Visual Literacy

What it is:

Learning to critically "read" graphic media using the same and similar techniques used to analyze and evaluate linguistic arguments.

Why you should develop it:

Film, video and digital images have largely replaced or greatly augmented our traditional reliance on linguistic messages as the primary means of:

            1) Transferring information

            2) Persuading audiences

Function Follows Form:  HOW the story gets told changes the meaning in significant ways: Consider:

-- Network TV programs are written or rewritten to fit advertising schedules; the plot is literally changed so that attention is peaked in the minutes before the commercial break.

-- Following the success of the Beatles and then MTV and its spin-offs, pop music has privileged visual image over musical content.

-- Very, very few Americans knew that Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheelchair.  It is currently illegal to print pictures of American flag-draped, American-Iraqi War coffins.

-- Starting with JFK's defeat of Nixon in 1960, following the first televised debate, politicians realized stage presence and photogenic politicians were in many cases more persuasive than political message. Witness the rise of Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger....

-- Lobbyists, corporate and special interest groups control candidates and politicians through campaign donations; politicians are only dependent on these donations because of the high price of televised campaigns.

-- Producing televised news -- vs. print or radio -- dictates what news is televised; networks are forced to only cover stories which will pay the exceptionally high cost of covering an event.

-- Network news programs are determined by corporate sponsorship through advertisement, not through the importance of the coverage as otherwise measured.

-- etc etc.

But Wait, There's More

Consider how stories were traditionally told, then perhaps told and also illustrated (cave drawings), then written down and read, then written and accompanied by photographs, then transmitted to film and television etc. Consider as well:

            -- Magazines and newspapers are the most widely read print media, and most are increasingly dominated as much by graphics as text

            -- Music was traditionally performed -- a combination of drama (visual) and music -- and then briefly primarily recorded (listened to, like language); MTV etc. returned the graphic quality so that music again is closely linked to visual images and how a musician looks, dresses etc is as important as the actual sounds.

            -- Computers and internet is increasingly iconic: we navigate thru symbols and pictures as much as thru text.

How to develop it:

1) Start by simply realizing that the graphic aesthetic world is deliberately structured/designed by intelligent people trying to influence your thinking and feeling.

2) Apply basic Critical Thinking skills:

            -- Practice Objectivity and Skepticism

                        -- Objectivity: Separate emotional response from factual information

                        -- Skepticism: Demand verified factual data

            -- Analysis

                        -- Breaking unified wholes into elementary parts

                        -- Identifying/naming those parts

                        -- Identifying relationship between the parts

            -- Evaluation

                        -- Judging the relative merit or value of a thing

3) Develop a vocabulary, relevant to:

            -- Film

            -- Television and Communications

            -- Web and graphic design

4) Compare sources:

            -- Do not rely on information from a single source or genre

-- Compare how TV, radio, web, novels, songs and newspapers etc are forced to present the same info differently simply by their inherent design

            -- Objectively analyze and evaluate the differences

            -- Example Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Bladerunner