What's the harm?

What's the downside to our contemporary practices of communication using images?

There are so many obvious reasons to why humans use images to convey messages. We use them for advertisements, road signs, and many other reasons. Images are great for the illiterate, including children, and for people of other nations that may speak a different language.
While we like to think that all these signs are for the sole purpose of making life easier, they are not. Images are used to persuade. They are used to show people what is right, and what is wrong. They are used to convince humans what to wear, buy, use, drink, eat, etc.
What's the harm? Even though these seem like good things, a lot of individuality is taken away. Humans no longer get to decide on their own what looks good on a person and what doesn't. People don't get to decide if their clothes are from last year, or if their clothes are "what every one is wearing." Our decisions become based on the pictures we see from day to day. Although people definitely still have their own opinions, they still want what looks like what every one else wants.

Sidelong Glance ---Doisneau

As a Reader

Writer/ Designer:

• Who composed this text?

This picture was taken by a French photographer named Robert Doisneau.

• What else has this person composed?

Robert Doisneau is famous for taking photographs that are amusing, eccentric and very in-the-moment. Many are pictures of people in different social classes. One example of a photograph that he has taken would be Kiss by the Hotel de Ville. To see this picture, please go to http://www.robertdoisneau.com/robert_doisneau_hotelkiss.htm For other pictures, go to http://www.robertdoisneau.com/index.htm and click on one of the three links to the right of the page.

• What point of view does he/she adopt?

Doisneau always took his pictures in a third person perspective. He doesn't interact with the people in the picture while he's taking them, and I do not believe that he wants the subjects to know he's there. It's important for him to make sure that the people are very natural, because that is when people are most interesting and most humorous.


Audience:

• What is your initial reaction?

When I first saw the picture, I noticed the painting right away. It just sort of pops right out on the page. Then I noticed the couple, which seemed like nothing unusual. Then I noticed the man in the picture looking towards the picture on the wall, and I just laughed. Typical men.

• What is the audience assumed to know or believe?

I think the audience is supposed to know how real life people are. It's assumed that people know that men will look at pictures of naked women when the chance comes, even if their wife/girlfriend is there. I think that is why that picture was taken, because it was amusing.

• Who is the intended audience?

Anyone could be the audience, I believe. Except maybe children. Other than that, anyone who knows a man knows what this situation is like. It's funny and it's something we all have experienced.

Picturing Texts Footnote

"Brand images- the Nike swoosh, the McDonald's arches, the Energizer Bunny, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Michelin Man, Colonel Sanders, to name a few- remind us of their brand names even without accompanying words."
"For some of us, the 'Paris' carries an image of the Eiffel Tower, and the common nouns 'dog' or 'cat' might link to a mental image of your dog or cat."
"Advertisers are well aware that images can stand for words and words for images, as the ad for Pepsi shown here illustrates."

From the time humans are old enough to recognize images we start to associate them with material objects. Advertisers use this to their benefit and try to instill in children the images of their companies to somehow gain a certain kind of trust or bond with people. Eventually, these bonds lead children to believe in the company and become regular consumers of what the company wants to sell. These quotes express this, by mentioning recognizable images, such as the Nike symbol and the McDonalds golden arches. We see these images on commercials, or on signs and because we recognize them and because they are so familiar, it is easy for children to say that is what they want.
Another example that wasn't used in the text but is talked about a lot is the camel from the Camel cigarette brand. The camel is an image that immediately relates to kids, because most see animals as cute things that they can pet and be comfortable with. By making a camel the cigarette image, children begin to associate one with the other, and because they like the camel so much, they begin to think that cigarettes are also something that they would enjoy. Eventually, as children get older, and the camel image starts to be less appealing, just because they are now growing more mature, the image of the cigarette stays the same. The advertisers hope that this will make them more apt to smoking.

Test Post

Test Post