Week 7

Week Seven:

How did you work with the logic and also resist the logic of the media? What is the cultural encoding of the media? How does this matter for your work?

John, you make me laugh. I've done a project on this exact topic.

I called it "Media Circus" and each of the images were meant to show how the media makes you see what you shouldn't see, hear what you shouldn't hear, wear what you shouldn't wear, and eat what you shouldn't eat. Aka, influence.

Of course, there is little to no logic in the media. Just think about the photoshopped images of the models that don't look like they even have a ribcage anymore. And those are supposed to be appealing! 

The problem is not deciding to work with the logic, I don't think, but in trying to figure out how the logic even begins to exist. It's like teachers mentioning to me that I should use skinny girls for models instead of real women. The worst part is, they're trying to help, because out in the real world, models are never not the standard size blah blah blah.

I personally think that the world can change on that, but we shall see.

 

Clearly this effects my work because I thought about it long enough to do a project on it. I've often thought about how people, but more specifically women, are effected by the images that surround us. Since when do we care more about what Lindsay Lohan is doing more than our friends that are dying overseas? Oh yeah, since forever. This is obviously an influence of what the media chooses to show to the public.

The fact that I know that Lindsay Lohan can't afford to go to rehab is a really sad thing. But I digress.

 

Visual culture has such a large effect on people of every time period. Fashion, especially. But how can we separate ourselves from this fact? What makes us so prone to the influence of bias sources? I think that the internet has a lot to do with it too. At this point in time, not only are we constantly surrounded by images, but there are so many images on every single thing that we look at that we don't even know where to begin. I think the world is constantly skimming down "pages" except we're not reading books anymore, we're reading facebook and McDonald's ads.