.LECTURE NOTES FOR VISUAL COMMUNICATION

LECTURE NOTES FOR VISUAL COMMUNICATION
sense, select, and perceive | light and color
eye, retina, and the brain
visual cues: color, form, depth, and movement
visual theories | visual persuasion
media stereotypes
visual analysis perspectives
typography | graphic design
informational graphics | cartoons
photography | motion pictures
television and video | computers
world wide web
the more you know; the more you see

Chapter 1: To Sense. To Select. To Perceive.

The Visual Process

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Retinal Disease
The Art of Seeing
Sensing, Selecting, and Perceiving
"The more you know; the more you see."
How is that True in Your Life?
Abstract Analysis

How Can You Find a Picture's Meaning?
Graphic Clues
Symbolic Clues
Look for the Literal and Symbolic Messages
There is No Meaning Without Words
Other Examples

Moving from Sensing to Perceiving
Visual Communication's Circle Dance

The More You Know; The More You Sense, Select, Perceive, Remember, Learn, And Know
Possible Visual Materials:

Child's drawing, confusing photograph, abstract art, Nick Park's Creature Comforts

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Chapter 2: Light and Color

What is Light?

The Nature of Light
Where Does Light Come From?

Empedocles (Light Comes from the Eyes)
Alhazen (Light Comes from Light Sources)
What is the Speed of Light?

Albert Michelson's Experiment
Is Light Particles or Waves?

Sir Isaac Newton (Particles called Corpuscles)
Thomas Young (Light Acts as Water Waves)
Max Planck (Light Photons Work Both Ways)
Albert Einstein (Proved Planck's Theory)
Electromagnetic Energy and Other Forms

William Herschel (Each Light has a Unique Temperature)
James Clerk Maxwell (Combined Electricity and Magnetism for the Word)
Heinrich Hertz (Radio Broadcast Waves)
Albert Einstein (Ultraviolet Radiation)
What is Color?

Physical Aspects of Color
Leonardo da Vinci (Six Primary Colors)
Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz
Tri-Color Theory of Color
Sociological Uses of Color

Red (Power and Curative Agent)
Purple (Dignity, Sadness, and Tinky Winky's Favorite Color)
Blue (Protection since the Gods Live in the Sky)
Green (Fertility or Envy)
Yellow (Activity and a Cure for Jaundice)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides showing technical and artistic aspects of light, paintings of Edward Hopper and Claude Lazar, scenes from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner

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Chapter 3: The Eye, the Retina, and the Brain

Historic Eyes

At Least 50 Million Years Old
Eyes Evolved for Walking and Safe Eating
Windows to the Soul
Parts of the Eye

Sclera ("White of the Eye") and Cornea (Clear Front)
Iris (Color)
Pupil (Where Light Enters)
Aqueous Humor (Gel in Front)
Lens (Focuses the Image)
Vitreous Humor (Gel that Gives Shape to the Eyeball)
The Retina

Foveal (Sharp Focus and Color) and Peripheral Regions (Movement and Dark Vision)
Rods (Movement and Dark Vision) and Cones (Sharp Focus and Color)
Optic Nerve ("Blind Spot")
Optic Chiasma (Newton's Discovery - Redundant Vision)
The Brain

Thalamus (Sense information is Filtered Except from the Eyes)
Visual Cortex (Back of the Brain-Where Images are Processed)
Hippocampus (Where Long-Term Visual Messages are Stored)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides showing the technical and artistic aspects of the eye, clip from Alanis Morissette music video, scene from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein

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Chapter 4: Color, Form, Depth, and Movement

What the Brain Sees

Nobel Prize Experiment
David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel
Brain Cells Combine to Show Color, Form, Depth, and Movement
Color

Objective Color (Scientific)
Wavelengths
Temperature
Comparative Color (Definitional)
Sky Blue
Fire Engine Red
Subjective Color (Emotional)
Symbolic and Emotional Responses
Form

Dots
Pointillists and Halftones
Lines
A Series of Dots Gives Lines Power
Shapes
Parallelograms (Rectangles)
Circles
Triangles
Polygons (All Other Shapes)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides showing the artistic aspects of color and form, Nick Parks' Wrong Trousers (color), and Bill Plympton's Your Face (form).

Depth (A Matter of Foreground and Background)

Space (Frames Matter)
Size (Small Objects in Front)
Color (Red in the Front; Blue in the Back)
Lighting (Backlighting for TV Studios and Photography)
Textural Gradients (Sand Dune Effect)
Interposition (Something in Front of Something Else)
Time (The Higher the Interest, the More it Will Be in Front)
Perspective (The Most Complex)
Illusionary (Eyes Can Be Fooled)
Linear (Painters Had to Learn the Technique)
Geometrical (Placement of Elements is Important)
Ancient, Native, and Children's' Artwork
Conceptual (Relies on Symbolic Definitions)
Multi-frame (Many Views at Once)
Pablo Picasso
Social Dominance (Who is in Front?)
Movement

Real (Not a part of this Class)
Apparent (Motion Pictures Give Illusion of Movement)
Graphic (Directing Eyes Through a Design)
Implied (Using Designs and Colors for Internal Vibrations)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides showing the artistic aspects of depth and movement, scene from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (deep focus--depth), opening sequence of "NYPD Blue," and scene from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (movement)

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Chapter 5: Theories of Visual Communication

Sensual Theories

Gestalt ("The Whole is Different From the Sum of Its Parts")
Max Wertheimer (While Riding on a Train)
Gestalt Psychology (Holistic Way of Treating Patients)
Visual Organization (How Does the Eye Notice Elements?)
Camouflage (Edgar Rubin-What the Eye Doesn't Notice)
Constructivism (Short-Term Memory Builds Images)
Julian Hochberg (Columbia University)
Eye Tracking (Machines that Measure Eye Movement Through a Design)
Ecological
J. J. Gibson (Importance of Ambient Optical Arrays and Environmental Testing)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides demonstrating each sensual theory above. Excerpt from Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, director, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, and music by Philip Glass (imagine yourself as a brain cell).

Perceptual Theories

Semiotics (The Study of Signs)
Ferdinand de Saussure (Swiss Linguist)
Charles Peirce (American Philosopher)
iconic signs (Direct One-to-One Relationship--Photographs))
indexical signs (An Assumed Connection--Smoke From an Exhaust)
symbolic signs (Meaning Must Be Learned--Words)
Codes (Collections of Complex Rules and Elements)
Metonymy (Viewer Makes Assumptions--Advertising Images)
Analogy (Viewer Makes Comparisons)
Displaced (Viewer Is Not Shown the Truth--Phallic Symbols)
Condensed (Viewer Creates New Messages--Music Videos)
Cognitive (Your Mind at Work)
Memory (The Past Affects the Present)
Projection (Giving Objects Added meaning--Tarot Cards)
Expectation (Assumptions About What Must Be Present)
Selectivity (Active Looking)
Habituation (Normal Appearances Can Dull Vision)
Salience (Relative Importance to the Viewer)
Dissonance (Distractions--Noise, Personal Problems, Temperature)
Culture (What and How We Learn to Get By)
Words (Explanations Are Always Needed)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides demonstrating each perceptual theory discussed above. Excerpts from David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway, "Wayne and Garth" on "hello" (confusing) music videos, "Losing My Religion," REM music video directed by Tarsas (the myth of Ithacus), and a "Saturday Night Live" clip demonstrating the importance of words.

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Chapter 6: Visual Persuasion

Mixing Advertising, Public Relations, and Journalism

Benetton Clothing Company Campaign
Shock Advertising (Created to cause Public Outcry)
Journalism Condemnation
Free Public Relations
Free Advertising
Jump in Sweater Sales
Persuasion

Aristotle (How to Persuade Someone)
Ethos (Credible Source)
Logos (Logical Argument)
Pathos (Emotional Appeal Including Images)
Propaganda

"Propagating the Faith" (From a Catholic Church Directive)
Negative Connotation (From Dictatorships and One-Sided Information)
Advertising

Buying Space or Time
Commercial
Non-commercial
Advertising Growth Since the industrial Revolution
Movie/TV/Web Placements
Advertorials (Fake Stories in Print)
Infomercials (Fake Shows on Television)
Public Relations

Free Space or Time
WWI and Rise ("Four-Minute Men")
Advertising and PR Firms Combine
Lobbyists and Spin Doctors
Journalism and PR
Most Stories (75 Percent) Are from PR Sources
Journalism

Reporting the News
Corporate Influences
Sixty-eight Percent of a Newspaper is Advertisements
Back to David Kirby

Life Mixes Advertising and Journalism
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides demonstrating various points above. Excerpt from Stop the Church (showing propaganda).

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Chapter 7: Pictorial Stereotypes

Stereotyping in the Media

Jerry Lewis Telethon (Helpful or Harmful?)
What is Stereotyping?
Dominant Culture in Control of Media Messages
Media Coverage and Prejudicial Thinking
Common Stereotypes

Irish Americans (Drunk and Disorderly)
Jewish Americans (Greedy and Powerful)
African Americans (Criminals, Sex-Crazed, and Musical)
Latino Americans (Illegal Immigrants and Gangsters)
Asian Americans (Smart, Greedy, and Bad Drivers)
Women (Place is in the Home and Sexual Objects)
Gays and Lesbians (Outlandish, Child Predators, and AIDS Carriers)
Possible Visual Materials:

Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away," concert film, "NYPD Blue" excerpt, "Jerry Lewis Telethon" clip, repeat Young Frankenstein clip opening, "Chess for Girls" from "Saturday Night Live," Volkswagen commercial, "Da, da, da," spoken introduction to slide show with music by Enya, "Boadicea" and Joan Osborne, "One of Us."

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Introduction To Chapter 8: Six Perspectives for Analysis

Personal

Initial, Gut Reaction
Historical

The Images' Place in Time
Technical

What Makes the Image Possible?
Ethical

What is the Moral Responsibility of Those Who Create Images?
Categorical Imperative
A Rule is Always Followed (News Justification)
Utilitarianism
Greater Good is Served to Educate the Public
Hedonism
Live for the Moment (A Personal Motivation for Actions)
Golden Mean
A Compromise Between Two Extreme Points (Aristotle)
Golden Rule
First Do No Harm (Do Not Add Grief to Others)
Veil of Ignorance
Empathy for Others (Greatest Hope for Overcoming Stereotypes)
Cultural

Societal Impact (What Messages are Produced?)
Critical

Reasoned Opinion (From Subjective, Quick, and Emotion Responses the Viewer Moves to Objective, Long-Term, and Rational Analyses)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides demonstrating each perspective above.

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Chapter 8: Typography

Johannes Gutenberg

Born in Mainz (Learned Metallurgy Early)
Fled to France because of Guild Wars
Borrowed Heavily (Experiments were Expensive)
Hot-Tempered Personality (Sued because of his Anger)
"Secret Art" (Afraid to Tell of his Idea)
Lost his Press in Court Case with Johann Fust
A Broken Man (Poor and Frustrated)
Buried in Mainz (Not Sure Where)
Gutenberg Bible

50 Pounds
Two Volumes
11 x 16 Inches
180 on Paper; 30 on Vellum (Completed in 1456)
47 Exist Today
Johann Fust's Printing Mark is in the Book
Fust Died from the Plague while Selling Bibles in France
Gutenberg's Secret Art

Acceptable Type Mold (Gutenberg Invention)
Removable Type (Already Well-Known)
Suitable Alloy (Gutenberg Invention)
Suitable Ink (Already Well-Known)
Suitable Paper (Already Well-Known)
Book-Making (Already Well-Known)
Converted Grape Press (Gutenberg Invention)
All Combined to Create a Commercial Press
Gutenberg's Legacy

In 50 Years, 1,120 Print Shops in 17 Countries
Established a Need for Literacy
Spread Humanism, Democracy, and the Renaissance
Began the Dominance of the Word Over the Picture
Personal Perspective

"Typography is to writing what a soundtrack is to a motion picture"
---Jonathan Hoefler

But Typography Decisions Are Seldom Noticed
Historical Perspective

History of Writing
Cave Paintings
Sumerians (Where Iran and Iraq are Located)
Cuneiform (Highly Stylized Letting System)
Egyptians
Hieroglyphics (Aesthetically Beautiful Letterforms)
Chinese Letters (Originally Over 50,00 individual Forms)
Phoenicians (Concept of the Alphabet--Symbols Stand for Sounds)
Greek Symmetry (Natural Forms for Letters)
Romans (Completed Western Alphabet)
Hot Type (Hot Metal)
Richard Hoe's Press
Cold Type (Photo or Computer Technology)
Photo, Digital Typesetting, and Desktop Publishing
Technical Perspective

Typeface Families (Each has a Mood and Purpose)
Blackletter (Religious Mood, Seldom Used)
Roman (Most Common and Readable)
Script (Invitations and Diplomas)
Miscellaneous (Advertising Roots)
Square Serif (inspired from Egyptian Conquest)
Sans Serif (Art Deco and Computer Uses)
Typeface Attributes
Size
Color (Type and Background)
Font (Bold, Italic, and so on)
Text Block Size (Column Width)
Justification (Left, Right, Centered, and Justified)
White Space (Kerning, Leading, Alleys)
Ethical Perspective

Readable versus "Garbage Fonts" (Conflict Between Literal and Symbolic Messages Conveyed--Is It More Important to Read the Words or to Derive Emotions from the Pictures?)
Appropriation and Theft (Easy Because of Computer Technology)
Cultural Perspective

Pre-Gutenberg Era (Before 1455)
Words as Pictures (Both Were One)
Gutenberg Era (1455 - 1800)
Printing and Word Dominance
Industrial Era (1800 - 1900)
"Dark Ages" (Because of Advertising Uses)
Artistic Era (1900 - Present) (Showed Designers Displays Could Be Pleasing)
Art Movements (Discussed Fully in Graphic Design Chapter)
Digital Era (1984 - Present)
Desktop and Online Publishing
Critical Perspective

The best typographical designs match the mood of the aesthetics with the content of the piece. Designers must always consider the audience.
Future Directions

Web Zines and Personal Typefaces
Possible Visual Materials:

Slide examples, excerpt from James Burke's television program concerning Gutenberg, Van Halen's music video, "Right Now"

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Chapter 9: Graphic Design

Saul Bass

Born, 1921, NYC
Bauhaus Influenced (Read Books on the Train to Work)
Warner Bros. (Champion--First Poster that got him Noticed)
Howard Hughes and RKO (But Didn't Like Control over his Work)
Formed his Own Agency in 1952 with his Wife
Bass/Yaeger Associations in Brentwood, California
Died, 1996
Saul Bass's Work

Posters and Titles
Movie Posters
Carmen Jones to Casino
Film Work
Psycho
Why Man Creates (Won Academy Award)
Logos
Quaker Oats, Minolta, GSA, United Airlines, AT&T
Personal Perspective

"Design is thinking made visual."
---Saul Bass

Multivariate Decisions are Often Overlooked by a Viewer
Historical Perspective

Pre-Gutenberg (Before 1455)
Cave Paintings
Books of Dead
Greek Symmetry
Gutenberg Era (1455 - 1800)
Printing Remained the Same
Industrial Era (1800 - 1900)
Steam Presses (Richard Hoe Press, 1847)
Lithography (Aloys Senefelder, 1800)
Photography (Joseph NiŽpce, 1827)
Advertising Uses
Artistic Era (1900 - Present)
Art Movements
Digital Era (1984 - Present)
Desktop (Personal Computers and Laser Printers, 1984)
Online (World Wide Web, 1994)
Technical Perspective

Contrast
Color
Size
Symbolism
Time
Sound
Balance
Symmetrical
Asymmetrical
Rhythm
Arrangement of Elements in a Display
Number of Elements in a Display
Unity
Related Content
Stylistic Consistency
Ethical Perspective

Utilitarianism (Educating) or Hedonism (Personal Messages)
Pictorial Stereotypes
Harmful Products
Appropriation of Designs
Cultural Perspective

Free Form Styles
Art Nouveau (Inspired from Japanese Art)
Henri Toulous-Lautrec, Will Bradley, Max Parrish
Dada (Anger Over World War I--Break All the Rules)
Marcel Duchamp, Sergei Eisenstein, George Herriman
Art Deco (Commercial Version of Dada)
Erte, Chrysler Building, Miami Beach District
Pop Art (Everyday Objects are Special)
Andy Warhol, Robert Frank, Peter Max
Post Modern
Punk (Modern Dada)
New Wave (Commercial Version of Punk)
Hip Hop (Clothing, Music, Display Art)
Grid Approaches
De Stijl (Harmony After World War I)
Piet Mondrian, Stefan Lorant, Modular Design
Bauhaus (Designs, Furniture, and Skyscrapers)
Paul Klee, Gyorgy Kepes, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Critical Perspective

A "Good" Design is a Cultural Artifact--the Audience Matters
Future Directions

Virtual Reality (Get Inside a Design)
Teleputers (Telephone, Television, and Computer Combination)
Possible Visual Materials:

Slide examples, selected movie titles by Saul Bass, and a scene from "Mad About You".

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Chapter 10: Informational Graphics

USA Today Weather Map

Allen Neuharth
Gannett Newspaper Chain
Eye-catching, Easy to Read, National, and Much Copied
Weather Maps

Edmond Halley (Known More for his Comet)
Newspaper Fad
NASA Satellites
TV Weather Segments
The Weather Channel (Began Same Year as USA Today)
George Rorick and the USA Today Weather Map, 1982
Personal Perspective

"God is in the details."
---Mies van der Rohe

Converts Data into Pictures. Shows Information that is Hard to Grasp Otherwise.
Historical Perspective

Sumerian Maps
Greek Maps
Chinese Maps
Three Infographic Pioneers
William Playfair (Scotland--Economic Charts)
Dr. John Snow (England--Discovered a Cause for Cholera Outbreak)
Charles Minard (France--Visually Described Napoleon's Downfall)
Infographics In Newspapers
Infographics Used for War Explanations
Computers Make Production Much Easier
Technical Perspective

Statistical Infographics (Convert Numbers to Pictures)
Charts or Graphs
Line, Relational, Pie, and Pictographs
Data Maps
Snow, Minard, and Weather Maps
Non-statistical infographics (Relies on Pleasing Aesthetic Values)
Fact Boxes (From Little Space During World War II)
Tables
Non-Data Maps
Locator
Explanatory
Diagrams (Most Complex)
Miscellaneous
Courtroom Drawings
TV Schedules
Icons and Logos
Time Lines
Editorial Illustrations
Ethical Perspective

Inaccurate Charts, Inappropriate Symbolism, and Chartjunk
Cultural Perspective

Be Clear about the Cultural Context of Signs
Critical Perspective

Computers Make Production Almost Too Easy
Infographics Should Always Be Filled with Content
Future Directions

More, not Fewer Informational Graphics in All Media
Possible Visual Materials:

Slide examples, videotape from a WGN weather segment, diagram from C/Net showing the Nicole Simpson/Ron Goldman murders.

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Chapter 11: Cartoons

"The Simpsons"

Matt Groening (From Springfield, Oregon)
Son of Homer, a Filmmaker
"Life in Hell" (Original Idea for TV Show)
Tracey Ullman Show (First Appearance of Simpson Characters)
James L. Brooks and Sam Simon Producers
Marketing Genius (More Money Made in Toys and Shirts)
First Aired January, 1990

Show Has Working Class Television Roots
Social Satire (Makes Fun of Society's Conventions)
"Itchy and Scratchy" (Toon Within the Toon--Ultra Violent)
Syndicated, 1994
Made in Korea
Longest Running Cartoon in Television History
Personal Perspective

"From a purely semiotic point of view, comic strips constitute one of the most complex and sophisticated areas of drawn communication."
---Clive Ashwin

Not Considered Serious
One of the Oldest Forms of Communication
One of the Most Complicated Art Forms
Historical Perspective

Single-Framed Cartoons
Caricatures (Anti-Portraits in England)
Cave Drawings (Exaggerations)
Egyptian Artwork (King Tut and Cleopatra Despised)
Pompeii Ruins (Drawn on Buildings)
Leonardo da Vinci (Notebook Drawings)
The Carracci Family (Agostino, Annibale, and Ludovico Carracci)
Al Hirschfeld (The New Yorker)
Editorial Cartoons
William Hogarth (England, Always Controversial, Died Penniless)
Benjamin Franklin (American, Revolutionary Cartoon)
James Gillray ("Little Boney" Cartoon of Napoleon)
Thomas Nast (American, Santa Claus and "Boss" Tweed)
Bill Mauldin ("Willie and Joe" and Civil Rights Cartoons)
Herbert Block (Nixon's Five-O'clock Shadow)
Paul Conrad (Inspired by Bauhaus Movement)
Humorous Cartoons
Sigmund Freud, "Wit and Its Relationship to the Unconscious"
New Yorker Magazine (Premiere Place to Find Cartoons)
Charles Addams ("The Addams Family")
Gary Larson ("The Far Side")
Multi-Framed Cartoons
Egyptian Continuous Paintings
Greek Vases that Turn
Japanese Continuity Paintings
Bayeux Tapestry (Mural Tells Story of the Battle of Hastings, 1066)
Flip Books (Animation Beginnings)
John Newberry (Children's Books)
Comic Strips
Wilhelm Busch (German Master)
Richard Outcault (First American Strip, 1895)
"Yellow Kid of Hogan's Alley"
Hearst and Pulitzer Fought over Outcault ("Yellow Journalism")
George Herriman, Krazy Kat (Dada-Inspired Violent Cartoons)
Buck Rogers (Action-Adventure)
Peanuts (Charles Schultz, Enormously Popular)
Robert Crumb (Strange and Disturbing)
Doonesbury (Garry Trudeau--Controversial)
Comic Books
Max Gaines (Cheap Little Books)
Superman (Two High School Students)
MAD Magazine (William Gaines)
Spiegelman's MAUS
Japanese Manga (Popular With Adults)
Animated Films
George Melies (Magician and Master of the "Jump Cut")
A Journey to the Moon
Walt Disney (Anti-Dada Family Values)
Snow White (Traditional techniques)
A Bug's Life (All-Computer Techniques)
Looney Tunes (Dada-Inspired Zaniness)
Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, and Friz Freleng of Warner Bros.
Hanna and Barbera
"The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons"
Japanese Anime (Popular World-Wide)
Technical Perspective

Frames (Word Placement)
Settings (Simple or Complex)
Characters (Crude or Sophisticated Drawings)
Motion Lines
Agitrons (Wavering)
Briffits (Puffs of Smoke)
Dites (Diagonal)
Hites (Horizontal)
Plewds (Sweat Beads)
Vites (Vertical)
Waftaroms (Smells)
Typography (Readers Become Actors)
Balloons (bubbles, icicles, perforated lines, spiked outlines, tiny words, trailing tails, unbroken lines, zigzagged lines)
Types of Animation
Cel (Looney Tunes and Walt Disney)
Dimensional (Willis H. O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Henry Selick, Nick Park, and Will Vinton)
Paper (Terry Gilliam and South Park)
Computer (Dennis Muren, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Cool World, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Antz, Tin Toy, Toy Story, The Matrix)
Ethical Perspective

Marketing to Children
"Yellow Kid" fans to A Bug's Life Backpacks
Stereotypes Supported
Racism during WWII
Political Messages
"Li'l Abner," "Pogo," and "Doonesbury"
Inappropriate Themes
Sex and Violence (Conflict over Compromise)
Cultural Perspective

Our First Introduction to Reading
Symbols Change with the Times and Culture
Critical Perspective

A Sophisticated Art Form Worthy of Serious Study
Future Directions

Cartoonists as Rock Stars; More Collectibles
A Wide Range of Offerings
Fox ("The Simpsons" "King of the Hill" "The PJs" "Family Guy" "Futurama")
UPN ("Dilbert" "Home Movies")
WB ("Baby Blues")
MTV ("Beavis and Butt-head" "Daria" "Celebrity Death Match")
Comedy Central ("South Park" "Dr. Katz")
Cartoon Channel (All Day All the Time)
Motion Picture Productions
Continued Concerns Over Harm to Society
Possible Visual Materials:

Slide examples, clip from "Futurama," a "Ren and Stimpy" cartoon, Tin Toy, Bambi vs. Godzilla, "Believe in Me," music video clip from Smashing Pumpkins, racist cartoon, "All This and Rabbit Stew," Tex Avery, 1942, various cartoons on video.

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Chapter 12: Photography

The Migrant Mother

Photographer (Dorothea Lange)
Columbia University
San Francisco Portraits
Paul Taylor--Husband (Concerned with Homeless)
Joined the FSA (Farm Security Administration)
Life Magazine Photographer
Complained About Being Labeled A One Shot Wonder
Subject (Florence Thompson)
32-years old
Five Children
Nipomo Camp, 1936
Complained about Privacy and Payment Issues
Colon Cancer
Public Support When News was Reported
A Moving Portrait

Close-up Portrait with Few Distractions
Is she sad or wishing the photographer would leave?
Personal Perspective

"I would willingly exchange every single painting of Christ for one snapshot."
---George Bernard Shaw
Our First Visual Imaging Machine
Frozen Memories of Time, Space, and Relationships
Reminds of Watching versus Participating
Historical Perspective

Heliography (Joseph Niepce, 1827, Eight-Hour Exposure)
Daguerreotype (Louis Daguerre, 1839, One-of-a-Kind, Middle-Class Popularity)
Calotype (Henry Talbot, 1839, "Negative" and "Positive" Terms)
Wet-Collodion (Frederick Archer, 1851, Civil War and Western Images)
Color Materials (James Maxwell, 1861, Louis Ducos du Hauron, 1869, Lumiere Brothers, 1903, Kodak Laboratories)
Gelatin-Bromide Dry Plate (Richard Maddox, 1871, Made Amateur Photography and Motion Pictures)
George Eastman (Kodak camera, 1888)
Holography (Logos and National Geographic cover)
Instant (Edwin Land, 1948, Polaroid)
Digital (Mavica camera from Sony, 1984)
Technical Perspective

Lens Type (Wide, Normal, and Telephoto)
Lens Opening (Small or Large)
Shutter Speed (fast or Slow)
Film Type (Color, Black & White, Fast or Slow)
Camera Type (Throw-Away, Instamatic, Instant, Rangefinder, Single-Lens Reflex, Twin-Lens Reflex, View, Press, Digital)
Lighting (Available and Artificial)
Image Quality (Exposure and Contrast)
Ethical Perspective (Five Major Journalism Concerns)

Victims of Violence
Right to Privacy
Manipulation
Stereotypes
Persuasion (Corporate Control Over Images)
Cultural Perspective

Portraits
Julia Margaret Cameron, Richard Avedon
Paintings
Oscar Rejlander, Henry Robinson
Landscapes
Timothy O'Sullivan, Ansel Adams
Artists
Alfred Stieglitz
Documentaries
Jacob Riis Lewis Hine Mary Ellen Mark
Critical Perspective

Photography did not cause the death of painting
Tells stories sometimes better than words alone
Pictures entertain, educate, disturb, and persuade
Future Directions

Digital Camcorders (Still or Moving Options)
There Will Always Be the Need for the Still Moment
Possible Visual Materials:

Slide examples from the above.

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Chapter 13: Motion Pictures

Citizen Kane

Shown April, 1941
Rated the Best Film Ever by Critics
Cast and Crew
Joseph Cotten
Agnes Moorehead
Herman Mankiewicz, screenplay
Robert Wise, editor
Vernon Walker, special effects
Bernard Hermann, music
Gregg Toland, cinematography
Financial Disaster Because Link with William Hearst
Orson Welles

Wisconsin Born
"Boy Genius"
First American with the Abbey Players of Ireland
Mercury Theatre, "War of the Worlds" and Martian Panic
Hired by RKO
Given Complete Independence
Labeled a Trouble-Maker
Wine Commercials and the "Tonight Show"
Innovations

Images and Words Combine
Deep Focus
Ceilings in the Shot
Optical Effects
Sound Effects (from his radio days)
Analysis of Citizen Kane

Such Independence is Rarely Given
Obvious Link with Hearst
A Brilliant Work of Art is a Composite of Many Elements
Personal Perspective

"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet."
---Orson Welles

Movies Capture our Imagination
Many Terms Describe the Medium (Movies, Film, Cinema)
Movies Tell Human Stories we Respond To
Theaters are Magical Places
Fun to Watch with Other People (success of Stars Wars: Episode I)
Historical Perspective

Side-Show Amusement
Gelatin-Bromide Dry Plate Photo Process
Thomas Edison
Individual Works for Fiction Dramas
Auguste and Louis Lumiere
Audience for Documentaries
Action-Adventures
Edwin Porter's The Great Train Robbery
D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation
First Feature-Length Film, 1915
Tremendous Cost
Ku Klux Klan was Reborn
Protests Throughout the US for Controversial Content
Formed United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford
Silent Era
Motion Pictures Became a Business
Directors Learned the Craft
Hal Sennett Max Roach, Cecil B. DeMille, Sergei Eisenstein, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton
Star System Developed with Tremendous Profits
Scandals (Fairbanks and Pickford, "Fatty" Arbuckle)
Academy Awards Established for Positive Publicity
Sound Innovations
Vitaphone (Disk), Edison's invention
Warner Bros.
The Jazz Singer, 1927
Problems with Synchronization
CD-ROM Sound (The Last Action Hero, 1993)
Phonofilm (Film)
20th Century Fox
Made Widescreen Films Possible
Color Innovations
Hand-Tinted Color (The Great Train Robbery)
Cartoon Color (Disney's Flowers and Trees)
Technicolor (None But the Brave)
Public Acceptance of Color (The Wizard of Oz)
Widescreen innovations
Cinerama, 1952 (Not Widely Accepted)
CinemaScope (Later, Called Panavision), 1953 (The Robe and How the West Was Won)
Imax and Omnimax (Tremendously Expensive, yet Popular)
Other Innovations
3D and "B" Movies for Drive-In Movies
Fall of Single Theaters; Rise in Multiplexes
Rise in Television Production
Technical Perspective

Visual Considerations
The Shot (Static or Dynamic, Objective or Subjective)
Film Stock Choices (Color or Black and White)
Text (Credits, Headings, and Translations)
Special Effects (Backscreen and Digital)
Audio Considerations
Speech (Narration and ADR)
Music (Sets the Mood)
Noise (Wild Sound, Foley, and the Lout behind You)
Ethical Perspective

Stereotypes
African Americans, Native Americans, and Women, Among Others
Sex and Violence
More Explicit than Mainstream Television
Many Movies Produced for Overseas Market
Cultural Perspective

Myths and Symbols of a Culture are Employed by Directors
Comedy (City Lights and Something About Mary)
Crime (Basic Instinct and LA Confidential)
Epic (Malcolm X and Elizabeth)
Horror (Frankenstein and Bride of Chucky)
Musical (The Sound of Music and Blues Brothers 2000)
Romance (Casablanca and You've Got Mail)
Science Fiction (2001 and Lost in Space)
Social Impact (The Grapes of Wrath and Smoke Signals)
Thriller (Jurassic Park and Psycho)
War (Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line)
Western (Stagecoach and Unforgiven)
Critical Perspective

Motion Pictures Adapt to Competition with Innovations
As a Business, Bottom Line is Stressed
Few Mainstream Movies Break New Ground
Future Directions

Continued Rise in Independent Movies
Better Food, Seats, and Other Inducements
Movies on Large, High Quality Home Sets
Possible Visual Materials:

Excerpts from various motion pictures (The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith, 1915 (silent era); The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleming, 1939 (color); Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, 1941 (words and image combination); Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray, 1955 (close-ups); Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960 (subjective camera); In Cold Blood, Richard Brooks, 1967 (terror of black and white); Woodstock, Michael Wadleigh, 1970 (montage); The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975 (slow rhythmic pace); Annie Hall, Woody Allen, 1977 (documentary style); Blue Velvet, David Lynch (symbolic images); Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese, 1991 (slow zoom-in); Boyz N the Hood, John Singleton, 1991 (family values); Freejack, Geoff Murphy, 1992 (terrible art direction); Blade Runner, Ridley Scott, 1982 (beautiful art direction).

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Chapter 14: Television and Video

Rodney King

Troubled Family, Alcoholic Father
Newly Released Convict
Difficult Finding Work
High Speed Chase
Beaten and Arrested
George Holliday

Oil Executive's Son
Grew Up in Argentina
Plumbing Company Manager
Heard Commotion Outside Apartment
New Video Camera, a Sony HandyCam
Video and Its Consequences

Sold to KTLA; Distributed Through CNN
An Example of Reality-Based TV ("Cops" and "Funniest Home Videos")
An Instant Public Uproar (Everyone Knew What they Saw)
April, 1992 Riots (After Police Were Acquitted in Criminal Trial)
Analysis of the Rodney King Video

Shocking Content
Reminds Many Civil Rights Pictures from the 1950s
Dramatic, Subjective Camera Work
Hedonism Wins as All involved Want Money
Stereotypes Supported (Police, Criminals, Lawyers)
Shows the Power of Television When the Public is Linked
Personal Perspective

"Our lives have been irrevocably transformed in
ways that make pre-TV America seem like the dark ages."
---Meg Greenfield

Easy to Criticize (Chewing Gum for the Eyes)
Always the Promise of a Better Program
Part of our Culture and Society--Pervasive Medium
But How will it Change with the World Wide Web?
Historical Perspective

Allen Dumont and the Cathode Ray (His Network Failed)
Phil (Philo) Farnsworth (High School Student with Working invention)
NBC, 1926 (First Broadcast Network)
RCA, Felix the Cat (Cartoon Character Transmitted During First US Test)
David Sarnoff (RCA, Invented the term, "Television")
1940s
FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Regulation to prevent Channel Overlapping
WWII Freeze (Due to Parts and Labor Needed for the War Effort)
Networks Begun (After World War II the Freeze was Lifted)
1950s
"Golden Age" of Television with Classic Programs (Form Established)
Dominance with Public Over Other Media
Game Show Scandals (Serious Public Relations Debacle)
Blacklisting (As with Motion Pictures, Joseph McCarthy Communist Hunt)
1960s
Cable (Initially to Bring in Pictures for Remote Locations)
Video (Discussed Below)
Violence Shows Condemned ("The Untouchables")
Inane Shows Criticized ("The Beverly Hillbillies")
Satellite Technology Offers Live Broadcasts
1970s
FCC Becomes More Politically Aggressive (Not Just Regulating Technical Items)
Spin-Offs Become Popular
TV Criticism Increases
1980s
Cost-Cutting of News Operations
Buy-outs from Unrelated Companies (Westinghouse, General Electric)
Mergers with Movie Studios for Added Production Work
1990s and Beyond
One Billion Sets Worldwide
Major Networks in Decline with Competition from Cable and Other Media
New Media Delivery Methods and Equipment (HDTV and World Wide Web)
Videotape
Charles Ginsberg Inventor, 1956
Ampex System
Initially Used for West Coast News
Hand-Held Equipment
Reality-Based Ethical Problems (Amateur Video)
Video Tape Rentals Helped Movies, not Television
Technical Perspective

Cameras
Scanned Images
Transmission Modes
Air
Broadcast (Traditional Method)
Satellite (Powerful Dishes with Short Orbit Satellites--DirecTV)
Earth
Cable (Digital Television with Cable Set-Top Box Converters)
Fiber Optic (Makes Teleputers A Reality)
Receivers
525 Lines (Initial American System)
625 Lines (European System--Better Quality)
HDTV (High Definition Television--Motion Picture Quality)
DTV (Digital Television--Linked with Telephone and Web Services)
Ethical Perspective

Ratings (Almost Anything to Bring in Viewers)
Stereotypes (Any Group Can Find Offense)
Sexual and Violent Themes
But Most Shows Are Not Violent
Cultural Perspective

Television is a Combination of Theatre, Radio, Motion Pictures, and Comic Books
Television Brings Familiar Stories in Serial Form Into Homes
Critical Perspective

All Other Media Suffered, But Not Out
Television as Baby Sitters
Wars and Tragedies are Diminished
Social Problems are Exaggerated
Finding Quality is a Viewer's Responsibility
Future Directions

Television in Movie Theaters
Home Teleputers Linked to the World Wide Web
Possible Visual Materials:

Rodney King video by George Holliday, The Accident, "NYPD Blue" episode, and The Contest, "Seinfeld" episode.

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Chapter 15: Computers

Computer-Generated Images (CGI)

Edward Zajac at
Bell Labs, 1963
2001, 1968 (HAL Computer Diagrams)
Futureworld, 1976 (Peter Fonda's Face)
Star Wars, 1977 (Deathstar Blueprints)
Tron, 1982 (Greatly Publicized for "Cycle Race" Scene, But a Financial Disappointment)
"Sharkey's World" (Music Video from Laurie Anderson)
Labyrinth, 1986 (Brilliant Work from Muppet Master, Jim Henson)
Jurassic Park, 1993 (Seven Minutes of Effects by Stan Winston)
Toy Story, 1995 (First All Computer-Animated Motion Picture, John Lasseter)
Twister, 1996 (Well-Done Tornado Effects)
The Matrix, 1999 (Virtual-Reality Fears Featured)
James Cameron

Born in Canada
Grew up in Brea, California
Worked with Roger Corman
The Abyss, 1989 ("Water Weenie" Effect)
Terminator 2, 1991 (Anything Conceptualized Can Be Realized)
Titanic, 1997
Terminator 3, 2000
Personal Perspective

"Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
---Arthur C. Clarke

A Dominating Technology
Almost Invaluable
Symbolic of a New Age
Access, Privacy, and Many Other Concerns
The Potential is Still Largely Unknown
Historical Perspective

Charles Babbage
Analytical Engine (First Computer, but Never Made a Working Model)
ENIAC and UNIVAC (Room-Sized Computers)
IBM
Herman Hollerith
Punch Card Electronic Calculator Used by Census Bureau, 1890
Started the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR)
Thomas Watson (Worked for CTR--Became President)
Renamed CTR to IBM in 1924
Son, Thomas Watson, Jr. Started Computer Interest
Eighty Percent of All Computers in the World are from IBM
Microsoft Corporation
Altair Computer (First Amateur Computer)
Bill Gates
Harvard Dropout
Richest Person in the World ($60 billion)
IBM DOS (IBM Paid Royalties for System Software)
Paul Allen (Also a Multi-Billionaire, No Longer with Microsoft)
Charter Communications (Cable, Telephone, and Computer Alliances)
Seattle Seahawks Football Team and Portland Trailblazers Basketball Team
Apple Computers
Stephen Wozniak (Technical Genius) and Steven Jobs (Business Sense)
Apple II, 1977 (A Great Success)
Macintosh, 1984 (Started Desktop Revolution)
iMac, 1999 (Reborn Macintosh)
Technical Perspective

Memory and Storage
From Bits to Gigabytes and Beyond
RAM (Random Access Memory) and ROM (Read-Only Memory)
From Floppy Disks, Zips, R-CDs to Network Storage
Central Processing Unit
The Heart of the Computer
Clock or Chip Speed (The Faster the Better--500Mhz)
PowerPC (Motorola Product)
IBM PCs (Intel Products)
Pentium III (Intel Product)
Switching Devices
Connectors (Fancy Electrical Cords--SCSI and Bus Interfaces)
Peripherals
Incoming (Keyboard, Mouse, Tablet, Voice, Scanners)
Outgoing (Monitor, Printer)
Interactive (Touch-Screens, Modems, Direct Internet Connections)
Software
Word, QuarkXPress, PhotoShop, FrontPage
Ethical Perspective

Violent Themes
Mortal Kombat
Doom, Quake II (Violence in Littleton, Colorado Partly Blamed)
Sexual Themes
Sex Drives Media (From Printing to Videos)
"Teledildonics" (New Term for Virtual Sex)
Virtual Valerie (Popular Teledildonic Program)
Manipulations
Journalism Concerns with Credibility of Images
Cultural Perspective

Computer Nerd, Fear of Computers, Computer Mystique are Fading
But a Fear of Virtual Reality Seen in Motion Pictures (Blade Runner, 1982, Dark City, 1998, eXistenZ, 1999, The Lawnmower Man, 1992, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, 1996, The Matrix, 1999, Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos), 1997, The Thirteenth Floor, 1999)
Y2K (Prepare as if for an Earthquake or Hurricane)
Critical Perspective

Computers Reflect on Culture that Makes and Uses Them
Computers Cannot Solve All Problems While Causing Some
Equal Access to Computer Technology is Vital for Participation by All
Future Directions

Better Encryption for More Commercial Applications
"Invisible" Computers (Wired Without Knowing It)
Teleputers
Possible Visual Materials:

Apple's "1984" Macintosh commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, short portfolio pieces from various companies, excerpts from cgi motion pictures: Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Tron, The Abyss, Terminator 2, The Lawnmower Man, and others.

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Chapter 16: World Wide Web

Interactive Multimedia

From Alice to Ocean Alone Across the Outback (First Photography Book with a CD-ROM)
Robyn Davidson
Rick Smolan
National Geographic Photographer
Day in the Life of Australia (And Other Countries)
Many Uses for Interactive Multimedia

Government Programs
Business Training and Sales
Consumer Education and Entertainment
Myst and Riven
But Still a 600mg Controlled Program to Be Replaced by the World Wide Web
Personal Perspective

"The World Wide Web is the most important single outcome of the personal computer. It is the Gutenberg press that is democratizing information."
---Bill Atkinson
Bill Gates (Interactive Multimedia is a Transitional Phase)
Fiber Optic Links Offer Unlimited Data and Speed
Historical Perspective

Dr. Vannevar Bush and the "Memex"
ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense--Communicate Despite Nuclear War), 1969
Quickly Used by Educators for E-mail
Videotex (Television/Telephone-Based Interactive Networks)
Ceefax, 1974 (British)
Minitel, 1981 (French)
Viewdata, 1981 (US, Coral Gables, Florida--A Failure)
Bulletin Boards (Computer/Telephone Based Networks)
America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy
Internet, 1983 (ARPANET Renamed with International Use)
CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Switzerland)
Tim Berners-Lee Creates the World Wide Web, 1990
Mosaic, 1994 (Marc Andreeson, University of Illinois Student Creates a Practical Web Browser)
Netscape, 1995 (Andreeson Forms His Own Browser Company)
Internet Explorer (IE) (Microsoft Corporation's Browser)
"Browser Wars" Unfair Advantage Claimed by IE Competitors
Cable Regulations
AT&T Breakup, 1984 ("Baby Bells" Established, Telephone Companies Couldn't Provide Programs and Services While Cable Companies Couldn't Provide Telephone Service)
Telecommunications Act, 1996 (Telephone, Cable, and Satellite Companies Can Offer Telephone, Programs, and Services)
Technical Perspective

Fiber Optic Cable
Enormously Expensive to Install
But a Great Potential for High Profits
Number of Possible Channels is 1,000 Greater Than all Radio and TV Channels Combined
Digital Convergence (Media Becoming One--Makes Teleputers Possible)
Ethical Perspective

Free Speech vs. Censorship
Privacy Concerns
Equal Access
Cultural Perspective

Portal/Commercial Sites are Used the Most
What Does that Say About the Medium? (Same as All the Others?)
Critical Perspective

How Do You Use the Web?
Look Up Details in the Starr Report or Take Courses Through an Online University?
Future Directions

Little Difference Between Newspapers, Television, and Portals
Possible Visual Materials:

Demonstrations of Passage to Vietnam and Riven. My bookmarks on the World Wide Web.

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Chapter 17: The More You Know; The More You See

Pictures aren't Simple
Key is Using Words and Pictures in Equally Respectful Ways to Help Educate, Entertain, and Persuade
Light is the Link
Light of Day
Light of Reason
Light of Compassion
Possible Visual Materials:

Slides from all the previous lectures.

ETHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

ETHICS AND
PHOTOGRAPHY

by Grazia Neri

"All too often magazines and newspapers do not show any respect for pictures. Instead, they cut them or print wording over them. Please insist that art directors should not alter pictures. I can assure you that I have seen some havoc played in recent publications capable of damaging the form and the contents of my photographs sufficiently to deprive them of their very essence. I do realise that my photographs provide ample surfaces on which art directors feel entitled to write. In actual fact, these areas are part of a single great idea, which is what gives rise to each single photograph. It is obvious that adding wording means altering this area, depriving the picture of its effectiveness and of its atmosphere. Please therefore ask editors and art directors explicitly to respect the photographer's ideas and his pictures in their integrity."


This note accompanies every photographic report by Anthony Suau, Time's Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist who lives partly in Paris and partly in Moscow. Over the past 9 years he has been busy documenting the changes taking place throughout Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down. His note led to perplexity, diffidence and irony in the editorial offices of the newspapers.

The 20th century can boast a significant precedent: that of having been photographed. Almost every historical event, scientific discovery, personage, the infinite natural disasters, the ill-doings of mankind and even his sentiments have been photographed. Rivers full of words have been written on the same auspicious or inauspicious events, but all told, the documents that persist in people's memories are photographs, which often become the icon of an event or of a catastrophe. In spite of this magic, little or nothing has been done to make the work of those who gravitate around this profession, which has been further massacred by the advent of the new technologies, more harmonious.

The camera is a different tool from a pen. It can be used to produce an instantaneous masterpiece, to upset society with a scoop, to amaze people with something new. Each of us reacts to the picture on the basis of our own sensitivity, culture, intelligence, mood and passion. What is more, the interpretation of one and the same photograph will be different at different times. A photograph produced today will offer a different impact tomorrow. Even the place where the photograph is seen can dictate our reactions. A photograph published in a gossip weekly cannot have, a priori, the same impact as a photograph on display in a museum or of another printed in a sophisticated book. The environment where the photograph appears may determine our reading of it.

When I see the notes accompanying photographic reports, and the reproduction rights of which will be sold to the papers, I am often seized by annoyance and discouragement. Bans, obligations, threats to invoice twice or three times. None of this will be enough to discourage improper use of the photograph or to make sure that the credits or explanatory notes are properly indicated or that the context in which the photographs or the captions accompanying them will be respected. There are plenty of associations representing photographers all over the world whose mission is to defend the autonomous language of photography who drop their weapons when they come up against the wall of indifference of the publishers and clients that provide the assignments that are the life-blood of the profession.

Only the great names are able to command respect, and this makes the situation even worse in photographic journalism. At times a minor incident is sufficient to cause the collapse of a young career or to place creative potential within the boundaries of humiliating routine. No wonder photographers have become touchy, melancholy, taciturn and depressed characters, needy of guidance not only from the technical and professional point of view but also the psychological.

The need for ethics to govern the world of photographs has become essential for all those who come into contact with photography: photographers, agents, photo editors, magazines, museums, publishers and gallery management. The absence of these ethics gives rise to distortions in the information and education of young people, prevents art and beauty from being enjoyed and turns us into victims of the worst types of manipulation.

Here in Italy the situation is made even worse by the absence of a register of photographers or of a law safeguarding photographic journalists. Unlike their colleagues in print and television, photographic journalists are not protected or even understood even by these other journalists.

The first ethical decision is performed by the photographic journalist at the very moment when he decides to tell a story or to tell it in a given manner. The photographer must safeguard the truth he feels he wants to convey to the public, and he or she must safeguard the public by making sure that their reporting is not simply based on the need for career advancement, and safeguard their principals. It takes great professional skill, passion and courage to assimilate these types of behavior in such a way that they are absolutely spontaneous. It requires great dexterity and emotional intelligence to convey a story in visual form. If these ingredients are lacking, it is very unlikely that the dream and utopia of honest photographic journalism will materialize. Photographic reporters want their talent and their cameras to induce the public to act and think "politically," giving the word its noblest meaning. It is therefore obvious that when a photographer feels that he has hit this mark, he will perceive any distortion of his message as an affront to his professional responsibilities.

In a recent interview in the French weekly L'Express, Willy Ronis, who has always taken sides in defense of correctness in the use of photographs, explained how a photograph that originally showed some strikers meeting to hear a trade unionist talk, was published by the New York Times without showing the representative and with a caption indicating that the crowds were "anti-capitalist revolutionaries." Edward Steichen maintained that it was not "artistic" photography that mattered, but that the true mission of a photographer was to explain one man to another man and each man to himself. He then added: "A photograph is worth a thousand words, provided it is accompanied by only ten words."

Another situation to which little consideration is given is the peculiar relationship between the photographer and the subject. Nadar, the great 19th Century portrait photographer, had perceived instinctively this tiring relationship between the rapacious "torturer" (the photographer) and his pretentious victim (the person being photographed), and his rather comic notes are a premonition of the problems encountered by portrait photographers and the people photographed by them, whether famous or not. Nadar stressed the expectations of the customers and their vanity and openly envied his friend Etienne Carjac, who started his career as a photographer fired by passion rather than need. He thus claimed that the latter's results were more significant than his own,

Carjac was not only a photographer, but also a painter and poet and was the author of one of the most circulated photographs in the world, a portrait of the young poet Arthur Rimbaud that was quite recently subjected to undue manipulation with the aim of portraying a more adult or simply more "Di Caprified" character as on the invitation to an exhibition dedicated to the poet.

The problem of control over photographs on the part of the photographer or of the agent who represents him is not so much financial as it is a moral problem: safeguarding the value of the photograph.

I have been involved with photography for 40 years, and since I was a girl I have been attracted by the reactions caused by the publication of photographs. I am an avid reader of daily newspapers, and one day I paused while looking at a photograph of Rina Fort a woman who was accused of a horrific murder published in "Il Corriere d'Informazione". However much I tried to consider the gravity of this woman's crime, I felt very sorry at the idea that she knew she was being seen by everyone.

The photographs which troubled me most were those of the authors of my favorite books, offering their looks to all and sundry. It is possible to try to dissimulate what we are and what we feel. However only a look can, albeit only in part, betray our emotions, our feelings and, all told, our own selves

So much time has gone by since those first visual emotions. I was thrown into the world of photography at the age of 18. No schooling, no training, many mistakes, a lot of constant self-criticism, much soul-searching, many new rules. Everything was new to me and was so for my whole generation. Nowadays everyone sees everything in an instant. Digital cameras and live television have now further changed our relationships with images.

But how should we behave when the photographs concern painful, resigned and desperate looks? When the photographs are of the miseries of the world due to the fault and avidity of mankind, pictures of death, separations or up-rootings? And why should we show suffering faces? Does it not mean adding suffering to suffering? This is a question I have asked myself many times during the course of my activity. However, thanks precisely to photography, those faces, those dead, those pains will be able to have a follow-up in our consciences. But in order for this to be correct and moral, it is necessary to obey a few rules, both on the part of the photographer, who must avoid aesthetic extremism which would stress his ability but limit reflection on the causes of the tragedy (usually international selfishness and sinister economic interests), and on the part of whoever publishes the photographs. They should be motivated by the intention of offering a honest document, choosing the truest reporting language, and also on the part of the person receiving the images, in an attempt to reach beyond the horror to understand the photograph and the photographic message,

Few people know how to read photographs and images in general. A recent study by Paul Messaris (Visual Literacy, ed. Westview), stressed this shortcoming and concluded that the analysis of the grammar of visual art makes it possible, among other things, to enjoy visual representations and teaches us to defend ourselves from counterfeits.

It would seem that the media have been intimidated by the strength of photography, and that as a consequence they have been induced to ignore it. They do not look at and do not choose from the incredible number of images produced by so many photographers on major stories. They prefer to choose from among photographs published in other papers from which the audience impact has already been tested, and those most similar to television pictures. This means that photographers are induced to construct scenarios and to portray people in untruthful, almost Disney like situations. What is more, we can no longer bear to see what we are and instead show great appreciation for "how we used to be." There are two reasons for this. First of all, we do not like ourselves (television stars are destroying the most truthful and appropriate concepts of beauty), and we do not have the strength or the will to take steps to change things. In the second place, photography of local news is disheartened and homogenized. The elderly and immigrants are an excellent example of this. Old people are split up into two categories: the rich and the marginalized. There are, however, a large number of dynamic and intelligent elderly people who do not belong to either of these sub-groups and who take an active part in life. Of these there is practically no trace. Photographs of immigrants always allude to negative situations. The articles accompanying the photographs are full to the brim with arrogance and do not let their real story show through. We never see photographs of positive integration, and all this fosters racism and the pushing away of the problem.

In any case, photography is considered a subordinate of written information. Photographs are met with hostility in editorial offices and fall victim to cuts in space and attention. If shown on television, photographs are accompanied by verbose comments preventing any direct contact with photographic language, which is concise, plain, dense and immediate by its very nature. This undervalues once again the educational power of photography which in actual fact can make the onlooker participate in a given reality, toning down its more violent or too involving aspects. This is because a photograph has no smell, no voice and, like poetry, establishes direct communication with the viewer with all the strength that originates from its immediacy and power to synthesize. Only the religious world understood, surprisingly early, how to exploit the power of images for its own purposes, creating a dangerous and somewhat ridiculous iconography, often made of sickening little pictures with their wretched hells full of flames for exorcising love for life.

Let us go back to the photographer, who has just completed a story he appreciates for the harmony he has created between the form and the contents. From this moment on until it is published, his report is in danger. The films go to the labs, the photographs have to be edited and if they are in black and white test prints have to be chosen. Only the photographer himself can make any cuts. The photographs then have to be combined with the appropriate captions, and are then sent to possible customers and, so lastly, by the time of publication, less than 5% of photographers declare themselves satisfied. For the others, something or everything of their story has been lost.

A whole parade of people have interceded between the incidents that were the cause of Anthony Suau's initial statement. Why does this happen? First of all, no training is provided for the personnel who have to manage the photographic material: there are no schools for picture-editors, or for filing personnel or for iconographic research personnel. Photographs cost too much and too little is paid for them. The distances separating the creation of a photograph from the moment of its publication is therefore either too long or too short. Digital is the new menace. Taking photographs with digital technology and then sending them off by computer? Yes, but who checks the process, the amount of room set aside for the report and for the title?

The staff cuts in editorial departments have also led to a further deterioration of the treatment applied to photographs, often delegated to the secretarial department, to improvised iconographic research personnel, to art directors and to editors in their odd moments. The times when people could spend time on projects, on discussions for organizing a proposal or a photographic work have disappeared. More than quality, what is discussed is price. What is more, during the last few years, a new and pernicious habit has become all the rage: rather than tackling a topic by displaying the work of a single photographer who has approached it with dedication, there is a preference for offering an assortment of photographs by various different photographers. This inevitably gives rise to a language that has nothing uniform about it and is mixed up (one photograph in postcard style, another showing the atmosphere, others that do not match up with the requirements of the text or even with colors caused by the use of lighting that makes them clash with the others), as if one wanted to supply a "Harlequin" paper, inducing readers, who are less stupid and unprepared than is thought, to turn over the page in a great hurry.

Reflection is necessary also on the subject of the new technologies: photograph scanning, digital transmission, the Internet. Many photographers consider the advent of digital technology a collective misfortune, which it is not possible to escape. The digital world is here to stay. It is a world that can be improved.

Indeed, the media have decided that they will admit to all their photomontages. Unscrupulous computer manipulations can lead to disorder and cause a few distortions of history. But I would not worry about these simulations. They are little games bound to disappear, because the public does not like photomontages. Moreover, even before computers came in, laboratory techniques had been introduced that made it possible to touch up or clean up a photograph according to one's needs. Nature photographers themselves, involved by definition in the ethical aspects of photography, feel the fascination of the computer. Thanks to the computer, the well-known photographer Art Wolfe was able to reproduce natural situations such as the migration of zebras, which would not have been easy to photograph. Wolfe stressed that the result of that situation, which does actually occur in nature, had been, in the specific case in question, reproduced using technological means. THE NANPA, the association of nature photographers, and other associations are also trying to regulate the relationship between technology and photography.

On the other hand, the advantages offered by the digital world are more than just a few:

a) Scanning photographs makes it possible to preserve them better than in any other traditional records system. The famous photographer Mary Ellen Mark has filed 18,000 photographs on CD's.

b) Computers make it possible to show the photographic exhibitions of up-and-coming photographers in different countries, which otherwise could not be displayed in galleries. In addition, it will foster the sale of photographs to collectors.

In my agency, the new technologies are used to transmit photographs, although I personally love touching a traditional black and white print. I feel that there is no point in ignoring what is new, and that it would be unproductive, and that it is desirable to know how to exploit the potential of the new means, while curbing their dangers. At the moment there are about one hundred associations all over the world that are concerned with these issues.

The 20th Century is the century of photographs. Starting from the Second World War, the way things are displayed has changed to a marked extent. Joy, pain, birth, death ... everything is visible and photographers themselves no longer recognize the limits of the permissible, beyond which their eyes, their cameras, the final product may wound the people photographed or the public. Experience has taught me that there are useless photographs: the photograph of Pasolini's corpse, for instance. It was absolutely gratuitous. On the other hand, I feel that the photograph from when Aldo Moro's body was found in the Renault, it had an important historical function. The same applies to a photograph that we grew up with: the sequence of the assination of President . Kennedy taken by A. Zapruder. Nobody knows the absolute truth about that attack even now, but without that document we would have accepted passively any pre-packaged version whatsoever.

I feel strong perplexities about news items. I do not agree with the publication of photographs that celebrate private pain, such as those showing a crowd of people in an airport who know that they have lost their loved ones in an accident, or people who have been arrested. I cannot bear, either, photographs taken in courtrooms, and I appreciate the law that exists in some American states banning the use of cameras in courtrooms. For children in difficulty, I believe that the law on privacy has made some proper corrections to the excesses of past years, but care is needed. Obscuring the face of the child is not sufficient, since even a coat can make a person recognizable and therefore vulnerable. I felt sorry for the life and death of Lady Diana, but I was indignant about the unfair accusation of photographers in contributing to her death. It is possible to escape the flashes of the cameras. All one has to do is to avoid the St. Tropez - Emerald Coast - Paris Ritz "paparazzi tour."

Author Paul Claudel gave a beautiful definition of photography in "The Listening Eye." The key to what is permissible lies in that way of listening that takes place every time we prepare to listen to our own hearts, to our own experience and to that of others. There are no limits, but rules that have to be invented from time to time. How can they be identified? How can photography retain its magic function of a reverent and respectful story of the object being photographed? How can such an obvious wish on the part of many celebrities to be photographed constantly be fulfilled without losing the rightful contact with their personalities? And how should one deal with news items, a crowd of unknown people? There are many hard and violent or soft or ironic stories I would not like to cancel from my imagination: the immigrants in Milan, in the arrival of the Beatles in America, the first AIDS deaths, the first great popular concerts, the fascination of certain first nights at the La Scala Theatre or at the Piccolo, the Latin Quarter in the fifties, the political demonstrations, the joyfulness of the end of the war, the extermination camps.

I have a few answers plus some intuitions. The first, which is also the most obvious and the most spontaneous, is that man has to act according to his conscience, and that in order to do so he must be inter-disciplinary. No one is capable of understanding what he sees if he decides to cultivate his own personal garden far from life. The first person of whom an interdisciplinary nature is demanded is the photographer, who must add to his training by reading constantly and by means of constant contacts with others. What is more, the time has come for image-reading to become a subject to be studied starting in primary schools, as suggested by the excellent Paola Pallottino. She recommended studying and salvaging the iconography of the past, and that the papers themselves should create opportunities for comments concerning the use of photographs and of their contents in handling far-reaching topics such as the war in Yugoslavia, and the famine in Sudan. In the future there will be a big demand for photography professionals, photo-shop experts, illustrators of news stories - professions which up to now have been improvised, without the support of any training at all. It seems that photography is too young to be deserving of management by specialized personnel, but 150 years are a lot!

Lastly, I would like to remember some remarks made by Michael Hoffman, editor of Aperture, the refined photographic publishing house in New York. This is how Hoffman summarized his ethical code referred to the publication of photographs:

a) The picture must be proffered to the public with the top standard of reproduction: the best inks, paper, design, printing and editing must be used.

b) The picture must be published respecting the wishes of the author, and it must be reproduced in such a way that it does not fall victim to commercial needs, marketing trends or outside censorship.

c) The picture must be placed in a context increasing the ethical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual commitment of the spectator.

Pure intuition is what makes me hope that we are approaching the end of this period, characterized by a lack of collective thrust, existential stresses and a reflux towards private life. It is only by ridding ourselves of the superficiality that is widespread at all levels that we will be able to undertake the path towards a change that will enhance the value of the ethics not only of respect for images but of all disciplines. This can only come true through a return to the great utopias that foster creativity and the spirit of adventure and which stimulate courageous choices characterized by respect for others.

Grazia Neri

Grazia Neri was born in Milan. After working at Newsblitz photoagency, she got involved in her own photography business in 1966 by representing the new born French agency Gamma that split up a few years later and gave birth to Sygma, which she then opted to represent instead. Since then, Grazia Neri has enjoyed the trust of some of the most renowned photographers, prestigious magazines and very committed agencies such as Contact, Matrix, Network, Vu...She quite legitimely is considered as a serious reference both for photographers and for agencies around the world. She was for 8 years President of Gadef, an Italian association similar to ASMP in USA that fights to protect the photographers copyright. She is regularly invited to take part in the juries of international competitions such as the World Press in Amsterdam, the W. Eugene Smith Grant and the Eisie Award. She has lectured on photojournalism in Italy, Western and Eastern Europe as well as in USA. She has been involved in the last few years in the curating and organization of exhibitions in Milan, Rome, Bologna and Verona. She is the artistic director of her own gallery which she opened in 1997 in her home town. Amongst the photographers for whom she has developed exhibitions are: David Burnett, Donna Ferrato, Greg Gorman, Douglas Kirkland, Frans Lanting, Mary Ellen Mark, Anthony Suau, David & Peter Turnley. Her agency has been more recently involved in producing photography books and catalogues in collaboration with some of the best Italian publishers such as Arnoldo Mondadori and Motta Editore. Grazia Neri is the president of the agency which bears her name. She has a son, Michele Neri, who is the executive director of the agency.

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I want, therefore, to leave the public outcry aside and focus on the photographic essay as a piece of artwork in its own right, thus offering a personal view on the use of the arts in health care, particularly in the care of older people. A burning question as I leave the debate behind, however, would be: "Where are the voices of the residents?" They seem to absent yet again, as others have scrambled to speak on their behalf. I wonder if anyone asked them what they thought.

Stark representation

Such stark representation of the human body, of whatever age, inevitably arouses mixed reactions. Nevertheless, this essay presents a reality of ageing and care of the ageing in a way we, nurses included, so often choose to ignore. For this reason and others, I write to commend and congratulate Alan Knowles and Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand for this wonderfully moving and honest portrayal of older people and those who care for them.

The photographic essay offers a refreshing contribution to the journal with its images and quotes highlighting the intimate and respectful relationship between care-giver and care receiver. The photos do not shy away, as good art shouldn't, from the vulnerability, frailty, and dependence of these older people, or from the reality of body work which caters undertake day after day. For me, the photos also reveal much warmth, affection, attentiveness and trusting acceptance on the part of both parties. Old naked bodies are not often seen in the everyday. The images and representations of ageing which are portrayed in magazines, film, newspapers are often of a refined old age--people with silvery grey hair who are described as "ageing positively"--perhaps a couple, of indeterminate

old age, walking hand-in-hand on a Kapiti Coast beach, safe in the knowledge that they have the good life in their retirement village. Or, if we do see even older, more frail people in the news, they are sitting dressed up in front of a centenarian birthday cake, and they are described as "cute", "sweet", "delightful", "amazing for their age". Or they are an "outrageous octogenarian




" who is skydiving

or going on a camel trek. These are the images we are more comfortable with. But images such as those in the photographic essay are scary for us. They remind us of our own old age, which we will reach unless we die first. And all the antioxidant
broccoli and pedometers in the worn will not keep this at bay. This discomfort horrifies us, and then suddenly we are horrified



for the older people in the photographs, as surely they could not possibly want this: our own mothers wouldn't, would they? (read: and we certainly wouldn't.)

If the role of art is to delight, enthuse





, calm, inspire and transport us, then surely it is also to provoke, question, challenge and make us think. I think we are all thinking, as a result of this photographic essay, and this is a good thing. Thank you, Alan and Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand, for capturing a slice of the everyday and sharing it with nurses and caregivers. This is often undervalued




work, even within nursing, and you show how vital and important carework is when delivered by respectful, non-judgemental, committed staff who carry out their work while upholding the dignity (dignity does not just occur when one is fully dressed) of the older people, whom in many instances are cared for as if they are members of a caters own family. Thank you also to those older people who agreed to have their photos taken. Alan Knowles has done them proud and to my mind there is nothing demeaning

or exploitative about these photos. It is surely, instead, potentially patronising to suggest that this might be so.

It would be sad indeed if the value of the photographic essay is lost in a furore of fury. It is a shame that the visual essay was never exhibited as planned, which may have been a more appropriate vehicle for the photos and may have done them more justice. But art will out and a large group of New Zealanders




are now perhaps reflecting more on real ageing, about their own ageing and about how frail old people are cared for in our country.

Lorraine Ritchie RN, BA, MHSci, is a nursing lecturer in Christchurch. She has a particular interest in the meaning of old age and ageing in society, and care from the older person's and a policy perspective. Her PhD will took at older people's assessment narratives and beliefs in medication using discourse analysis

methodology.
COPYRIGHT 2006 New Zealand Nurses' Organisation
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2006, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

The photo essay: when pictures add up. (Photo Critique).

The photo essay: when pictures add up. (Photo Critique).

Link to this page
I'm often asked to explain the difference between a picture story and a photo essay. Though both attempt to tell a story using multiple images, they are entirely different forms of visual communication.

A picture story is usually narrative in form and relies heavily on text and captions for context and meaning. Text is written first, and pictures usually show the very things the story talks about.

A photo essay, on the other hand, is more interpretive and symbolic in form. It cumulatively adds up the meaning of multiple pictures to communicate an even stronger point. Text and captions are written after the pictures are related and displayed. Words offer context, but the images in a photo essay express considerable meaning on their own. Effective photo essays can be long or short--ranging in size from a page to an entire book. The photo essay, rarely seen these days, offers great potential as a visual communication medium. It is a sleeping giant

waiting to be awakened.

As a theoretical example of a short photo essay, I'll use four of my own pictures taken on a recent visit to Alaska. I chose industrial subject matter--the remote and isolated historic mill town of Kennecott, which once processed the output of the United States' last and largest high-grade copper ore mine. Now a ghost town
in Alaska's vast Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

, Kennecott thrived from 1911 until 1938, when the nearby mines were depleted





. For more than 60 years, Kennecott's buildings have somehow endured. Today they offer us a haunted look into another era.

If I were to publish these four images in an actual photo essay, I would need three spreads (six pages). I would open the essay with a two-page spread carrying only a full-bleed picture of Kennecott's spectacular power plant. (A headline and subhead





would be placed in the sky.) The patterns created by the sunlight striking the rooftops of the vast structure symbolize the glory days of early 20th-century heavy industry. As I was framing this shot on the display screen of my Canon G2 digital camera, I thought of the words of Charles Sheeler

, an American painter who interpreted the great factories of the Roaring '20s in a stark, geometric style



. "Our factories," Sheeler said, "are our substitute for religious expression." Cropping the image tightly within the frame to intensify the energy of the rhythmic diagonal roofs and vertical chimneys, I saw before me an industrial cathedral. Although its windows are now smashed and electricity no longer radiates from its core, the power plant tells us what Kennecott once represented.

The middle spread of my theoretical photo essay would feature a vertical pairing, as well as a short copy block. At top, I'd place the picture of the red and white Kennecott post office, the heart of the old mining town. All who once lived here walked through the narrow wooden door to get their mail. It now bears a "keep out" warning.

As a contrast in both content and color, I would place a chaotic interior shot I made in Kennecott's mill building directly below the post office shot. I found this room ravaged





by time and vandals. The U.S. National Park Service, which took over Kennecott in 1998, intends eventually to restore these buildings to a state of "arrested decay"-thereby keeping the ghost in this ghost town.

I'd close the essay on the third spread, filling both pages with a full-bleed shot of the 14-story mill itself, which still dominates the scene. Its massive chute, which once funneled refined ore to waiting trains below, is now supported by a scaffold to prevent collapse. It emerges from the hillside and forest, an industrial relic still holding its own against the forces of nature.

In this short photo essay, I attempt to interpret the story of Kennecott visually as a series of triumphs and losses. People, time, money and nature all play a part. Kennecott still lives in these images as history all of us can share.

If you would like to see other photographs I made at Kennecott, as well as elsewhere in Alaska and Siberia, Russia, this past summer, you can view them on the web at www.worldisround.comf articles/12057/ index.html.

Philip N. Douglis, ABC


, is director of The Douglis Visual Workshops, now in its 31st year of training communicators in visual literacy. Douglis, an ABC Fellow, is the most widely known consultant on editorial photography for organizations. He offers a comprehensive six-person Communicating with Pictures workshop every May and October in Oak Creek Canyon, near Sedona, Ariz. For current openings and registration information, call Douglis at +1 602-493-6709, or e-mail him at pnd1@cox.net. He also welcomes tear sheets




for possible use in this column. Send to The Douglis Visual Workshops, 2505 E. Carol Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85028, USA.
COPYRIGHT 2002 International Association of Business Communicators
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2002, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Legal Studies Forum
Volume 17, Number 1 (1993)
reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum
VISUAL LITERACY AND THE LEGAL CULTURE:
READING FILM AS TEXT IN THE LAW SCHOOL SETTING
PHILIP N. MEYER
Vermont Law School*
I have found that students better understand this new "lan-
guage" than their book-bound teachers. While legal scholars are
more adept in reading written texts than their students, we
quickly find that our video sophisticated students are much
better trained in "reading" films. Therefore, film helps to level
the pedagogical playing field to the advantage of teacher and
students alike.
John Denvir1
During the 1990 and 1991 academic years I taught a course in popular
storytelling at the University of Connecticut School of Law. The underlying
premise for the course was simple: Our popular culture is predominantly,
perhaps exclusively, a narrative culture, a technologically based oral and visual
story culture, a culture of "secondary orality."' 2 Understandings" are imagistic
and story-centered. Law students and law professors are, of course, products
of this culture. More important, perhaps, lawyers operate in a predominantly
fact-based "narrative" legal culture - an increasingly visual (imagistic) and aural
story culture - discrete from the "paradigmatic" text-bound analytic culture of
the law school.3 Films provide a unique mechanism for structured critical
reflection on the dynamics of legal cultural storytelling.
By avocation, I am a long-time film junkie and closet-screenwriter. By
vocation, I have worked with "criminals" in the prisoners' rights office of a
public defender and taught creative writing at a state psychiatric facility for
criminals. I have always been fascinated by the stories of criminals. Conse-
quently, I selected films with the theme of the outsiders' perspectives on law
and society.4 I hoped that my work experiences would provide experiential
references for meaningful discussions of the films. I also hoped the discussions
might be therapeutic, for the instructor as well as for the class.
I am employed currently as a teacher of legal writing and director of a
legal writing program. I teach law students how to "write like lawyers." My
job is to acculturate students: I help them internalize the highly structured
[73]
analytical form necessary to succeed in law school and transfer this abstract
paradigm into articulate lawyer-like prose.
Law students must effectively identify legal issues and correctly synthe-
size and articulate the legal rules necessary to resolve these issues. Students
must learn to systematically apply these rules ("the law") to "the legally signifi-
cant facts." Unfortunately, the legally significant facts embodied in law school
hypotheticals, legal writing problems and examination fact patterns are simpli-
fied, desiccated and decontextualized; they are merely excuses for students to
state and apply legal rules. The appellate opinions studied in law school are
based on re-examinations of law; they accept the facts of the case as fixed at trial.
After graduation, however, most lawyers operate as storytellers, subjec-
tive and passionate voices advocating client stories in a predominantly narrative
oral culture. Trial lawyers, for example, are "imagistic" storytellers operating
in a factually indeterminate and interpretivist world far removed from the
legally indeterminate world of the appellate court and the law school classroom.
I hoped participants in the seminar would rediscover and develop
subjective storytelling voices in their analysis of imagistic cinematic texts. I
hoped that participants could develop vocabularies for reflecting upon a com-
plex experiential world through analysis of films. I hoped that the course
might liberate the imaginations of law students exhausted after three years spent
in the stultifying and exclusive study of appellate cases.
In this essay, I expand on the brief journal excerpts cited in previous
articles,5 and share the deep thoughtfulness of several seminar participants. I
present significant excerpts from four representative journals, abetted by my
commentary, to identify and describe certain systematic and representative
features of this new literacy.
In the first journal excerpt, illustrative of the new aural and visual
literacy, one student presents a theoretical deconstruction of the stylistic ele-
ments in Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil." In the second illustrative excerpt,
another seminar participant applies his visual literacy to Roman Polanski's
"Chinatown" and Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" and contrasts conflicting
popular images of the lawyer as detective and truthfinder with the lawyer as
postmodern trickster storyteller. In the third and fourth excerpts, one of which
comes from my journal, participants are sensitive to mythic sub-texts and
discover gender identities in Terrence Mallick's "Badlands" and James Foley's
"At Close Range."
These excerpts reflect discrete class discussion themes, and they also
manifest a stunning new visual literacy. In my commentary I discuss the
significance of this new literacy for legal cultural storytellers.
[74]
Visual Literacy
Popular cinematic stories are generally simple linear narratives viewed
from the fixed perspective of an omniscient narrator or protagonist with whom
the viewer identifies. The story hooks the imagination of the audience and
propels the imagination forward with a "hard" plot-line. Since the audience can
not "back-loop"6 over the text, the sub-units of the film must simultaneously
reaffirm and express the central thematic concern or vision of the story while
the plot-line moves the story forward ineluctably. Consequently, sub-units may
be "read" independently and used to decode and comprehend the story's the-
matic content. This concept of underlying "story theme" is akin to the law-
yer's notion of "theory of the case" in the trial storytelling process.
In class discussion, I used freeze-frame analysis on a four-headed tape
machine to deconstruct thematic content. Participants were remarkably adept
at "stop action" analysis of images and deconstruction of smaller cinematic
units. Many "read" visual text and "subtext" fluidly, with great sophistication,
and were conversant with cinematic story-structure although none had taken
a film course or studied film theory. Nevertheless, participants readily under-
stood that images reflected deeper structures and resonated with specific mean-
ings. Participants, sophisticated cultural consumers of stories and images,
reflected systematically on these visual stories.
The journal of Alex G. illustrates this heightened visual and aural
literacy in a critique and deconstruction of the multiple layers of Orson Welles'
"Touch of Evil." The plot of this movie is a prototypical and simple detective
story: a good Mexican cop Vargas, portrayed by Charlton Heston (plastered
with curious make-up to express apparently Mexican ethnicity) and his pretty
American wife (the extremely blonde Janet Leigh) witness a murder on the
American side of the border. Vargas and Hank Quinlan (the bad American cop
portrayed by the corpulent Welles) attempt to investigate and solve the crime.
Their respective methodologies for achieving justice differ drastically. Quinlan
attempts to frame an innocent Mexican youth, while Vargas adheres to "the
rules" and correct investigative procedures. Eventually, Vargas perceives Quin-
lan's corruption and confronts him. Meanwhile, a gang of Mexican bad guys
kidnaps Vargas' wife. There are progressive complications: drugs, more mur-
ders. Quinlan, in cahoots with members of the gang, attempts to frame Vargas
for the murder of the gang leader. In the end, of course, good triumphs over
evil: Vargas exposes Quinlan's corruption and criminality, leaving Quinlan
destroyed.
Like other seminar participants, Alex thinks imagistically. His analysis
imaginatively reinvents the story. He literally sees ideas embedded in cinematic
images; he sees far more in individual shots than I do. For example, Alex
[75]
begins his journal with the description of frames frozen on the screen:
Struggling to lift his hulking frame Hank Quinlan (Orson
Welles) stands nearly erect and half sober in the living room of
Tanya's (Marlene Dietrich's) brothel. As the camera angle widens,
foreshadowing the future, the head of a bull, skewered with swords,
looms over Quinlan. On the same wall, in a mirror surrounded by
photographs of young handsome matadors, is the reflection of
Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston), Quinlan's mortal enemy.
The scene typifies not only the allegorical nature of "Touch of Evil",
but also how the director, Orson Welles, uses the film as a vehicle
for his storytelling.
Alex perceives depth in the "cinematic style" that belie "Touch of
Evil's" gangster cliches. While the text is the "classic confrontation between
good (Vargas) and evil (Quinlan)," the story is "much richer" than merely the
downfall of a crooked cop acting outside the law. The film is multi-layered,
allegorical. Specifically, the allegory is about characters searching through a
maze: Hank Quinlan searches through the maze for a murderer; Vargas search-
es for "the truth"; and "on a deeper level" Quinlan searches to retrieve his past,
and Vargas "in a Homeresque way" searches for home and for his wife Suzie.
Alex identifies story themes, developmental narrative structure and specific
architectural "turning points" in the narrative that mark the ends of three acts
that build towards "the final hallucinatory scene" where "Quinlan reveals and
confronts his dark past .... Like two parallel lines meeting at the horizon,
Vargas's search for truth and Quinlan's search for his lost past converge in the
climax."
Alex is sensitive to visual images and reads these images with great
confidence. For example, he describes Hank Quinlan as " .. . . . the corrupt
Texas cop. His fat equals only the excesses of his job and his maculate face his
stained career . . . fat not from the candy bars but from the excesses of his
abuses."
Alex observes that the characters do not tell this story, rather the
camera does:
Through light and shadow, the use of sound and space, the char-
acters and the maze in which they search are defined. As the char-
acters lose themselves searching in the maze of Los Robles, the
viewer is similarly made to feel uneasy, disoriented and frightened.
Hank Quinlan's evil is not merely heard in his words or seen in his
actions, it is felt by the viewer through the violent movements of the
camera; the piercing, discontinuous sounds of latin music; the asym-
metrical camera shots, and the disruption of time and space. This in-
tentionality of style ... subverts the "balance" of the viewer. The style
denies the viewer the ability to orient himself with any static point of
[76]
reference. Thus, as Quinlan acts farther outside his jurisdiction and
the law, the viewer's perceptions of normality are similarly shaken
by the camera. Through this style Welles effectively tells the story of
corruption at the border; a story which the viewer not only sees and
hears but feels as well. Instead of "form over function," "Touch
of Evil" is "form as function."
In the way that many students and academics of my generation respond
to and interpret written texts, participants were sensitive to and responded to
visual and oral texts with intellectual excitement and speculation. Alex, for
example, is viscerally in tune with imagistic storytelling and observes that he
did not so much "watch" the film as "experience" it. He describes how Welles
uses light and shadow, space and sound, to shake the viewer's "sense of normal-
cy, equilibrium and faith in a 'linear progression,' just as Quinlan and the maze
of Los Robles shakes their sense of honesty, decency and faith in the law."
Alex also understands how the confrontation between Quinlan and
Vargas is framed and emphasized visually: from the first time Quinlan is seen
against a dark background, stepping out of a black car" it is "apparent" that
he is "a doomed man." He is, however, blinded by light,."always squinting
during the day and in his confrontations with Vargas." Whenever Quinlan
appears, "either darkness or shadows pervade the scene It is almost as if
Quinlan is a tumor spreading through the department and infecting 'the
good.'" The conflict between Vargas and Quinlan is emphasized by "Quinlan's
cancerous shadow" that stalks Vargas throughout the film. "Moreover, in every
scene involving Quinlan and his henchmen, Quinlan's shadow covers their faces
it or interrupts the vision of the scene in some way."
Similarly, Alex responds to how Welles uses space and sound to "draw
the viewer out of passivity and force him into the maze." In the first scene the
camera snakes its way through the streets of Los Robles ... beginning with
a closeup of the bomb being placed in the car, then panning back to cover the
city block, then closing in on Vargas and Suzie following them through the
border until the car explodes." Alex observes how this technique "subverts the
viewer's sense of linear progression and denies [the viewer] the sense of direc-
tion, depth perception." Alex documents the use of space and sound through-
out the film:
Welles further creates a feeling of imbalance through spatial manipu-
lation, by confusing foreground, middleground and background. In
the scene after the car explodes, Quinlan and four other individuals
are shown in one frame, however they are all aligned asymmetrical-
ly with no center of balance in the scene. Similarly, when Grandi
loses his "rug," in one shot he and his nephews are in the middle-
ground and in the subsequent shot they are in the foreground
with the camera
[77]
remaining in deep focus. By stripping the "normal" film constructs,
foreground and background, of any static balance, Welles creates
the optical equivalent of moral chaos. Everything is off-center in
"Touch of Evil, " reflecting the lack of middle ground between good
and evil, and also the imbalance of the characters; the psychotic
Quinlan,the sadistic Grandi clan, the pure Suzie, the experienced
Tanya and the "hubristic" Vargas.
Alex describes how "the optical moral hysteria of the maze is reinforced
by the use of the distorted camera angles." He meticulously documents how
the director visually composes the scenes to "manipulate and disorient the
viewer's powers of concentration, visual perception and spatial organization.
While Vargas and Quinlan's worlds are being turned upside down by their own
driving pursuits, so is the viewer's world by Welles' direction."
In one excerpt, he describes and illustrates how sound dislocates the
viewer's perceptive world":
... Sound defines space .... In "Touch of Evil" the aurals and visuals
do not fit. An example of this are the "disembodied" voices after the
explosion. The voices sound as if they are they are confined to a
small room. In reality, however, the scene is in an open field. This
combined with the voices competing and overlapping with each
other within the frame builds tension as well as shaking the viewer's
perceptions of how people talking should sound.
Another way in which Welles achieves this is by separating sound
from its source and confusing it with reflections and shadows. For
example, when the Grandi clan races to the Mirador Motel, the
sound of their engines is heard as if they were six feet away, yet the
camera shows them off in the distance. And when Suzie calls to her
husband from the fire escape, the viewer hears her as if she were in
the next room, while Vargas on the street below is oblivious. Simil-
larly, when Menzies [Quinlan's deputy] and Quinlan "find" the plant-
ed evidence, the camera is focused on Vargas yet the sound is only
of Quinlan and Menzies off-screen. By the end of the film the view-
er has lost all sense of distance and direction as well as the source
itself. The most vivid illustration of this is the finale in which the
"listener" hears Menzies' and Quinlan's voices (separated from their
bodies) on the tape recorder in closeup, while seeing the two men
walk across the bridge at a distance. When Menzies is shot, the
viewer never sees the actual shooting, but hears only a closeup
of the shots fired.
Alex proves his case by systematically compiling the cinematic evidence.
As for time sequence he observes that although the narrative is "consolidated" and
the movie takes place in only a day and a half, "the viewer has no conception of
[78]
this." The distortion of time and space is not accomplished through manipu-
lation of narrative structure, "but rather by the fragmentati6n of the viewer's
perceptions and the manipulation of his senses." It is through the stylistic
elements of "Touch of Evil" that Welles "not only visualizes the conflict be-
tween good and evil, but imposes it upon the viewer."
Initially, like other seminar participants, Alex enjoyed the class' covert
analytical enterprise but questioned the utility of this work in the context of
law school or doing lawyer-work. Perhaps the class was simply a pleasant way
to spend Thursday evenings and avoid another three-credit "overdose" of
appellate cases before having to face the pressure of graduation, loan-debt, jobs
and the rigor of the bar exam. By the end of the semester, however, the class
took on deeper significance for many seminar participants. The meaning for
each participant was different. For Alex, the class affirmed the importance of
his intuitive responses and aesthetic sensibility to his prospective work as a legal
cultural storyteller. Furthermore, in classroom discussion and in his paper, he
imbedded his creative analysis in a tightly organized, passionate, yet lawyer-like
presentation and proof. In doing so, he reaffirmed my sense that filmic text
can provide a laboratory for sensitizing students to, and for the analysis of, oral
and visual storytelling techniques in a legal culture that is, in significant part,
a subset of larger popular storytelling culture.
Skepticism
I proposed hypothetical questions to contextualize our viewing of
several films: Do trials ever reveal the "truth" of the past? Is this their primary
function? Or are lawyers merely narrativist tricksters? Is it, as one seminar
participant observed, only "God who really knows what happened?" Does the
trial serve primarily other functions, such as resolving the controversy,
releasing emotions, providing a sense of coherence - not necessarily be-
tween the event and the outcome, but between the outcome and what hap-
pened at the trial itself[?]7
Alternatively, as the cognitive theorist Jerome Bruner has argued persua-
sively,8 is the storytelling (narrative) mode discrete from the empirical (paradig-
matic) mode of proof? Are stories formed by clever and devious aesthetic
arrangements connected by the aesthetic tissue of verisimilitude? Although
events may "happen", are the causes (the hows and whys of events) ever "know-
able"? Can we, for example, ever look inside someone's mind to determine
"intent" or "state of mind"? Do rules of procedure and evidence unduly cir-
curnscribe and artificially constrain trial narratives? Are lawyers an ethnocen-
tric sub-culture of popular storytellers particularly subject to the professional
self-delusion that cognitive theorists have termed "the original attribution error."9
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In exploring this constellation of discussion questions and themes,
thoughtful participants reveal in their journals additional features of visual
literacy. Doug C. titles his exploration of the storytelling role of the lawyer
"Truth in and Out of Chinatown." The journal compares "Chinatown" and
Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" as presenting visual metaphors for the law-
yer's role in the storytelling process. "Chinatown" is the title of Roman
Polanski's movie; it is also Doug's elliptical reference and response to conflict-
ing images of the lawyer's storytelling role.
Initially, Doug's introduction states, somewhat apologetically, that his
paper reflects a "familiar" seminar discussion theme:
... [C]an the truth of a past event be known? Is an "objective" reality
possible, or is every past occurrence only possible of interpretation
within the context of the observer's unique unrepeatable perspective
of the event?
Doug discusses this theme with a certain detachment and indignation,
reflective of the attitudes of many bright seminar participants. That is, Doug's
answer to this question is, implicitly, obvious. Stories, especially aural and
visual stories, can not and do not reveal truth. We live in an imagistic, frag-
mentary and subjective world and our "stories" are intrinsically imaginative
reconstructions.
... since there is no recount[ing] of events that we can accept
as absolutely true ...we are forced to create systems of "truth substi-
tutes" as alternatives and thus "truth" becomes definable only within
the systems that we create....
"Truth" is literally dependent upon the placement and angle of the
camera:
A popular example: last spring Tate George propelled the
UCONN Huskies basketball team into the NCAA Final Eight by a
"buzzer beating" last second shot. But was the shot "good"? The
best view provided by CBS cameras "Super Slo Mo" replays ap-
pears to indicate that Tate's hand touching the ball when the shot
clock on the same screen indicated no time was remaining .. this re-
play became the "truth substitute" to which the announcers latched
onto and their pronouncement was that UCONN stole a victory.
... But in the case of Tate's shot, accepting a camera replay as
the best "truth substitute" probably doesn't get us any closer to the
absolute truth than the version espoused by any random
ticketholders. Perhaps if God were a Husky fan, He might inform
us that two molecules that connected Tate's hand to the basketball
ceased to "touch" one another (in some atomic sense) with a
nanosecond of time remaining
[80]
in the game. However, anything short of such a divine vision will
contain all the inherent defects that "truth substitute" systems suffer
from. That is, belief in the truth becomes synonymous with belief in
the system.
Doug's observations reflect a knowing cynicism that he shares with
many seminar participants about the nature of their chosen profession and the
limited possibilities of such a narrative-based system's providing "justice" that
is ultimately any more than narrative resolution or denouement:
As a general rule, the justice system seems to favor the "knowable"
version of the truth. Lawyers tend to believe the opposite. By their
behavior and their beliefs, lawyers view the truth as "unknowable"
and as an unapproachable ideal. Thus a lawyer might say that the
judicial system is not a search for truth but a forum for the exposition
of competing versions of what-the-hell happened in a given event.
Doug states his belief that - "leaving aside examples where it is so clear
that an account of an event is 'true' or at least so clear that no one wants to
bother arguing about it" - "the truth" is "unknowable." "Since there is no
way 'truth' can be definitively proven, the role of the lawyer is not to aid in
the search for truth, which according to him is an oxymoronic phrase anyway,
but to arrange any and all facts available to produce the story that best suits his
client's needs." Errol Morris's "The Thin Blue Line" is a "persuasive illustra-
tion" of how easily stories are manipulated and how readily we succumb to the
call of our own stories:
... In the movie, truth is not static or fixed, but is malleable enough
to bend according to the teller of the story .... The movie's premise
achieves the effect of creating horrible unease in the hearts of viewers.
Detective mysteries, particularly cinematic detective stories, provide an
effective visual metaphor for a contrasting idealization of how the "justice"
system (a "truth-substitute" system) supposedly works.
How do detectives fit into this scheme? ... Each is faced with a
past event that is open to dispute; a crime, mystery, or confusing or
unexplained incident. Both must "reconstruct" the event for an audi-
ence. But here the detective and lawyer part company. The lawyer's
motivation is not necessarily to find the truth; instead he is motivated
to come up with a reasonable version of a story, consonant with the
facts, that best serves his client's needs and in turn his own. In con-
trast, the . . . detective traditionally wishes to find the truth, or the
least distorted version of truth available.
Detectives can be "roughly categorized into two groups; those that
primarily ponder on the past and those that act within the present." In the
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first "genre" - akin to the way truth is uncovered in the judicial system -
passive truth-finders "parse through all available information and establish not
the best but the only explanation":
. . . an event leaves behind facts that are indelible and unique as a
fingerprint. The mere inspection of existing clues would expose a
wolf-hound, a poisonous snake climbing a rope bellringer, or a
murderous orangutan. Though cloaked in enticing packaging, this
view of the the way the world operates is mostly stage theatrics and
... borders on campiness.
A second type of truth finder is an "active participant" in the process.
Jake Gittes in Polanski's "Chinatown" is an example of a detective in this genre:
Gittes is quick-witted and bright but not of [Sherlock] Holmes-
ian intellect. Instead, Gittes' genius appears to be not in finding out
what the hell happened but in making things happen. Since the case
before him is not laid out like an intricate puzzle, Gittes must resort
to old-fashioned investigative work and during his meddling,
dames scream, punches are thrown, and guns blaze in the night.
Gittes is a human monkey wrench and despite being confused as
to what his role should be, since he isn't sure of anything including
why he was initially hired, he throws himself into a vague conspiracy
hidden against the gauzy southern California landscape .... Jake
seems to be aware that he will not always find clues merely by ob-
taining a superior vantage point but that clues must be dislodged by
his very presence ... In "Chinatown" Jake is as much a part of the
overall plot as the crime itself.
As much as "Chinatown" tends to resemble how truth is actual-
ly unearthed, the movie is still faithful to, and thus somewhat limited
by its adherence to the notion that, truth is "knowable." This com-
mitment to a clean, tidy universe is understandable in a commercial
sense, since moviegoers are unlikely to flock to see a movie with no
resolution, or worse, one whose conclusion is that truth is unknow-.
able. Although "Chinatown" challenges commercial orthodoxy
in certain ways, its iconoclasm is limited to sending the message
that the search for truth and justice is not rewarded (can it be its
own reward?) and the act of doing good will only result in getting
your new girlfried killed in the end.
Errol Morris's "The Thin Blue Line" presents a contrasting metaphor
about the "natureof truth" although, Doug observes, the movie's ending is "at
odds with the overall message":
[82]
Morris sets out to show that all stories are hopelessly subjective,
and that truth cannot be found,except in the ending of the movie
Morris betrays his own thesis. By concluding his film with David
Harris's vague, ambiguous "confession," Morris has arranged the
facts and interviews to produce the inevitable conclusion that
Randall Adams is innocent and Harris is guilty. While I do not argue
with the merits of this conclusion (any one who saw the movie
would have to agree that Harris is guilty as sin), the overall point of
the movie is lost. Morris sets out to establish that all interpreters
of events rely on their particular perspective; this is why no two
accounts of an event can be absolutely similar and why the past
only exists according to the storyteller's will. But by choosing to
place Harris' confession at the end, Morris has made a conscious
decision to have the story come to a conclusion that points to an
obvious "truth"; that Harris is guilty ...
The theme of storyteller as creator of truth becomes an inces-
tuous one, as Morris appears to fall prey to the same folly as those
that he tries to expose.
Other participants, like Doug, revealed similar attitudes about stories,
particularly visual and aural stories. Participants were deeply skeptical about
the possibilities of such stories' revealing "truth" especially when these stories
were embedded in the formulaic procedural maze and evidentiary constraints
of the judicial process. This cynicism is, perhaps, partially a product of three
years of immersion in the exclusively paradigmatic culture of law school that
devalues and deemphasizes narratives. Simultaneously, participants - subjected
to a continual barrage of visual and aural stories in a popular culture filled with
advertising, television, radio, politics, sound-byte news - often felt deceived by
stories and popular storytellers. Although extremely thoughtful and perceptive,
they were sensitive to manipulation and tended to disbelieve their eyes and ears.
The heightened awareness and critical acuity of many students was often accom-
panied by a hardened detachment, cynicism and refusal to suspend disbelief.
Many participants, like Doug, are truly suspicious of all visual narratives includ-
ing "actual" video shots of such events as the Tate George shot or the Rodney
King beating. These images, often edited into fragments and sound bytes that
are deceptive and decontextualized from the events themselves, are perceived as
"truth substitutes" that do not capture or reflect externalities or totalities.
Many upper-level law students no longer trust narrative explanations; they are
frozen into narrative disbelief. The filmic texts provided an opportunity to
reflect systematically on this deep skepticism.
Passivity, detachment, cynicism and, I fear, resentment and anger, are
also deeply ingrained features of the new visual literacy.
[83]
Hollywood Myths
The myths of our popular culture are revealed clearly in popular films.
Several thoughtful film-makers have, often self-consciously, transmuted myth
into film. These are explicitly Americanized "Hollywood" versions of classical
imaginal landscapes. The characters are archetypes; the plots provide con-
temporary spins on classical thematic patterns. These filmic texts provided a
mechanism for systematic and self-reflective analysis of architectonic story
structures.
Some readers of this article might, initially, question the relevance of
this observation for prospective lawyers. Trial storytelling, however, is a
deeply mythic enterprise: "stock" trial lawyer stories are obvious compilations
and transliterations of popular mythology. Fact-finders identify with and re-
spond to these collective aural story-structures as the mechanisms for organizing
complex stories into coherent meanings.10 Professors Anthony G. Amsterdam
and Randy Herz have documented brilliantly the mythic story-structures
underlying closing arguments presented at a criminal trial.11 The authors' tex-
tual "micro-analysis" of a transcript from a representative successful closing
argument in a murder case, for example, revealed the structure of a deeply
mythic subtext imbedded in the literal text. The audience, the jury, was en-
gaged imaginatively in the heroic myth of the search for the grail of justice.
The sources of this infra-structure were, in the authors' estimation, classical.12
The imagery and structural sub-text was, however, a "Hollywood" version of
classical themes, part of a "popularized" mythology. Professors Amsterdam and
Herz subsequently used three segments from Hollywood movies13 to identify
and illustrate three discrete lawyers' roles as dramatis personae within different
versions of a standardized popular mythology.
I sought to explore further this popular mythology. I selected two
pictures - Terrence Mallick's "Badlands" and James Foley's "At Close Range"
- that I believe reflect intentionally mythic internal landscapes through cine-
matic imaginings. Both "Badlands" and "At Close Range" are based on "actual"
stories. Both pictures possess a heightened visuality, often stunning, yet differ-
ent from the psychoanalytic internalities of film noir14 or Orson Welles's paro-
dy/exaggeration of noir elements in "Touch of Evil." The visual statements in
"Badlands" and "At Close Range" often overshadow plot. The imagery calls the
viewer's attention away from the plot to the director's self-conscious effort to
create a deeper resonance for referential images.
"Badlands" is a beautiful yet curious movie about a Charles Stark-
weather-like couple (Kit played by a youthful Martin Sheen and Holly by an
equally youthful Sissy Spacek). Kit murders Holly's father, and burns Holly's
home to cover up the crime. Holly joins Kit and the two outlaws embark on
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a romp of murder and mayhem across the plains. Holly's internal monologue
is lyrical and romantic, filled with stock excerpts from the pulp magazines,
romantic songs, and adolescent fantasies of the day - she is a travelling sidekick
on the journey through an imaginal landscape. The imagery is verdant and the
photography exquisite. Holly's monologue, an aural montage, provides coun-
terpoint to the imagery. Holly's romantic musings and justifications of Kit's
activities are, however, different from the audience's reactions. These characters
are not Hollywood's usual sympathetic variety. The audience is distanced
further from the story as Holly's self-reflective and self-consciously romanti-
cized thoughts and the events of the plot are subsumed by the intensity of the
film's cinematic beauty. (For example, Mallick presents the fire that Kit ignites
to burn down Holly's house to conceal the murder of Holly's father as epipha-
ny scored to classical music.)
In referring to the "exquisite beauty" of the images in another Terrence
Mallick film, "Days of Heaven," Stanley Cavell notes that Mallick, a former
professor of philosophy at MIT before going Hollywood, translated Heidegger's
work including The Essence of Reasons.15 Cavell cites Heidegger compellingly
in his aesthetic contemplation of the startling beauty of the imagery on the
screen (" ...the face whereby a given something shows its form, looks at us,
and thus appears . . ."). Initially, it was not apparent to me what the "face on
the screen" revealed or even why I had intuitively chosen Mallick's movie. My
confusion abated, however, when I read the participants' journals. I realized
that "Badlands" was a shared imaginal landscape rather than a literal representa-
tion of the plains of Nebraska.
James Foley's "At Close Range" is an idiosyncratic film with an exag-
gerated visuality that makes the viewer aware that this story is intended to be
about much more than merely small-time, small-town hoods in rural Pennsyl-
vania. Brad Whitewood, Sr., operates a gang of professional Pennsylvania
thieves. (Brad Sr. is portrayed by a silent, sinister and archetypal Christopher
Walken who is literally evil beyond words - so evil that he is afflicted by a
"Pennsylvania" accent that twists and distorts his speech and often prevents the
viewer from understanding what he is saying.) Whitewood's son, Brad Jr. falls
in love with sixteen-year-old Terry. (Sean Penn portrays the emotionally
seething and confused Brad Jr., who - like his father - operates in an imaginal
landscape beyond language, trapped by his father's spirit and a slow-cooked
Oedipal rage.)
Brad Jr. desperately seeks his father's love and escape from the nothing-
ness of life with his mother and an abusive stepfather. He wants to join his
father's gang and live with the alabaster-skinned Terry (a child-like yet strong
willed tomboy portrayed by Mary Stuart Masterson). Brad Jr. forms a chil-
dren's gang of outlaws Whitewood Sr. names them the "kiddee" gang - to
[85]
emulate his father's gang. Brad Jr. proves his manhood to his father in a
robbery and moves up to Whitewood Sr.'s gang. There is a plot reversal,
however, when Brad Jr. realizes that his father is evil, after he witnesses his
father murder an informant. He wants to escape his father's grip. But it is too
late. When Brad Jr. commits a crime to get money to escape with Terry, he
is arrested and jailed. His father rapes Terry as a warning to his son about the
consequences of what happens to squealers. When Brad Jr. learns of the rape,
he comes clean to the authorities in exchange for his release from custody.
Brad Sr. systematically slaughters the members of the kiddees' gang, including
Brad Jr.'s half-brother.
Finally, Brad Sr. orders the gang to murder his son. Brad Sr. salaciously
watches a stripper at a netherworld bar while the Whitewood gang carries out
the order. Terry is murdered and Brad Jr. is badly wounded. Scored to Ma-
donna and synthesizers, Brad Jr. rises from the dead and cleanses the blood off
his body with water from a garden hose. He then confronts Brad Sr.
In reviews, critics were ambivalent towards Foley's aestheticizing of
violence, gesture and imagery, cinematically employed release the mythic ele-
ments in the story. For example, Richard Corliss observed that, "Every over-
wrought gesture, every pregnant banality, every brutal killing is elongated to
impress upon us the moment's importance and sick beauty. This fetishized
attention to detail . . . makes 'At Close Range' a sort of Atrocity Olympics
captured in Super Slo Mo.""16
Nevertheless, "At Close Range" and "Badlands" encouraged a type of
analysis that seemed prevalent in the course journals. In these journals, includ-
ing my own, the images of the characters were clearly identified as representa-
tive of archetypes drawn from stock "mythic" stories. journals attempted to
trace the structure of these stories.
In one representative journal, Christine S. uses these two films as a
mechanism for exploring a male director's exploration of (and exploitation of)
archetypes drawn from a purportedly female psyche, or at least the director's
version of this mythology, and her subjective responses to this vision.
Like Alex (and like other visually literate students) Christine herself uses
the hook of an image to capture the imagination of the reader. It is as if
participants are writing movies; they are thinking imagistically and describing
images as embodying ideas. What they see is what they think. Christine's
"hook" is taken from personal experience, rather than the film's cinematic text:
I went to school with a murderer. Two weeks before gradua-
tion, the police discovered the mother's body in the trunk of the
family car, where it rested while my schoolmate commuted to
class each day. I attended a private Catholic girls' high school. The
student was con-
[86]


victed and sentenced to Niantic prison for Women, from whence
presurnably she received a high school diploma. My story has a
point - the only murderer I ever knew personally was female, and
very much like me, yet in the literature of criminality women infre-
quently appear as direct or deliberate, as so-called cold blooded
murderers. Those that are portrayed directly are often queens or
wariors, pseudo-males,operating in their stead. The others fall into
two general categories, both images of women from childhood
which persist in fiction about female outlaws. The evil step-
mother of infamous fairy tales,grasping and jealous, dominates the
night psyche of many a child. Eve, the primal temptress, continues
hold over theimagination of adults. Both recur too often in fiction
to be dismissed as childish remnants. This tendency is certainly not
an issue NOW will take up any time soon, but it raises an interesting
question bout the literary/cinematictreatment of women involved
in serious crime. In both "Badlands" and "At Close Range"
females were co-conspirators with their male counterparts, yet the
cinematic treatment of each reflects uncertainty about their real roles.
Like other participants, reminiscent of Hemingway's focus on sentences
as the relevant analytical sub-unit for analysis of fiction, Christine interprets
shots as emblematic of story structure, theme and character. She decodes
readily the meanings of these shots in "Badlands":
An innocent high school baton twirler in the opening shot,
Holly views life as that baton, spinning and tumbling end-over-end,
but, at base, under her control. Originally, she seems an unwitting
victim, the object of Kit's obsession. This facade fades at her al-
most stoic acceptance of her father's murder and connivance in the
the destruction of her home. Her narrated commentary shows her
to be aware of both the intentionality of her actions and a presenti-
ment of the end of her romantic adventure. She remains an elusive
character, in spite of her diary-like recollections - somewhat
unattached from Kit, his aberrant behavior and her own fate. Even
her protestations of love fall short of real commitment.... This
spree had little connection with her real life or aspirations, but
was a careless moment out of the short life of the young girl from
Texas whose father was a sign painter.
Excerpts from the journal illustrate Christine's analysis:
... As their odyssey continues, Holly becomes increasingly less
communicative with Kit and more with the audience. As an observer
to the events of the story, she uses emotionally florid language that is
sophisticated and lyrical, while her character responds to Kit in
vague, abbreviated comments. Revealing little of herself to Kit, the
persona she presents to the audience is illusory and other-worldly.
For those
[87]
given to finding symbols in people, she becomes Kit's muse of evil,
ever quiescent but stirring violence in him. Her report of his vision
of herin beautiful white robes, but with a forehead cold to his touch,
is delivered in her childlike voice with pride.
... She parts from Kit, not because she suffers any great moral
angst, but because she has tired of the game. Perhaps she sensed his
willingness to kill had waned as he let a solitary oilman escape.
. . . The early interval in Eden, with the whispering forest
around them, forecast Holly's role as Eve, leading Kit to the tree of
evil, at once temptress and serpent, virgin and victim. The image is
repeated in Terry, the female companion in "At Close Range."
Christine compares Terry and Holly. Although Terry's role in the
triangle between Brad Jr. and Brad Sr. is somewhat different, their mythic roles
are analogous. Again, Christine analyzes thoughtfully the opening shot of "At
Close Range" as it captures and explicates the underlying mythic implications
of the filmic text:
Terry first appears offering herself for appraisal on the town
green. In her early responses to Brad's advances, she resembles
Holly - tentative and virginal. Brad is the initial pursuer, but Terry
quickly rejects her safe middle class surroundings to join her for-
tunes with him. In desertion and realliance, she encourages Brad's
growing association with his father, flirting with the evil in the
character portrayed by Christopher Walken. The director's
heavy-handed use of religious/cultural symbols throughout the movie
emphasizes Terry's unique position in the father-son conflict. It is
Terry who whispers the ultimate temptation in Brad Jr.'s ear, the
suggestion which lures him into criminality and the inescapable
confrontation with his father...
The Eve image preserves women's roles as both helpmate and
temptress. It accounts for female evilness while maintaining her dual
status as desirable and subservient. How people respond to the Eve
figure in outlaw literature and film is symptomatic of how they feel
towards criminality in general. Eves evoke the ambivalence that
marks the field, at once attractive and repugnant, compelling
a response to our very nature.
I saw the same movies as Christine. And yet, when I review my
journal, it reveals an entirely different mythology. In fact, when I recall and
describe these movies, I describe entirely different films that fit with my interi-
or stories, I literally see a different story. For example, like Christine, I begin
[88]
my analysis of "At Close Range" with the hook of an image. My journal,
however, recalls specifically a different "opening" image that evokes a different
mythology shot on a different interpretive landscape:
The opening shot of "At Close Range" is Gatsby-esque, a deeply
romantic version of this same visual image: a teenage boy driving a car
into the center of a dream-like town, while the lights around him spin
as if a projection from inside his imagination. These lights are softly-
muted, distant. At the center of town, at the base of a monument,
there is a lovely innocent-faced barely post-pubescent girl. The boy
cruises slowly around the square. The music plays lyrical synthesizer
figures. The boy watches the girl intensely and, in slow motion,
tthe girl looks back. A deeply emotional cathexis is established
between the boy and the object of his desire .... As the title
suggests, the world is viewed "At Close Range" from the perspective
of the adolescent outlaw anti-hero, Brad Whitewood Jr ....
Romantic possibilities and interconnections are imbedded beneath
language, located in the mysteries of silence and experience.
The visual style is not a gloss over the story. Instead, the style
enables the storyteller to open up his material to deeply and darkly
resonant mythic themes (e.g., the power of good and evil, the sins of
the father visited upon the son, and search for the lost father and the
ultimate desire for atonement with the father).
These are, of course, the themes of my story - not necessarily the one
that James Foley's tells - just as Christine tells her story when she describes
the film in her journal. When we replay filmic text on the screen of our
imagination, we imaginatively reinvent the text, grafting the images onto inter-
nalized story-structures that make the story our own on subsequent interior
viewing.
In my journal I develop several themes. The first compares the stylistic
perspective of the storytellers in "At Close Range" and "Badlands."
In "At Close Range" the filmmaker's technique closely intercon-
nects his vision to the adolescent world of his anti-hero/outlaw ... The
eye" of the camera becomes the "I" of the criminal outsider .... In
"Badlands" the perspective is brought even farther inside the internal
world of the adolescent anti-heroine: the story is revealed through
internal monologue . . . .
The second develops the mythic themes of the search (specifically, the
quest for the departed father) and the dangerous "heroic" journey. These are
the themes that I uncovered in the movie. These are, of course, themes
from a traditional male mythology reflected in male journals, regardless of
[89]
the cinematic "text." For example, Alex specifically perceives and analyzes
this theme in his visual analysis of a different movie, "Touch of Evil." Similar-
ly, Doug - despite his skepticism - specifically identifies the heroic "search"
for truth as the core story in his analysis of "Chinatown." Doug identifies a
twisted anti-theme version of this search as the core story in "The Thin Blue
Line." Likewise, Amsterdam and Herz deconstruct the macro-structure and the
micro-text of a male defense attorney's closing argument in a murder case to
reveal the identical "heroic" mythological infra-structure.17 The characters in
these mythological stories are invariably archetypal.18
Participant journals simultaneously reveal personal psychobiography
interwoven with these deeper patterns. For example, my journal and the
interpretation of "At Close Range" reveals my psychobiography: it captures
my autobiographical stories about the early death of my father and my search
for (as Doug might say) "father-substitutes" rather than "truth substitutes."
And, as I explained in a previous article,19 many of the course journals were
deeply personal.
Generally, journals cross-referenced other popular aural and visual
stories: popular music, television programs, news and sports events. There was
a new visual textual field of sources and references.
For example, my journal compares "At Close Range" to the most
popular intentionally "mythic" movies of the day, "The Star Wars Trilogy":
Like Luke Skywalker, Brad Whitewood Jr. embarks on a dan-
gerous journey to prove his manhood and fulfill his romantic longing
for sensual love, heroism and, ultimately, the possibility of transcen-
dence. Unlike Luke, however, Brad soon discovers that he is not
protected by the power of "The Force." The narrative possibilities
are dark and sinister. There is evil beneath the danger and risk-
taking rather than heroism, romance or, transcendence.
Later I note the plot point of the major dramatic reversal after Brad Jr.
witnesses the murder of Lester the informant. "Brad Sr. puts his fingers to his
lips and signals to his son, signifying silence and complicity .... at that mo-
ment Brad Jr. realizes that his father is evil." Brad Jr. tries to extricate himself
from his father's grip. It is too late, however.
Like Luke Skywalker's inevitable confrontation with Darth
Vader, the denouement comes in Brad Jr.'s final face-off "at close
range" against his father, evil personified, remarkably portrayed in
mythic shadings by Christopher Walken (who does not need to wear
a Darth Vader mask). There are deeply resonant lines here, beauti-
fully delivered with an edge of self-awareness bordering on parody.
For example, Brad Jr. retrieves the weapon that was presumably
used to slaughter the
[90]
kiddee gang, his half-brother, and his lover Terry. He demands to
know, "Is this the family gun Dad?" This father-son confrontation is
charged with realized emotional potentialities and the intentionally
sparse dialogue is energized by the punctuation of gunfire ....
Classroom discussion of these conflicting mythologies, sources and
cross-references underlying our interpretations and understandings of cinematic
text was fascinating. Conversation was tinged with elements of personal confes-
sion. Nevertheless, participants imaginatively incorporated a collective or
shared repertoire of popular images, events and symbols. Although we recog-
nized the subjectivity of our interpretations, we shared the discovery that we
imaginatively reinvented the visual texts of the story along several common
axis.
We noted the sexual bases to the interpretive mythologies that underlay
and organized our biased viewings of filmic texts. For example, Alex, Doug
and I interpreted and organized three different movies along the same psychic
axis of the heroic search. Christine and other women in the class, however,
organized stories along a different shared axis that charted discrete and different
psychic terrain. We literally saw different movies. "Badlands" and "At Close
Range" provided imagistic keys to unlock and unpack competing mythologies.
These discussions have profound implications for popular storytellers' trying
to understand how we think today, and particularly for law students trying to
systematically reflect on their roles as popular storytellers discovering how to
use stories effectively as tools for communication and rhetorical persuasion in
an aural and visual popular storytelling culture. These mythologies underlie
and inform our understandings of lawyers' roles inside and outside of the court-
room.
Conclusion
The course in Law and Popular Storytelling scratched the surface of a
simple idea: lawyers are popular storytellers who operate in an aural and visual
storytelling culture. Lawyers tell imagistic narratives constructed upon aesthetic
principles that are closely akin to the structural principles that control the for-
mulation of plot-structure in commercial cinema. We tell stories with hard
driving plot-lines and clear themes that are readily distilled. We shoot our films
from the fixed perspective of protagonist-clients. We are simple realists who
construct our stories to hook the sympathy and capture the imagination of
audiences who think in pictures. We sequence shots on imaginal storyboards
until we establish the patterns that ultimately suit our purposes. We speak and
think filmically, We have much to learn from visual storytellers working the
same popular cultural turf.
[91]
The course was also deeply personal. I selected films about convicts,
criminals, prisoners and outlaws - protagonists on the margins of society - as
visual texts. Because of my own work experiences, I found these visual texts
especially interesting. I also believed that my work experiences would provide
experiential references for meaningful discussions of these films.
Although I felt intuitively that the students would respond to films, I
was unprepared for what transpired. The films about protagonists on the
margins of society struck a deeply resonant chord in third-year law students.
Participants revealed a heightened and stunning visual sophistication and acuity
that I had not anticipated. journals were passionate and eloquent, more so than
my often obscure pedagogic reasons for initially selecting the movies. Likewise,
discussions often came to life with passion, humor and profound understanding.
Many students perceived far more in the films than I did. These bright students
were, apparently, versed in a new type of visual literacy. They were on the far
side of a dramatic and seismic shift in our culture.
[92]
ENDNOTES



* I am grateful to David R. Papke, Neal Feigenson, Richard Sherwin,
Patrick Kennedy, Cam MacRae and the students in the Law & Popular
Storytelling class.
1. John Denvir, "Introduction to Special Issue on 'Legal Reelism,'"
15 Legal Studies Forum 3 (1991).
2. Walter J. Ong, Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word 136
(1988)
.
3. See generally Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible World
11-13 (1986).
4. The syllabus included the following movies: "In Cold Blood,"
"The Thin Blue Line," "Chinatown," "Straight Time," "Badlands,"
"The Grifters," "Touch of Evil," "The River's Edge," and "Twelve Angry Men."
5. Philip Meyer, "Convicts, Criminals, Prisoners & Outlaws,"
42 Journal of Legal Education 129 (1992) and "Law Students Go
to the Movies," 24 Connecticut Law Review 893 (1992).
6. See Ong, supra note 2 at 39-40.
7. Gary Bellow and Bea Moulton, The Lawyering Process:
Preparing and Presenting the Case 198-199 (1981).
8. See Bruner, supra note 3.
9. The terminology is taken from lecture notes from J. Bruner,
"Lawyering Theory Colloquium," New York University School
of Law (Spring 1992).
10. See, for examples, Reid Hastie, Steven D. Penrod, Nancy Pennington,
Inside the Jury (1983); W. Lance Bennett and Martha S. Feldman,
Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom: Justice and Judgment in
American Culture (1984).
11. Professors Amsterdam and Herz presented this microanalysis of
closing arguments in a murder trial in an untitled working paper and
discussion at the 'Lawyering Theory Colloquium," New York
University School of Law, April 7, 1992. A formal version of this paper is
Visual Literacy and the Legal Culture 93, forthcoming in volume 37 of
the New York Law Review.
12. The authors identify the "classic narrative theme" of "the quest of the
hero" as "unmistakable" in the closing argument and cite sources including
Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale 92-96 (Scott, trans. 1968); Joseph
Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1968); Henderson,
"Ancient Myths and Modern Man," in Carl Jung, ed., Man and His Symhols
10 1 - 119 (Laurel ed. 1968) to trace the origins of this oral narrative theme.
See Amsterdam and Herz, note 11, supra.
13. "The Jagged Edge," "Anatomy of A Murder," and "True Believer."
14. See, generally, Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir,
Genre, Masculinity (1991).
15. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of
Film xv (1971).
16. Richard Corliss, Time, April 28, 1986, 70.
17. See Amsterdam and Herz, supra note 11.
18. See sources, supra note 12.
19. See Meyer, supra note 5.