Using images to piece together an argument was a very interesting assignment. After deciding on a subject, I found myself wondering what type of images would prove useful in making a point. I decided to discuss the role of the media in distorting young girls’ perception of body image and ideals. With our advanced technology in this modern era, photo-editing software is being used to depict women as unrealistically flawless. After nearly losing a cousin to anorexia, I decided to use images to capture the horrible nature of this disease, its affect on young women and our society’s media contribute to this growing problem.
The use of images to make my argument is much stronger than the use of words could have been. Firstly, the very root of the eating disorder problem stems from the effect of visual images. Women are using visual ideals to compare themselves with, including images on television, magazines and in the movies. It therefore seemed most appropriate to use visual arguments to demonstrate this issue. Secondly, the true self-inflicted horror of anorexia can only truly be appreciated through visual means.
In my video, I decided to begin by portraying a happy little girl running free through a field. This was to symbolize the free spirit and uninfluenced mind of a naïve child. The child appears carefree and happy. The next slide begins by showing Barbie dolls. The Barbie dolls are very thin, and dressed in revealing clothes. Following this image of Barbie, I used a photograph of a young Asian girl, in a tight leotard, holding a Barbie doll, and sucking in her abdomen to make herself appear thinner. She is clearly upset from the expression on her face, and she is trying to appear thin just like Barbie. It is also significant that the little girl is of Asian heritage, while Barbie is Caucasian and blonde. While the little girl seems to idolize Barbie, it is for her body image and not her facial beauty in this particular picture. This further points out that even dolls used to entertain young girls contribute to distorting a healthy view of normal body weight.
The following picture shows a little girl worshipping Barbie, with a look of sadness in her eyes. The images that follow are different examples of additional influences for young girls. The female Disney characters are all very skinny with unrealistic proportions. The cartoon figures that follow are also unrealistically too skinny. Photos of little girls are then presented who are reading magazines and watching television enviously. Young girls are exposed to such media, and their effects on them must be analyzed. One young girl refuses to eat lettuce, even at such a young age.
Examples of maturing women are soon presented. Now, it is more than cartoons and dolls that contribute to falsifying images of body beauty. Very thin beauty queens and super models are presented, along with a few unhealthy looking celebrities that are beyond underweight. The message coming across to American women (whether intentional or not) is that success, beauty and fame can only be attained if you are thin. The following photo is from a commercial advertising a body suit that promises to make people appear thinner. This further emphasizes our nation’s obsession with physical beauty and body weight. Even though you are not “perfect”, you can make yourself appear so with the help of artificial means.
The next sets of images are my favorite because they emphasize how the act of distorting beauty in our society is intentional and misleading. I found photos of celebrities before and after their photos were edited. The original photographs have been modified making the celebrity appear much thinner than they actually are. Britney Spears appears muscular and well toned at the pool in a bikini, however appears much leaner and lighter than her natural photograph. Even Queen Latifah, who is one of the few celebrities to have found success despite being overweight, it dramatically reduced on the cover of a magazine to appear lighter than she actually is.
Subsequent photographs show young girls weighing themselves when they have not even reached puberty yet. Young girls have become more aware of their bodies and their weight, but in a disturbing way. They have an unhealthy obsession with being thin and achieving an unhealthy body weight while struggling to keep up with the ideals imposed on them by the media. A little girl appears weighing herself on a scale in diapers. The subsequent slide uses sarcasm to ridicule the situation. “Does this diaper make me look fat”, it says. Cheerleaders are soon captured staring at a skeleton in envy. A girl hold her mouth shut, with the words “I hate myself for eating” written on them. Her teary eyes capture the sadness and desperation associated with her disease, while her hand over her mouth emphasizes the determination and will they employ to remain so loyal a painful process.
This disease affects families. A mother tries to speak to her daughter, but her daughter looks away. The next few images show the result of this disease. Young women are shown on the toilet vomiting what little food they gave eaten. While stubborn in her ways, there is a silent cry for help hidden in each girl. The devastating health effects are then portrayed in the slide show with missing teeth due to purging, and the horrible loss of normal body fat. A real photo of a girl before and after anorexia demonstrates the ghastly transformation once anorexia takes hold of a person. The effects are devastating and cannot be described in words.
In the last few slides, this disorder becomes a disease, which leads to hospitalization and which ultimately leads to death. A cemetery is used at the end of the slide show to represent death, which is then x-rayed. This dramatic effect was used to reflect that once they are dead and buried in the ground, the women have now finally achieved their desire to look as thin as skeletons, because they are skeletons.
The video I put together has truth value. According to J. Anthony Blair, “an expression has truth value if it can be affirmed or rejected.” I think the images depicted in my video are realistic images that capture the horrific aspects of anorexia. These images speak for themselves because they invoke emotion to make a point. While Blair argues that emotion itself cannot argue a claim, I believe emotion can be used as an argument.
For example, if an image is depicted as negative (such as that of a young anorexic woman vomiting on the toilet), it is clearly an argument against it. When used in sequence, images have an even more powerful message. For example, I agree that alone, the images of the beautiful supermodels would not make a claim. When subsequent photos present the ill effects of glorifying skinny models as beautiful, it is put into perspective. Just as words alone cannot make a point, but must be used together in a sequence, so too can images be used together in sequence to present a claim and argue for or against it. The photo of the young Asian female sucking in her abdomen while looking fondly at Barbie, for example, does make an argument independently. When looking at the image of a woman whose entire skeleton can be seen through her skin, this is an image that cannot be rejected. The celebrity photos taken before photo editing cannot be rejected. Blair believes this makes visual arguments weak, as they are hard to reject.
According to Blair “the great advantages of visual argument, namely its power and its suggestiveness, are gained at the cost of a loss of clarity and precision”. While it is true that images can be interpreted differently, if properly presented, images can be clear and precise. I do not think a viewer can watch my video and not understand that the message is against the glorification of overly thin females in the media. I think that point was clear and precise. While the author/artist/illustrator of the visual image must rely more on hope that the viewer understands the message, while the written word guarantees a point is come across, I believe the image can present a claim and support it clearly with an added effect of dramatization, passion and emotion. This however, can only be done when the images are presented in a cohesive and organized fashion.
Unfortunately, there were several projects classmates presented whose claims I could not decipher. While the images spoke out to me individually, I could not piece them together as I would a written essay to understand the meaning. However I do not think this is due to a disadvantage of the image as a communicative means. I think it was the author’s mistake. If a written argument is not presented well, it will not make sense. Similarly, when images are displayed in a particular way, they can confuse the viewer.
Instead of comparing the two means of communicating and debating over which one is superior, I believe the most strength added to a claim occurs when combining both visual and written arguments. Using both, the power of an argument becomes explosive. They should not be in competition; they should be used to compliment one another. As stated by J. Anthony Blair, the advent of the new “print-based technology” allows for this marriage to occur as it “facilitates, supports and intensifies” the preference for print. By printing both text and images, the world of communication has now expanded in ways unimaginable before. Instead of rejecting this change, it should be embraced. Whether supported visually or not, the ability to argue a claim in more than one way is an advantage.
The claim made by my visual production I believe was strong. My images were successful at conveying my message. My claim is that modern media negatively affects young girls and that they convey false images of the ideal feminine body, which contributes to eating disorders. My claim was supported using images of young women exposed to the media including magazines and television and becoming upset at how their bodies looked in comparison. It exposed all the false images associated with body image found in the media today such as edited photos and anorexic looking celebrities whose bodies are glorified. It captured the
In “New Media Age”, Blair discusses the transition of communication from written to visual and the effect it has had on the way we communicate ideas and make claims. The “new dominance of the image” further supports my claim that images portrayed in the media have serious impacts on the lives of young women. As our society focuses our attention on visual stimulation, we will focus more on visual appearances.
I think my images were very effective in supporting my claim. The only way to make my claim stronger would be to perhaps include some writing along with my images. For example, there were a few words in several pictures that did emphasize certain points the image would not present without the words. For example, following the picture of a little girl in diapers on a scale, the next image was “do these diapers make me look fat?” While seeing a little girl in diapers concerned with weight is a striking image, the mocking power of the statement that follows makes the image even more powerful by delivering the message more directly. The words added humor and irony to a photo that simply provided astonishment. However, I do think in the end, the outrageous photo was able to convey the message across well enough without the support of text.
Images can have the property of being predictable. Many images invoke obvious and universal responses. For example, images of war are terrible regardless of whom the viewer is. The response to such atrocities of war is therefore predictable. Such images do not require verbal or textual support to evoke a response, as they possess such a strong message, it is conveyed with the power of the image alone. My visual production was predictable in several ways. The effect of emaciated women is predictably negative. The graphic nature of some of the images may not have been as predictable, however the reaction they would stir is. By using graphic images I hoped to relay the message that the media is making women have such hatred for themselves, that they willingly sacrifice everything – even their lives – and suffer in order to reduce their weight. The graphic nature of the images supports the expressiveness of my production. It is one thing to verbally state that young girls idolize Barbie, and another to look into the eyes of a desperate little girl trying to flatten her belly like Barbie. It is one thing to state that women starve themselves to death, and another to see the vivid transformation of a normal young woman to an anorexic skeleton.
The idea that images are only able to argue a claim if they are organized is supported by Gunther Kress who claims the “organization of writing” is governed by “the logic of time”, while the image is governed by “space”. Writing he claims, must present arguments in a specific sequence to make sense. He argues that images on the other hand, are more arbitrary because they are governed by space. An image and its mirror image will likely offer the same argument and make sense, which will not be true in a sentence. On the contrary however, I find that time and space overlap in written and visual arguments. My argument began with the portrayal of a young vibrant girl, girls who were then exposed to the media full of skinny women, women who then stopped eating and started vomiting their food, and women who ultimately died. There is a sequence to my photomontage, which, admittedly, would have been lost in a single photo. However by keeping my images in sequence and by presenting them in a specific order, I did preserve the message I was trying to convey. This is a principle Kress attributes solely to writing, which I find can also occur with the presentation of images.
Kress continues to discuss the difference between the written word and the expressed image in making a claim. He discusses the arbitrary nature of art and space. In space, the objects that will be depicted do not have to follow the rigid order of the written word. This freedom found in the logic of space also gives art the possibility of interpretation. Once interpretation is needed, the meaning of something can change. If an artist’s image must be interpreted by a viewer, its meaning will change with each viewer and there is no guarantee that the viewer’s interpretation is the one the artist meant to convey. While this may seem like a weakness of the visual argument, I think even the written word can be interpreted. Literature, and poetry in particular, is often analyzed and interpreted.
Blair brings up the way students are encouraged to discuss something “in their own words”. This shows how interpretation, expression and communication in the English language can be found in both text and image. Individuals can get creative and flexible with order, sequence, space and time, and still manage to communicate messages to one another. Whether governed by the logic of space, or the logic of time, arguments governed by any logic at all, are likely to be successful.
The success of the image in making and supporting a claim is evident in the work done by my peers. The visual productions I viewed that were created by my peers were not all successful. I found many visual presentations to consist of different images presented in what seemed to be a random order. I can determine what I think each person was trying to convey through images. The downfall to images as discussed earlier is that there is no way to truly confirm that my take on a film was exactly how the creator wanted it understood. I can only assume that the images had the same effect on me as the artist intended. However, some peers had me completely confused about their claim.
One visual production whose claim was powerfully conveyed was the video “Save”. While the images conveyed war, they were very specific in depicted children at war. I understood that she was commenting on the young children in Uganda who have been forced to adopt violent lifestyles for political reasons. Their lives have been consumed by this violence making ruthless monsters out of the Ugandan youth in addition to creating death and destruction by ruining communities. Her images were very powerful and specific. Most importantly, they were organized in a way, which argued a specific point. The most powerful point that came across was that something should be done for this injustice to children. The message was for people of the world to take a stance and help save these children.
Pictures can convey powerful messages, just as strong as words can. I agree that pictures should be used as a parallel mode to writing. Ideally, words and images should become allies to compliment one another. Both are modes of communication, and communication is something valued heavily in our society. We should strengthen our communication by combining these two different yet powerful modes and reap the full benefits of our ability to express ourselves. They should be used in conjunction, not in place of one another. Humans use both visual and auditory senses to understand their environment. Why should they be used independently to understand each other?
