Response to Roland Barthes' Image-Music-Text

In his discussion of the "connotation procedures of the photographic image" (25), Barthes says that, by 1961, there had been "an important historical reversal, the image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image" (25).

He goes on to say that "[f]ormerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination" (25).

How has this changed today? Does his description still hold?

On one hand, I think about my experiences in the production of news images. The captions for photos were the most frequent locations for errors within the paper. Part of the issue seemed to be that the photogs, as much time as they would spend choosing and processing their images, neglected to double check the accompanying text for errors. The desk kept up this cycle and would often mismatch the captions and photos. This process was only furthered by the AP's supposedly recent tendency to have significant errors within photo captions.

If this relationship isn't one in which the text is "parasitic on the image," it at least suggests ways in which the text has become secondary to the image.

Barthes says later in the essay that "[s]ometimes, however, the text produces (invents) an entirely new signified which is retroactively projected into the image, so much as to appear denoted there" (27).

Two things here. First, in my experience, errors in captions can also work this way. So, the fact that the text was seen as secondary sometimes led the text to accidentally "produce ... an entirely new signified." To be more clear, there were, shamefully, a couple times during my tenure that captions made it into print that erroneously said people had died in motor vehicle wrecks. Yikes.

Second thing. This passage from Barthes makes me think of LOL animals and the like. Just saw this new take on the adorably captioned kitten photos:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/cocaine-animals

It was one phrase a couple pages later, which truly gave me pause, however. Barthes says that "man likes signs and likes them clear" (29).

What is implied here? First, Barthes is suggesting, I would argue, that we uphold the Aristotelian distinction between man and animals; man, by this argument, would be the only animal that possesses language. This distinction seems implied not only by Barthes' choice to specify that it is man who does the liking but also that liking is involved. So, if we can agree that animals rely on some sort of sign system, this sign system would be more pure in a sense, more encompassing, and would not allow for the type of break and resulting awareness from the sign system that would be required in order to express preferences for signs and, specifically, clear signs. In other words, it seems that here, Barthes is upholding Aristotle's claim for man's privileged (?) position, while taking this distinction further. Why does man like "clear signs"? One way of reading this claim would be that man requires clear signs. (Of course, in this formulation, the philosopher would become the odd human out, with a preference for dwelling in zones of ambiguity). But, if man requires clear signs, perhaps it is because his language or sign system is prosthetic and not innate. There are no clear signs, in a sense, for animals, just signs.

This phrase could perhaps be unpacked further, but, all this to say, that if we are rethinking what the place of the visual is in relation to written or spoken language and traditional studies of rhetoric, it seems that we should return to this distinction between the sign systems of man and animal for hints on where to begin.

Responses to Defining Visual Rhetorics by Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers

Overall, I found this anthology to be helpful in thinking through some questions surrounding the study of visual communication, visual rhetoric, or, as Maureen Daly Goggin suggests in her essay about samplers for needlework, the rhetoric of the visual.

As is to be expected, some pieces in the collection were more interesting to me than others. Below, I offer my thoughts on a few of them and connections that came to mind while I was reading.

In the introduction, Hill and Helmers tell the story of how the photograph Ground Zero Spirit took on a life of its own, what Cara Finnegan would perhaps label the reproduction and circulation of the image. As Hill and Helmers say, "it's reprint could include buttons, pins, mugs, cups, cards, CD covers, clothing, stamps, sculptures, and computer wallpaper" (11). Here, it seems, that even if we resist the idea of a true "visual turn," as I think that we should because such a turn seems to suggest an ahistoric position toward art and the notion of form, something has, of course, changed. For clues to the nature of this change we should perhaps look to not only technologies of replication and reproduction but also to systems of profit that would put wind in the sails of these images as they are set free to profilerate the globe. It has to do with questions of copyright as well. As Hill and Helmers say about the use of Franklin's photograph in ways that allows designers to evade licensing fees, "Is this plagiarism? Or intertextuality?" Does our lack of respect for intellectual property when it comes to images have to do with the degree of saturation of the visual that we currently witness?* Again, for a hint about the nature of mechanically reproduced images it seems that we should look backward, to the point at which these technologies emerged.

*An aside:

When I say that "we" have a lack of respect for images as intellectual property, I do not necessarily have in mind the academic community, although it is not difficult to imagine the numerous times daily that we inadvertently, through powerpoint presentations or handouts, encourage our students to lift digital images. Rather, I'm thinking of the weekly entertainment insert at the daily newspaper where I worked as a paginator. When we couldn't find AP images of celebrities, chili cookoffs, films, etc., we were told to take them from Google images. It was no surprise to later learn that we didn't even own the copyright to that publication's signature font.

A video. Saw this BBC piece last week and thought of chapter 8 and Janis Edwards' piece about the images of the Kennedys. There are news conventions that we take for granted, but, as Kostelnick says, "information design is socialized by discourse communities that construct, adapt and refine conventional practices and that enculturate users in those practices" (225). We have to run on autopilot to some extent when we negotiate visual culture. Without some shared conventions, we would be lost. From a rhetorical perspective, the extent to which we're able to play with conventions, to break the rules, to create something that is persuasive to whatever ends, will depend on our audience and their willingness to "go there" with us. Or, in other words, it reminds me of when the newspaper redesigned their format from a broadsheet to a tab to save money (in the pretense of "going green"). The front cover went from columns of text with a main photo to a magazine-type cover. According to many of the readers, the design team pushed it too far. The users had been "enculturate[d] ... in those [prior] practices" and resisted the change. People canceled subscriptions citing the design changes.

One of my favorite pieces in this text was Greg Dickinson and Casey Malone Maugh's essay about the Wild Oats Market in Fort Collins, Colorado. Was tempted to insert Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck) for Wild Oats throughout the text. It sounds like the same aesthetic.

They say, "We want to suggest that one of the functions of postmodern visual rhetoric in the everyday built environment is to negotiate the contours of dislocation characteristic of postmodernity" (261). On one hand this statement seemed to make sense. Ok. So, we're dislocated and the design will help us navigate the decentered position in which we find ourselves. However, that seems like it would have been the task of high modernist visual rhetoric. Do we consider the Wild Oats/Whole Foods visual rhetoric to be postmodern? I would say, if anything, what this type of visual design might be addressing is the nostalgia or longing, but, perhaps, the visual rhetoric of these stores is addressing our dislocated position. Either way, when I think of postmodern visual rhetoric, it is not the structured, somewhat comforting experience of being in this type of supermarket. Rather, I think of the images that embody a postmodern style as bringing to our attention some type of break. Otherwise, I agreed with the analyses in their essay and the Polan-esque feel of their explication. Also, really feel like they should have riffed on the Clash song in the title. Loved footnote 5: "It is more than a bit ironic that wild oats are weeds of which the farmer tries to rid the field" (273).

Overall, after this first text, it does seem that the study of visual communication may need to narrow its focus or define its terms. Also, and although not all of the essays dealt with recent technological developments, I was a bit disappointed that more attention was not given to the mode of production of the the visual, specifically what has changed, and why several of these authors suggest there has been a recent "visual turn." So, although Cara Finnegan defines production as one of the ways in which we can begin to pay attention to the historical/rhetorical situation of images and although Diane Hope focuses on the portrayal of nature as feminized, there is no consideration in this text of the impact of image production on material resources, for an ecology of images, no consideration of ecology in the more common sense of the word.