooper, Patton, 2007, p. 42). In a modern society, visual advertisements are used very often to warn, to persuade, and to inform audiences. The examples of visual advertisements are the United Nation’s posters to warn people to recognize about women’s rights, McDonald’s posters to persuade people to purchase hamburgers, and the NPOs’ posters to inform people about global warming. Many different techniques are used in every advertisement such as pathos, ethos, and logos to achieve its goals. Pathos is appeals to emotion, ethos is appeals to credibility, and logos is appeals to logic.

Susan Bordo’s Hunger as Ideology argues that the seemingly progressive improvement of destabilizing images in advertisements in order to break the stereotypical mold is not as “progressive” as one might think; These images do not challenge the old patterns that dominate the advertisement world but break the barriers of the ideologies that have been classical “sold” to our society. It is agreeable that these “destabilizing” images allow their viewers to challenge the normality usually depicted, however there are categories in which these images do not show progress, but make way for an opposite effect, leaving a negative taste in the mouth of the consumer because of the intent of use of images in the uncommon advertisements.

Whether that be to sell entertainment, news, a message, or an item; the goal is to gain a profit. Indirectly, the media is giving the public what it wants in order to successfully sell their pitch. Yet, in creating such mass media, films and forms of art obtain power. They have the capability to influence individual’s perspectives. For example, a commercial on the television about a fur coat may influence you to buy that coat.

According to Robert Scholes, author of “On Reading a Video Text,” media, especially television, can hold a person captive and paralyze their ability of acknowledging what’s real. Scholes wants his readers to learn how to analyze and criticize the media, to avoid believing in their ideology. Throughout Scholes’ article he teaches the readers the skill of analyzing to avoid this “power.” Scholes was able to pull this off by describing the accurate message of a twenty eight second Budweiser commercial with the techniques they input to the commercial. Americans have to start analyzing the media and the ideology they present with these three matrices: visual fascination, narrativity, and cultural reinforcement.

Ones’ appearance is not the only determinant of knowing if the person is evil or good. As seen in Felix, and an old man in the forest, and other minor characters in Shelley’s Frankenstein are too quick to make a judgment of the person based on his or her appearance. Beauty does not indicate one is good while being ugly does not say that you are evil. In Frankenstein’s, the creature is the victim of the component of appearance because his ugly appearance leads people to loathe him and even see him as evil. However, Walton, Frankenstein’s friend, the only characters who does not judge him solely on his appearance, who has quested Walton to kill the creature, serves as a moral example to the reader since he gets to know his actual intentions through his use of words and his actions.

Media influence is the force by which ideas are injected into people’s lives shaping the very culture of society. This influence is masqueraded through hidden media message, resulting in a change in its audience which can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short term or long term. Although mass media’s influential effect can reach a wide ranged audience as an agent of socialization the responsibility to contain what it releases has not been of importance. “The media’s socially significant obligations are formally ignored.” (A.S. Zapesotskii, 2011, p 9). Media messages can be exerted through many different outlets such as TV shows, music, movies, commercials, news, magazines, games which are all gravitated to entertain audiences ultimately offering personal gratification that can sometimes blur the lines between reality and