Final Symbols
Symbols Guide
ignorance stereotyping
us/them misrep. of race in media
history myths of affirm. action
+ Connotation
The symbols below represent myths of affirmative action. Specifically, the signs are conveying the myth of "color blindness" in regards to race. Some do not realize that ignoring "color" (or seeing one color) is equivalent to ignoring cultural backgrounds. In reality, it is a refusal to search deeper into who individuals are. In this aspect, I linked negative connotations onto these signs, giving it a grunge appearance. Using the conventions of splatters of paint, the no symbol, and a gunshot wound, it extends the meaning of the sign into one that is aligned with death or serious injury.
These signs below represent ignorance. One key aspect of subtle racism is that people refuse to acknowledge it and are not aware that they themselves are discriminating against people of different ethnicities. Connotations of machinery and industry are added to these signs to further ignorance as cold indifference. The metal gate, the cold, hard marble, and the aluminum texture all point to apathy and inhumanity.
Below are three iterations of "misrepresentation of race in the media." The pupil of the eye is a film reel made to look like an eye. People tend to view other ethnicities based on what they see on TV, in the newspapers, magazines, social media, the internet, etc. Inevitably, the media impacts the way we understand the world. Using similar qualities of a web icon/button, an image of a tv screen test, and a close-up of an LED Screen texture, the sign works together with the connotations of technology.
Notes on reading
Type and Image by Meggs, pg 41, 62-65
- The Union of Word and Picture
- two problems with combining word/picture
- visual organization: how to seamlessly merge into a whole
- message making: how can they both come together and extend one another?
- image used to illustrate text, but now text is loaded with culture, morality and imagination
- since type is more specific, it can bind image to a specific meaning
- Objective type and image
- Letter + Image
- a rebus is a representation of words or syllables by pictures of objects whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound
- Word + Image
- the power of image to intensify meaning of a word
- Visual-Verbal Synergy
- cooperative action of words and pictures that come together to create a greater meaning than it is presented individually
Intertextuality
- Barthes: "death of author, birth of reader" - "text unity does not lie in origin, but in destination"
- context determines the reader's framework when interpreting text
- intertextuality - no text is clear cut, it always is in relation to another
- different frames of text
- formal: genres
- genre can be seen as a sign system or code
- no such thing as complete originality
- some texts directly allude to each other
- alienates the context
- makes audience believe in an on-going narrative
- appeals to critical detachment than emotional involvement
- links cross boundary of formal frames
- share topics (ex. genres)
- where does text begin and end? (boundaries of text?)
- each text exists in a vast society of texts
- intratextuality - involving internal relations in the text
- single code (photograph) - relationship of the pictured person to the other person in the photograph
- several codes (text) - newspaper photograph may have a caption
- anchorage
- principle function is ideological
- photograph in a newspaper with a caption - caption tells us how the image ought to be read
- relay
- multiple codes are involved in media
- ex. film and soundtrack - relationship with one another, how they work together
- relationships of codes in a genre shift over time
