Project C : Interogation

The stereotype works in different ways, it ranges from showing Asian Americans restricted to clichéd occupations to showing particular Asian racial features, names, accents, or mannerisms as comic or sinister. Asians restricted to supporting roles not only in American mainstream media but ironically also in projects with Asian or Asian American content of which there is no relevance or need of. Usually, when a project features Asian subject matter, the main character will still be white. Another stereotype that is shown is about Asian male sexuality as negative or non-existent. Although Asian women are frequently portrayed as positive romantic partners for white men ("Sayonara," "The World of Suzie Wong," ad infinitum), Asian men aren’t shown as heroes or as the romantic lead roles with women of any race. There exist another stereotype for women though, Asian women are often portrayed as compliant, industrious, eager to please and nicknamed the "China doll," "geisha girl" with a certain sexuality underlined.



Depicting people in groups rather than as individuals can have a similar effect, especially if similarity is enhanced by similar poses or synchronized action. The three women not only look similar but also all walk in the same direction and are angled towards the viewer in more or less the same way. This reinforces the ‘they’re all the same effect ‘that constitutes generalization. Elsewhere (van Leeuwen, in press) I have pointed out how in press photographs of the Gulf War allied soldiers were usually depicted as individuals, doing things like defusing bombs, writing letters home, and so on, and Iraqi soldiers as groups involved in synchronized actions like aiming guns and surrendering. Distancing Showing people from a distance (in a 'long shot') can also decrease their individuality and make them more into types, because from a distance we will be less able to discern their individual features.


Society, in general, is influenced by media great deal nowadays but American society, in particular, has altogether a very impressionable effect by it and media nowadays can make or break a perception or an impression, recent elections were the biggest example of that. The portrayal of Asian particular East Asians by Hollywood as this stereotypical image of a person who is only good enough to be the supporting role along with certain negative physical attributes has impacted the way American see Asian Americans and it can be reversed the exact same way as it is portrayed.

Exercise IV : Class Exercise Based on Reading Set 7

For this exercise we were required to have read the reading set 7 and discuss with our group and share the topics that we plan to explore or investigate along those lines.

The introduction of 'Handbook of Visual analysis' talks about methods and wireframes of how there are different ways to interpret visuals and take out meaning from it. The book also emphasises on the fact that these methods are not always required to be taken in consideration while analysing a visual.

Sometimes the analysis can be done without the methods defined in the book. The methods/categories defined the book vary from how different groups are portrayed in the media including journalism, to analysing historical art pieces using the techniques and tips given by the art historians.  To the chapter that talks about understanding how different things can have completely different meanings in various cultures.


My first topic was to investigate how certain groups are always shown to some sort of role in the mainstream media. for example, a Chinese guy si always shown as someone who is either good with maths or is a kung fu fighter.

My second topic was to find out about how different colors, shapes and things can have different meanings in different cultures. For example, calling someone an Owl is considered an insult in Indian/Pakistani culture but in the western culture, an owl represents wisdom.

The third topic was how advertising have shifted the tone towards smoking. From something that was vastly celebrated and acknowledged as manly to something that's not good for your health. (Eg The Marlboro man)

The topic that I decided to go for was the first one. I am gonna investigate how the tone and attitude towards a certain community forms an opinion and perception about certain communities. 

Reading #3: Theory: Semiotics, Hermeneutics

When a work of art turns out to be not from what it claims to be it devalues historically but should it devalue at the same time aesthetically . Suddenly the painting becomes less appealing to a human eye ? Technically it shouldn’t but there has been instances in history as well as in current times when the outlook about that particular piece of art in public changed dramatically  and it got removed from the museum wall .The reason to begin with could be the wrong attribution of artist by mistake or forgery but fundamentally the real aesthetic value of work should and it does remain intact .The general popular belief also is that it should make no aesthetic difference whether a work of art is forged copied or original, although for some the line gets drawn at forged for moral reasons.

Work of art as intended human performance ,in order to understand that one must have information about the content of its production .One has to place it within a tradition. Also there exists the technological reproduction of art, the technical capacity to bring out the aspects which cannot be perceived in the original(enlargements, slow motion and so forth). The original keeps its authority over the manual copy though.

The issues of original, copies and fakes continue to fascinate even today. In 2010 National Gallery in London staged an exhibition detailing the scientific way to investigate the original panting by a scientific method called FTIR but the exhibition failed to explain the link why it was so important to identify the art as original for the artists itself.

Exploring Photography one must say that the illusion between photography and reality is far from simple.Photography from its infancy brought together people, places and events of the world, for instance war before invention of pictures sounded very glamorous until the real photographs of war scenes came into being and people realized for real and visually in its complete starkness the horrors and atrocities of war.

Photgraphy wasn’t only concerned with the wonder and celebrity, it also documented the social condition around the world which eventually and with the course of time visually accounted for social change. The mechanical authenticity of photography has become obvious with time yet in a famous and controversial claim Scruton says that Photography should not be regarded as a medium of art ,it is regarded as somewhat something very easy by him . According to this argument Photography simply produces what’s already in front of us in the nature and real world it only reproduces and it cannot transcend its subject matter. William King however eloquently negated it by saying that when one looks at a photograph be it your Parent’s wedding pictures or last year’s trip with friends it invokes memories and it holds much more than the subject matter itself. This in turn means that the photograph is more than a surrogate for a subject matter it is the result of photographer’s intention ,a notion does not make sense in Scruton’s views.

Reading Set #2 Theory: Iconology, Form, Art History, Ideology

Looking at most of the paintings one doesn’t need art education it’s more like common sense appealing to human nature and having a keen eye for observation and for detail. As opposed to ‘mystery painting’ as there isn’t much obvious about it and only way to such a painting would be visually on the evidence presented by the  art gallery mystery text tab itself.

A portrait on the other hand is picture of a person, still life is also easily recognized style, genre painting is a scene from everyday life, the terms themselves can often falsely suggest distinctive and exclusive categories. Categorizing a painting is not an exact science nor is it a simple one. Broad classification into immediately recognizable genres is however a very self-place to start when beginning to describe the painting.

The methodology described in this section of the book Is ideal for ‘what you see is what you get ‘kind of paintings specially for paintings that the entire substance for it lies within the painting except for when dealing with religious or mythical scenes. We look at a visual text purely at a face value we often failed to delve beyond its face value.

The first works on iconology were simple practical books of emblem and personifications which showed artists how to represent particular people and virtues and so on. They gave practical ideas on how to represent abstract ideas foremost among them was Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia published originally in Italy in 1593.It underpins many traditional histories of art as the identification of subject matter is important to nearly all figurative works. The medieval and renaissance periods are particularly rich in emblems and symbols both overt and disguised and studies concentrating on these periods are especially interesting to those who enjoy the iconology approach.

To discuss form Fry is the ideal person to talk about here as he thought form n content changed in painting just as the painting itself was turning away from the pursuit of realism at the start of the 20^th century. He thought that there has to be more to art than the simple imitation of reality. According to him people has 2 lives, actual and imaginary and the work of art was intimately connected with the second.

If we are practicing artists in any medium whatsoever we will understand the aesthetic balance to bear even in small everyday life for instance while arranging furniture or hanging a picture on a wall.We all rework the attraction of the eye.

Traditional art history is that approach is subject to fierce attacks on several fronts. The conventional perspective exemplified by the work of Gombrich have been under criticism such as that it focuses upon the individual artist and does not take social environment into consideration and overlooks female artist and favors some over others. In a rich and intense debate over art history everything is open to criticism even criticism can be criticized.

Reading Set #5 Visual Culture

Film

The medium of film goes beyond the photography and its ‘frozen’ reality. It is free from the constraints of time and space. Film is a very new thing for something which has been existing since prehistoric times, the art of storytelling. Novels, plays and theatre differ from the film by its ability to tell a story. In theatre we watch from a fixed space and the real thing is being acted on the stage at that time, for novels the limit of time is finished.

In earliest times, film was a rare and new thing and they were shown in cafes, musical halls and theatres as purpose built cinemas weren’t available. Films were also very short n simple. Today it is still considered an attraction to go to IMAX where screen is enormous with swooping camera effects and special spectacles to help create the effect to create a fulfilling experience. It is the cinematic experience rather than the quality of films that are the main attraction.

Just as verbal literacy exists for grammar of verbal communication there exists a visual literacy when films are considered. Most films grammar consists of shot and edit.

The novelty of moving pictures was not enough alone to last public interests in cinema. Once the reality of it became clear and believable, it started to wear off and the educational and informative experience along with the quality of film needed to improve to regain the attention of audience.

If we fail to notice the difference between the real-life time and space behind the director’s work than the professional motive has been accomplished. If editing is deftly performed in the naturalistic cinema, then we should hardly be aware of the conventions of the cinema should strike as the most natural thing in the world. This is the feature of the classic, Hollywood classics which wants to persuade us not that we are watching a technically manufactured artifice but that we are witness to actual events. The events that we do witness are rarely actual at all.

Typography is a narrative device that needs to be mentioned here also. Most commonly nowadays we see this used for the open or closing of the film to let us now who is in it.it is used in a caption for example as London when the shot of Trafalgar square comes.

Stanley Kubrick was one of the most meticulous and accomplished filmmakers of twentieth century.

His main work has been Spartacus (1960), Full metal jacket (1987) and eyes wide shut (1999). The shining (1980) Is loosely based on a horror story. Horror is not always one of the screen’s most prestigious/successful genres. The opening 10 minutes of the shining provide an extremely valuable example of contemporary cinematic narrative. The opening shot is a slow, sweeping helicopter over a mountain lake, a small island comes into prominence as the camera sweeps low and banks of the right.it dissolves into shot 2. the shot has an elliptical edit that has signaled the passage of time and space between the shot to show the journey of several hours’ duration and several hundred miles in distance. The transition is time and space was indication fairly by the dissolve.

Film history has already established itself as a respectable field of study. In general, it follows the narrative, chronological approach of art history while permitting additional focus on particular films, directors, actors and studios.it is an approach to see how a particular text fits within the story of the film as it is used for the considerations of the context and beloved by the art historians.

Does film just represent time or actually create it?

The film has the ability to communicate what other media usually doesn’t. Time is also the central concern in the very particular views about cinema. ‘Modern’ is used to classify the kind of cinema capable of generating a particular concept of time. The history of cinema is divided into 2 parts, classic and modern periods. During the classic period time is measured through movement and actions. Time in these kinds of images is subordinated through space which means that the sense of time in classical image movement cinema is experienced in an indirect way.

Television

The differences between the world as depicted on TV and the world that we actually inhabit.

Popular television may not showcase the very best in contemporary culture, in sheer quality it is hard pushed to rival poetry, the opera, the art gallery or the symphony hall.

Television is after much more realistic than film because that is the medium for which down to earth everyday drama is most commonly produced. Soap opera is one of the things that is specifically made for television.it takes its name from the fact that this form of open ended serial drama was devised as a vehicle for the advertisement of domestic products to the mainly female viewer who were thought to constitute of the main audience at day time. Some soaps are more realistic than the others but usually feature the glamorous lives of wealthy and accomplished people. British and Australians on the other hand aim to be more recognizable to their audiences.

The text then goes on about discussing the various soaps and their plots and how it has evolved with the time and American soaps has showcased the various sections of its societies in a very engaging, humorous and satirical way. Desperate housewives and how it shows these bored housewives in an upbeat white neighborhood and their gossips and subsequent issues, Devious maids is something targets the Hispanics where as fresh off the boat celebrates the diversity of what America has come to be and portrays the survival of a Chinese family here while trying to keep its traditions alive and so on and so forth.

TV is a much new medium and there is not much text available for it and given the commercial aspect of TV, it is regarded as a medium not suitable for serious study.

Visual culture (New Media)

Despite the nature of its ever changing and evolving, there remains an incredible amount of talk about all the communications and the media revolutions through which we are all supposed to be going. The hyperbole seems to increase on a daily basis. If we were to believe everything we have read and heard, then the future would be unrecognizable in reality however we suspect that it won’t be.

The phrase new media is widely used and emphatically embraced we need to remember what is actually meant by the word media. These are not new forms of communication but increasingly convenient and consumer friendly hardware systems which deliver similar texts without altering their content, meaning or message.

We can see how changing technology has both affected and yet failed to revolutionize music. The earliest records were available only on vinyl, playable at 78 revolution/min.in early 1980s digitals dis was introduced,1990s saw the introduction of the mini disc and by the second date of the 20t century mp3 and computer downloading again has changed the way people listened to music. Although delivery has changed it hasn’t changed the face of music itself. The text in each case has remained exactly the same, the way of acquiring or purchasing the music in these cases has changed only.

Some extreme forms of manipulation can be used to change an image like adding a filter to making the day sky darker and giving the illusion of night, this is not to mislead the viewer but to demonstrate the creativity and skill. The increased variety of delivery systems for visual texts is no more amply demonstrated than it is with the moving image .in terms of viewing experience Tv and film differ and going to the cinema and watching a film with all other people is different than watching TV alone or with a small group that you know at home and it offers different feels to its viewers, again the experience is different but if the same movie is seen at home than the text is the same.

A computer screen is a square screen with a visual world that exists within the physical world of the viewer without blocking the virtual world that exists within. not all new media experiences use the screen such as the virtual reality devices with the head gear the simulations go back further than the simple exhibition of screens.

The notion that the kind of closed interactivity promoted by computer technology corresponds to an externalization of the mind has serious social and political implications.