So this week we had several reading over different comics and advertising in pop culture.
"In Gratitude" is the story of a soldier coming home from the war. The story is told in comic book style black and white printing. The stories photos are given lifelike details. The soldier comes home from war with a missing hand. His life was saved by another soldier who shielded him from a bomb. At the end of the comic, it reveals the dead soldier is black. The soldier he saved was white. Even though the black soldier died a patriot, due to segregation and racism, the town will not lay him to rest in a white cemetery. This comic was used to address racism and cultural injustice.
"Superman in the Slums" is based off the super hero superman. This comic was telling typical superman tales. Defending the innocent, and stopping crime. But it also addressing the need to rid cities of inadequate housing units, typically in low-income areas. This comic was done in color, but very light detail in the images. Just enough for you to visually see what it going on. The content of the characters conversations supported with background information. "Understanding Comics" helps gives understanding to the various skills, details ect. These various tools are much like a skill set lets say a chef would have. Each category discussed in this comic helps to show what actually goes into making a unique comic. This comic gives clarity in the artistry of comics. It discusses how icons are used to convey a person, place or thing. They can be in deep detail or very simple, such as a smiley face.  "Image-Based Culture" addressing how much imagery has saturated modern day culture.  This article starts by speaking about the start of image use in the 1920's, and it being used to sell nonessential goods. The author also speaks about images having an effect on our economic growth. Targeting advertisements at specific groups. Images in advertisements are no longer used to just to sell products, but also feelings. Imagery is apart of every crack and crevice of modern day culture, society, advertisements, politics, and corporate America.

4/3

The popular and, in my opinion, widely over-used phrase: "a picture is worth a thousand words" seems to be the target of this week's readings. This week we were supposed to have read 1 selection from what appears to be a comic style textbook, one original Superman comic, one comic style story of a returning Korean war veteran, and a commentary on the dependency advertising has on images for the spread of its message and how those images came to be.

Personally, I don't find anything wrong with an image based culture, after all, images and drawings were the original and most primitive forms of writing. Images work to convey something that mere words can sometimes only dream to achieve and often times can achieve with much less effort. In the case of "In Gratitude" much of the story was reliant on the emotions and reactions of the characters involved. Through its comic format, the reader could both see a visual of the story being retold by the parents while simultaneously seeing the reactions of the son whilst hearing it. This duality of imagery made for a much better overall story and a more concise delivery of the message.

As far as advertising goes, image reliance can be largely traced to the people and audience whom companies wish to advertise too. With children, technology users, and a rising uneducated population being the target population for many advertisers it is the smarter choice to go with pictures than with large written pieces to show how a product or service could make one's life better. Why waste minutes explaining how a product works when one or two pictures shown in a thirty-second interval could serve the same purpose. The advertising space spent is cheaper and the effect is the same. This is not to condone or condemn a consumer based society but merely to explain why and how the system works because it does work.

Imagery is so very pervasive in society today not because of any new or revolutionary reason but for the same reason imagery has always been so important: it can convey a message that is sometimes just very difficult to put into words. Emotions and empathy are not always something one can convey with the use of complex ideas and sentences no matter how eloquent but the image of tears or smiles, a furrowed brow or pursed lips, those will always be translatable.

Ellie Usher

            The first reading for this week was a piece by Sut Jhally titled “Image-Based Culture”. This article brought up many points regarding advertising today and how certain objects have a meaning behind them due to the images we attach to them. Jhaly starts his article by bringing up diamonds. Prior to 1938 they were simply a rare and beautiful gem. Then, they idea of romance was attached to diamonds. After this time, diamonds became part of engagement rings, and this ring was a symbol of romance. We often do this in society. We make things into something that they are not, but then it will always be what we made it. So much of the world today is shaped by our opinions of things.

            “In Gratitude” shows us what society can do to the image of something. People get an idea of something due to what society says. It isn’t until someone shows us the wrong of a way that we see it. This showed a young soldier who returns from war. After a discussion with his parents, it is revealed that he had a best friend, Hank, who sacrificed his life to save the soldier’s. Hank had no family, so Joey asked his family to bury Hank. He quickly discovers that his parents would not bury Hank in the family plot, as Joey had requested for a simple reason. He was not white. His parents did not know this when they agreed to bury Hank, and they were ashamed of what everyone in the town thought of this. Joey is immediately ashamed of this, and makes sure everyone knows. He tells everyone that it should not matter what Hank looked like. He was a soldier who sacrificed his life in order to save another. This points out the way we are in our society. The town has no reason to be racist, other than the fact that everyone was. They grew up in a world where black was better than white. It took a man to go to war and see that it truly did not matter in order for others to see that this might be true. There are many things in our society that should and could be changed if people made an attempt to correct them.

Image Based Culture

This week our readings were about how images affect peoples’ interpretations of media. Images have a strong impact on how people few a certain product because images produce a visual representation of what the product does, or what the product could do for you. People are visual learners in general, so introducing images to the advertisement game completely reshaped how companies advertise their product. Companies target peoples wants and expectations and create them and put them in their commercials. The companies are basically saying “we know what you want and this is what your wants look like. You will achieve this if you buy our product.” The author, Jhally, quotes Tony Schwartz calling the advertising business “partipulation” which I agree with completely. The companies advertising are manipulating you into buying their product, but they are only able to do so with your participation. Your participation is your wants such as a comfortable financial future or a nice relaxing time on the beach. The advertisements manipulate your participation into thinking that you can get these wants.

I think that it is crazy how companies have basically worked the advertising business down to a science. They have figured out how you brain works and target it. The article talked about how if you watch a music video, you will associate the images in the video every time you hear the song regardless of whether or not you are watching the video. I find this to be very true because there have been plenty of songs that I have listened to and not really formed an opinion of how it makes me feel, but after watching the video, the song makes me feel how to video made me feel. I had recently found a music video that was all happy images from various cartoons in my childhood and now every time I hear that song it reminds me of my childhood when originally I did not associate the song with my childhood whatsoever because the lyrics did not really relate to my childhood.

I feel though that this can be dangerous because music videos, specifically rap song music videos, contain a lot of images of sex and drugs. People could watch these and think that just because they listen to this type of music means they can have sex with anyone, or they can do all the drugs that these rappers are doing, which is a very unsafe game to be messing around with.

Claire Tidey 4/3

This week we were asked to read four sources. The first called "Image-Based Cultures", this source focuses on how cultures are influenced. one point that this source makes is that "it is sometimes difficult to locate the origins of our most cherished values and assumptions." (Jhally 199) Jhally uses this as a long running sentence that continues with many supporting ideas throughout this source. He also talks about the differences between the good life and reality when regarding advertising. Jhally states an important idea that what they place in the advertisements is things like happy family's, great relationships, and tension free leisure time, all of which in an advertisement can be provided by a product. Jhally brings up another interesting point about how the length of advertisements keep getting shorter and shorter, "images meticulously placed with music" (Jhally 203) these two combinations of things allow for people to feel emotions about the product and not give it a second though before buying it. The next source us a comic strip by McCloud. This comic strip was mainly about the abstract pieces that can be used. One thing McCord states is important is that "the universitality of cartoon imagery, the more cartoony a face is for instance, the more people it could be said to describe" (McCord 31) this is described as going from a very detailed picture of a specific humans face toa simple stick figure of a head. The next source is also a comic strip, this one a little harder to read, is by Wood. This one is a true comic strip about two boys who fought in the war together, Hank and Joey, this two were brothers through it all. Hank has ended up dying and Joey gets sent home. This comic is all about gratitude and being thankful for what you have. The final comic is about Superman and his good doings in the city. The bad guys had ipped off the police which had ultimately got them caught. This week we had to read four sources, three of which were comics.

Elon Smith-Miller 4/3

            McCloud’s comic was exceptionally interesting in the sense that it presented ideas one does not take into consideration when examining everyday objects. When looking at a picture of a cow, we state that it IS in fact a cow; however, as McCloud pointed out it is quite the opposite. These things, such as images that are not actually a cow, are known as icons; an icon is any image that is used to represent a person, place, thing or idea. Too often we generalize things; for example, we call certain things symbols when in reality they are images we use to represent concepts, ideas, and philosophies. These “things” are a category of icon; others may include those such as language, science and communication (icons of the practical realm), or icons we call pictures that are designed to resemble their subjects. The main idea McCloud focused on was examining cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification; in other words, why we can take a detailed picture and strip it down to its raw form and still see it as the same thing it was before. The reason is, cartoons are meant to focus our attention on an idea, and additionally are a universal concept. Nearly anybody could examine two dots with a line below, and a single circle around it and come to the conclusion that it is meant to resemble a face; this is because your mind will not let you see anything else. Overall, this comic focused on the psychology behind human attribution to certain concepts.  

            Jhally’s article on “Image Based Culture” was different from most of the other readings from this week. This article focused, primarily, on how images are used in today’s society (this is somewhat similar to McCloud’s comic). Jhally’s first goal is to address how our culture has been defined over time and what sorts of things shaped it. Nearly everybody knows a diamond is “forever;” in other words, it represents the link between roses and romantic love. This is an example of a scenario where an image is used to represent an idea. The image does not just serve as a link, rather it is also used to draw on people’s emotions. Overall, this is a smart way to advertise. If someone has an image to look at they are more likely to purchase the product than if they are simply given a verbal description. One thing I found interesting was his description of advertising as being a part of “discourse through and about objects.” This description is due to the fact we are not tell us specifically about things, but rather how these objects are important domains of our lives; due to the importance we will do everything in our power to obtain them.