The Strange & Exotic

When I was younger, I believe I was much more oppositional to positive orientalism then negative orientalism. I find it interesting, but especially at a young age the surrounding culture of the West had much more significance because it was all I knew. Because of this, Eastern culture was always just this "other" that didn't actually matter or mean anything in my life because I live over here in the West, not that East. I began to grow much more open and positive about Eastern culture as I grew older, and began to actually learn through History and such, about other cultures and how actually interesting and unique each and every culture is.

I think this attraction / repulsion to the "exoticness" of other cultues can be simply explained through basic philosophy. Simply being that to us, seperate cultures are always subconsciously (or consciously) noted as being an "other" or an unknown. This is what I like to call the weird, or the strange. Basically it is how we categorize what is unknown or new to us. It is alien, foreign and therefore considered strange. I think that every person has their own personal repulsion / attraction to what is weird, or different. For me when I was very young it used to frighten me, and from that I think it inspired me. I learned to cherish and love what is weird, to me it became a powerful symbol of my individuality at what it means. I think because of this love, and strong attraction I have become very found of the "positive" exotic outlook onto different cultures. I love learning about different cultures, and when I run into foreigners or people of distinct seperate culture I often feel a deep humbleness torwards them, and a strengthened desire to get to know them and reach out and touch more of what I do not know.

Modernity Modernism & Madness

The difference between modernity and modernism is that modernism is the set of styles defined by a time period in which is considered "modern". Usually the styles carry similar themes of structuralism, systems and progress. Modernity is the time period in which "modernism" is present, beginning with the Enlightenment in the late 18th century really until today (said to peak in the late 1900s). The modernism within this modernity has consistently changed over time, a phenomenon Michel Focault theorizes is due to a term he refers to as Discourse. Discourse is the name of the "change" or fluctuations that occur over time within Modernism, which result from social beliefs, mutual knowledge and pre-existing discourse.

I think madness is a particularly good example of how discourse is present throughout time, simply because madness is something we've always understood and still understand very little about. Focault would state that our changes in how we perceive and handle "madness" is due to the social and scientific changes that have resulted out of Modernism, and I would have to completley agree. The reason madness was thought to have been "demon magic" and work of the devil ect, centuaries ago is because we literally had no rational way of explaining it. It did not seem to have any explanation that a person could mentally be changed from some unseen outside force, that is a persons being could be mysteriously changed. In this time however, much less was understood on the phenomenon on a person's being and therefore explanations having to do with the brain and psychology weren't possible conclusions.

It is due to modernism and the progression of industry that have led us to technological advances that have led us to discovering more about the brain. Today in the field of psychology, we know that "madness" is not the result of satan, but often mental diseases that have to due with brain chemistry and the physical reaction of chemicals within the human body. However, I know that even today madness is hardly understood, and just beginning to be looked at properly. We may have finally realized that madness is not the devil or witchery or evil, but we still think its "a problem". So while I think the example of discourse is evident here, before we used to take those who were mad and torture and kill them, today we try to help and assist them as a result of the natural flux of discourse. However I still think that some of that "predjudice" exists in the fact that we think there is a "problem" with madness. I think insanity is an extremely interesting aspect of humanity, but I think its just that, an aspect of humanity. Though we get better at "covering" certain mental diseases over time, to the real definition of madness, I see that there can be no cure. Due to our current social structures and beleifs, we think that there is a idea called "normality" that uis to say that there is a certain root of consciousness in which everyone should be experiencing things the same way. I think it is things like insanity that expose a truth that there is no such thing as "normality" and that there is an infinite amount of ways to experience an infinite amount of things, and that there is truly no "problem" with that. An insane person may struggle in todays society only because he or she is expected to act within the structures and systems we've created through modernism. However these structures and systems are self made, not permanent and always changing through discourse. Our ideas of "normality" are therefore for the most part highly personnel to the era, culture and beleif system, and largely overestimated.

Interpellation

Interpellation really could be considered the single goal of advertising. This is because in order to effectively advertise anything, an advertisement has to "put you into a position" (or where you "need" something). This is normally done by putting as much relationship between you and the product as possible. The goal is to convince you you're buying into your own ideology, when in fact the ideology may just be a companies. In the image at the right we see eggs and bacon made of cardboard resting on a plate. It makes a relationship to us because most of us are aware of the phrase that "food can taste like cardboard" and most of us have had experience with the phrase. Then the advertisement takes this relationship and connects it with the product: Heinz ketchup. Aha! Problem solved! We are trying to be convinced that every time we've had food that tastes like cardboard, we've been without Heinz kethcup. Hm.

Taste and Kitsch. Taste is considered what is the traditional and conventional approach to judging art. It implies that we can use what has been considered "great art" in the past to judge what great art is today. This is very common in fine arts. Kitsch is art which is considered to "have no taste" and yet, in such a way as to have no taste, has taste in representing "what is tasteless". The term seems broad, and even from the reading I'm not sure I have a definite idea of exactly what you can define exactly as Kitsch.

Decoding

As an encoder and decoder, I find the two to be one of the most important processes there is and ever shall be. The idea, which summarized is the communication through visualization, I think is far too simply categorized within Stuart Hall's three leveled theory. The reason I dislike it, is though is conveniently gives us three categories of "ways" to decode an image, I think they're far too theoretical. Though clearly some people are more one then the other, I don't see how anyone can make a 100% dominant reading or a 100% oppositional reading, though it may seem it. In other words, I think on some level or another everyone is a negotiated reader. As much as we may assume we can understand an image (its ideology), we never can actually know if we interpret it exactly as intended if we are not its creator. And neither can we be completely oppositional to an image because no matter how we ignore an image (ideology) we cannot actually deny its existence if we're looking at it, and are thus related to it.

Indeed, we could put dominant and oppositional reading at opposite ends of a spectrum, and all of our readings could be placed effectively at some point inbetween. If I were to summarize my placement on the spectrum, I'm not even totally sure where it would be. I'd like to think that sometimes I can be more on the dominant interpretation of things. I feel I understand most cultures, its attributes, desires and means of visual communication. However I usually negotiate with alot of the "encodings" toying on the idea of whether its another pitch aimed for the pleasure senses, or if there is a deeper meaning involved. And also often am I oppositional to "encodings". I feel there is so much built into this world that is based apon concepts of the senses and desire, for some things I cannot get over the underlying motivs for quick fufillment and excitement (drama). In this age, one cannot trust everything he sees or hears if one doesn't want to become manipulated by big business, advertising and greed. At some level, everyone decodes with a certain amount of opposition to protect themselves from illusion; The question is where to draw the line if there be one.

Ideology: The Perfect Family

The idea of a perfect family is ultimately an age old tradition, however from culture to culture over the centuries what makes a family "perfect" has changed. The photo to the right is of the Obama family and the current president. The idea of a perfect nuclear family, the 'traditional american' perfection is completely captured in this single photograph, and may be partially responsible to Obama's respect and success in the last presidential election.

This photo is perfect because it tries to express each family members unique individuality, while showing the togetherness and blissful "family whole". Each member's smile is unique and true to their character. The balance of the two children resting on their father brings great direction and closure to the space within the picture. Interestingly even though she is definently included within the family ring, Michelle Obama is definently secondary in the picture. Her black shirt contrasts with Baracks and the childrens white apparall. The choice of the photograph being done in black and white also heightens the contrast of the photo and 'bring out' the family from the background.

Just as the idea of the "perfect family" has not changed significantly within America's last few centuaries, neither for the most part has the design of the family portrait; Which almost always depicts the family placed relaxingly, embracingly and lovingly often non-casually within an often dream-like beautiful envireonment. Also of much importance is the capturing of each family member's smile. Think, originally when photographs began being developed people in portraits did not relax or smile. The idea then was that it was a much more formal "preservance" of a single identity in a proper acceptable state. Since then the ideas of 'capturing happiness' have become more common. In this photo of the Obama family, not only is everyone relaxed and happy, but their smiles seem completley natural and convincing making the photo appear very "real".

I think this is the overall interesting fact about the whole western family portrait ideology. Its total goal is to try to create an almost surreal happiness and comfortability depicting members happy and relaxed, in incredibly close proximity all simultaneously enjoying something or another immensely. This type of a photograph is centered around the idea of communicating "feeling" of happy family, even though the chances of all the family members coming together in literal bliss to share a moment like this together (with the exception of taking a family portrait) are not likely to ever happen.

Photographic Truth

I find the argument of Photographic Truth to be an interesting one. The term is used suggest that the image of a photograph (which uses light to 'capture' the image of our material world), also captures truth as most agree the images we see of the current moment are true, and a camera recreating 'one' of these moments also stays true.

Where the idea starts to get interesting, is where one starts questioning what "truths" then can be taken from a photograph that is completely original and not resulting from personnel inference and cultural persuasion? This question goes deep into what we see at the root of human vision, and mind. I do not believe in the myth of Photographic Truth because I know that there always must be at least some subjectivity for photographs to physically make sense. Every picture in some way must only be a 'piece' of a whole moment and not actually an entire moment. So as hard as we may try to "get into another moment" with a photograph, we obviously cannot because a photograph is only a piece, a single limited perspective, from which an entire whole cannot be comprehended. The truth is that one can look at an image and see whatever it is they want to see until one's mind beings making distinctions, assumptions and connections that may or not be factual.

However when one doesn't have to look at a photograph and try to "think" of what the picture is, it pops right into the head, its already there. This is because we have already constructed a reality on how we think things are, what Robert Barthes calls myth , the hidden set of rules that determines how we create meanings and associate them. Barthes believes that myth is specific to certain groups whether culturally or throughout time. I agree with Barthes that there are myths that are specific to different groups, but I believe they also can exist at many different levels, and that while some are held by small cultural groups, other are broader "rules" that restrict our perception that go so far as mankind.

Soldier Caskets

My immediate reaction to this image

is one of sadness, and loss. After which a few moments of looking, I feel a slight urge to look away with a hint of annoyance. While I do feel this image definently for the most part conveys the quantity of loss involved with the Iraq war, which expresses a feeling of depression; My personel reaction to this feeling is of anger, as I am not one to support wars of any nature, especially ones as political as the war in Iraq and do have a "problem" with the image I am looking at. The image too, does communicate a message of honor, with all the caskets being lined so orderly and each respectfully carrying an american flag. However I feel there are better images from the war that communicate this idea better.