MCOM 100 – The Image and Spectacle

 

 

 

Thoman, Rise of the Image Culture

 

Connections between images/imaging technology and consumer culture

 

What does the author mean by image culture?

·         How does this relate to Bogart’s definition of “media?” (from week 3)

·         Television’s role in the image culture

 

Myth of Progress

 

Materialism and the media

 

Media Awareness

1.    Denial

2.    Rejection

3.    Resistance

 

Plato – must move into the light

 

 

The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord)

 

 

Kellner - "Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle"

 

In this study, I will provide an overview of the dissemination of media spectacle throughout the major domains of the economy, polity, society, culture and everyday life in the contemporary era

 

Guy Debord and the Society of the Spectacle

·        Media and consumer society that is organized around the consumption of images, commodities and staged/planned events

 

Spectacle Economy

·        Entertainment economy, business and fun fusion

·        Celebrity is also manufactured

 

The Culture of the Spectacle

·        in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life

·        “lifeies”

·        logic of commodity spectacle

 

Debord and the Spectacle: A Critical Engagement

·         focus on specifics

·         U.S. focus - not critical radical Marxism

·         focus on interpretation and cultural studies

·         contradictions and reversals of the spectacle

 

Globalizataion, Technological Revolution, and the Restructuring of Capitalism

·        megaspectacle

·        Technocapitalism

 

To conclude:

 

 

The Image over time

 

·         Art

·         Document

·         Context

·         Theory

 

 

images have social context about when they were created

 

 

Realism and the History of Perspective

·         Perspective in the Renaissance

 

Realism and Visual Technologies

History of images

1.    ancient art

2.    age of perspective

3.    modernism

4.    postmodernism

 

 

Photography

 

The Reproduction of Images

·         Mechanical reproduction and Benjamin

o       Art and Aura

o       Images in different contexts

 

Visual Technology and Phenomenology

·         phenomenology

 

The Digital Image

·         analog and digital

·         iconic sign

·         symbolic sign

·         indexical sign

 

Virtual Space and Interactive Images

·         simulation

 

 

 

How We Negotiate the meaning of images

·         Semiotics

·         sign

§         signifier

§         signified

 

·         denotative and connotative meaning

 

The Value of Images

 

Image Icons

·         “An icon is an image the refers to something outside its individual components”

 

 

Postmodern Perspectives

 

Some interesting sites on postmodernity:
·                            Dueling Paradigms:  Modernist V. Postmodernist Thought for a good review of the differences between modernism and postmodernism

·         Notes on: Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

·         Postmodernism

·         Postmodernism Generator

·                            Postmodern Culture is a journal devoted to postmodern issues

·         The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

 

 

The Postmodern Condition

Historical Background

·         Critique of modernism

·         Modernism: knowledge based on rationality; cognitive approach

·         Postmodernism: knowledge based on the communicative subject; semiotic approach

Tenants of Modernity

·         Modernity refers to the last three hundred years of Western history during which many of the current ideas were developed.

·         Reason and rationality

·         Progress, linearity, universalism

·         Cognitive subject

·         Science and material progress

·         Representation

·         Truth

·         Human center

·         Cartesian mind/body split

·         Spectator and spectacle are disconnected

·         Metanarratives

 

 

Postmodernism critique of modernism

·         No single truth

·         Flexibility

·         Historical and cultural processes over reason

·         Centerless

·         Capitalism problems

·         Progress not equal linear growth

·         Mind/body are one or multiple

·         Economic/material measure is inadequate

·         Aesthetics

·         Rhizomatic NOT depth

 

Generally, postmodernism is:

·         The disappearance of authority, unity, continuity, purpose, and commitment

·         The emergence of complexity, multiplicity, fragmentation, resistance, negation, rupture, and irreverence for any specific goal or point of view

·         Deep purpose and deep commitment no longer exist, and hedonism seems to be the prevalent way of life

 

The act of defining postmodernism is frowned upon by postmodern theorists

 

 

Some Postmodern Conditions

·         Hyperreality and simulation (Baudrillard)

·         Pastiche

·         Chaos/random/nonlinear

·         Fragmentation (Decentering of the Subject)

·         Visual Styles and Imagery

·         Multiplicity

·         Social and self construction

·         Play and fantasy

 

 

 

 

 

 

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