Understanding Visual Culture

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Part 1: Short Answer Question..

Part 2: Short Essay..

Conclusion.

Reference List

Introduction to Understanding Visual Culture

Visual media is recognised as one of the primary sources of entertainment and major feature of modern society (Caple, 2017 p230). In this report, there will be two parts. Part A will cover relevant topics of visual culture and Part B requires a short essay on the way we view the society.

Understanding Visual Culture - Part 1

  1. Is Laura Mulvey’s argument concerning the ‘male gaze’ still relevant today?

In the essay of Visual pleasure and narrative cinema, 1975, Laura Mulvey stated that the masculinity is observed as the prospect of active narrations while femininity is still revolving around passivity. In her essay, she follows the Freud theory and highlights that in narrative cinema, the protagonist is usually male actors and the object of gaze or desire is the female actors (Oliver, 2017 p452). This concept should have been outdated today but that is not the case unfortunately. Mulvey’s essay was written 40 years ago and her theories and core touch points are still available and noticed in the film industry, which is utterly discomforting.

  1. Does a medium always affect the messages it conveys?

As the economy evolved, with it the various ways of media to convey communication also evolved. The wide array of channels ranging from print media, radio, television and the new media - internet has played a vital role in spreading and establishing communication links to entertain and educate the society. Marshall McLuhan states that medium is the message, which means that the chosen medium to convey the message is as important as the content intended to deliver (Hunter, 2016 p112). For example, a feature film will take its audience to the ending of the story in a linear way. On the other hand, the same content of the film is shifted on to website, will not convey the message in the same linear way.

  1. How does visual culture constitute a form of ‘soft power’?

Visual culture is a major part of soft power because the core aspect is to attract the relevant audience without paying off any tangible asset. Visual culture lays out various mediums to format attractive content that will be perceived of value in the eyes of the audience, an individual or an organisation wants to portray. Visual culture provides the concept of soft power the mean and medium to persuade the target audience without the display of force or power (Feklyunina, 2016 p783). The technological innovation in the visual culture has also boosted the methodology of soft power to a completely new level.

  1. Photography provides an objective or ‘truthful’ representation of reality. Do you agree

As it is understood that photography is a subject that can create ambiguous meaning or represent the actual happened phenomena in a truthful way. The power lies in the eyes of viewers who will decide on their shared believe whether the photograph is objective or truthful. In other words, the technology allows us to manipulate and alter the framing of an photograph to create a different meaning. Photographs are also used to record evidence that indicates it is widely used to capture reality (Schwan et al., 2017 p176). In the essay of Benjamin, the Work Of Art of Mechanical Reproduction states that photography has two main issues. One is that it has the ability to produce autographic pictures as in it can create art in a unique way. Second is that it can also represent reality without manipulating it in any way.

Understanding Visual Culture - Part 2

Transform a society’s practices of seeing—its ways of meaning, symbolic frameworks, institutionalized traditions—, and you change the meaning of historical situations and the terms of sociocultural experience. Discuss this claim, drawing on key concepts and theorists explored in the unit, and using an analysis of this image to support your argument

We live in a world, which is divided by culture, caste and societal values based on the geographical distribution of land and the ambience of climate. Human beings are the pillars of these societies, and their lives is constructed by various societal practices like rituals, festivals any popular event like concerts of sports game and many more. The provided statement highlights the fact that the thoughts and perspectives of human beings is what constructs the standards of society and ideologies of it. Social practices have the ability to shape the everyday life for all the members of the community (Loorbach, Frantzeskaki & Avelino, 2017 p618). As the entire globe is divided with different kinds of communities, the social practices differ as well. These distinctive practices create the sense of identity. The author of Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein states and elaborates the problems of following the rigid rules of societal practices. The author claims that there is no evidence to base the current societal practices that the society follows blindly. Other factors highlights that the conventional approaches, which are vastly influenced by psychological and economic concepts, affects the behavioural pattern immensely among people.

Sociology is a systematic study of the methods that affects the people and thereby affects the structures of a normative society. These social structures form strong associations with organisations, cultural groups and societies to provide an understanding of the framework that helps for implying legitimate changes in social practices. Scholars who engage with this field of study often look at the world with various perspective to achieve a deeper understanding of the various perspectives to look upon a particular matter (Campbell, 2019 p34). The establishment of gender roles and protagonists are often laid out by analysing these different perspectives. This is termed as sociological imagination where one drives analysis from their individual experiences on the grounds of cultural biases. There are three aspects to sociological paradigm - Structural functionalism, Conflict Theory and Symbolic Internationalism.

Functionalism popularly known as structural - functional theory states that the society is constructed with the combination of biological and social needs of the humans in the society. The theorist Hebert Spence was the scholar who invented this theory notices the similar pattern in the social structure of society and human body (Marmolejo-Ramos et al., 2017 p174). He compared the fact of human organs supporting the human body functioning with the parts of society to be linked with each other for the proper functioning of the society itself. He believed that social institutions, shared beliefs, religion, healthcare, government, education and economy together constructs the social paradigm of a particular community. Sociologist Emile Durkheim stated that humans make up the functionalities of the society (Abrahams, 2018 p5). For example, this current pandemic situation has led to total shutdown of many countries to promote social distancing. This sudden societal change of living life was implemented on a very short notice because of the urgency of the situation. In the given picture, it can be noticed that the female is trying to protest against the necessary shut down and a health care worker is standing her way because he understands the need of this societal change. The situation is conflicted and hence comes the significance to apply to conflict theory.

Karl Marx who saw society and the competition within it to procure the limited sources developed the conflict theory (Lynch, 2018 p84). The difference in caste that is noticed in the society and their competition to achieve societal status and materialistic and political benefits like access to employment, food, shelter, leisure and education as well. Therefore, the social institutions helps in the executions of maintain the unequal framework of the society that results in communal violence, hatred and narrow mindedness. Another sociologist named Max Weber expanded the idea of Marx. He added that people succumbed to the social inequality believing that this is how the society works - ‘winner takes all’ (Rosenberg, 2019 p158). The reactions to inequality was regulated because the class differences successfully fostered the culture of legitimacy of holding power and bending it to one’s need.

In recent times, Saltzman Chafetz discovered the prolong inequality among genders and race (Mingo & Nocenzi, 2020 p17). The institutionalised social structures provides material and support to keep the notion of inequality so that some part of the society can enjoy utmost privileges, which is ethically wrong. The recent case of George Floyd is a great example of the sufferings of racism. Another example for gender equality is the noticeable gender pay gap in the economy, which was recently reformed by powerful institutions. Therefore, these institutions realised that the societal change in the established gender roles was required for the overall growth of the community. This was majorly influenced by the third wave of feminism.

Symbolic Interactionist theory focuses on the factor of relationship among humans in the society. Herbert Blumer stated that human beings interacted with things or material, which holds meaning in their perspective (Grills & Prus, 2019 p58). This meaning in derived from their interaction with society in a specific circumstance. The concept of constructivism is derived from the symbolic theory. It talks about the social constructs that is cognitively developed by humans over time. These constructs develop with the interaction with others. These social construct holds meaning as it is generally or widely accepted across globe (McCourt, 2016 p479). For example, the social construct of marriage to lead a happy normal life in the society. Those who oppose this idea are often looked down upon; another great example is the pride movement. The acceptance of different sexuality other straight was unacceptable to many for a long period. It was due to collaborative protest, movements, the awareness grew, and the societal change happened.

Therefore the above statement is well justified that it is we, humans who hold the power to change the meaning as we see today and to reform the traditional institutionalised mal practices that promotes inequalities in the society.

Conclusion on Understanding Visual Culture

It can be concluded that the study of sociology affects the behavioural patterns in human and leads the way for any societal change if necessary. Therefore, humans shall strive towards the deeper understanding of right and wrong so that the world becomes a place where equality and humanity is celebrated widely.

Reference List for Understanding Visual Culture

Abrahams, R. G. (2018). Structural Functionalism. The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 1-7.

Campbell, C. (2019). Sociological Groundhog Day. In Has Sociology Progressed? (pp. 29-40). Palgrave Pivot, Cham.

Caple, H. (2017). Visual media. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Media, 230.

Feklyunina, V. (2016). Soft power and identity: Russia, Ukraine and the ‘Russian world (s)’. European Journal of International Relations, 22(4), 773-796.

Grills, S., & Prus, R. (2019). Knowing, Acting and Interacting: The Symbolic Interactionist Tradition. In Management Motifs (pp. 43-78). Springer, Cham.

Hunter, T. M. (2016). 5 The Medium is the Message: Chirographic Figures in Two Traditions. In The Materiality and Efficacy of Balinese Letters (pp. 100-122). Brill.

Loorbach, D., Frantzeskaki, N., & Avelino, F. (2017). Sustainability transitions research: transforming science and practice for societal change. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 42, 599-626.

Lynch, M. J. (2018). Conflict and Crime: Marx, Engels, Marxist/Radical Criminology, and the Explanation of Crime. The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology, 84.

Marmolejo-Ramos, F., Khatin-Zadeh, O., Yazdani-Fazlabadi, B., Tirado, C., & Sagi, E. (2017). Embodied concept mapping: blending structure-mapping and embodiment theories. Pragmatics & Cognition, 24(2), 164-185.

McCourt, D. M. (2016). Practice theory and relationalism as the new constructivism. International Studies Quarterly, 60(3), 475-485.

Mingo, I., & Nocenzi, M. (2020). The dimensions of gender in the last twenty years: an analysis of the International Review of Sociology. International Review of Sociology, 30(1), 6-25.

Oliver, K. (2017). The male gaze is more relevant, and more dangerous, than ever. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 15(4), 451-455.

Rosenberg, M. M. (2019). Conflict, Order and Societal Change in Max Weber's Ancient Judaism: Substantive and Methodological Implications. Max Weber Studies, 19(2), 146-170.

Schwan, S., Bauer, D., Kampschulte, L., & Hampp, C. (2017). Representation equals presentation? Photographs of objects receive less attention and are less well remembered than real objects. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 29(4), 176.

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