a.   the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture

b.   American Idol or People Magazine

c.   better understand the code of visual communications

a. the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us. we use words to understand, define and describe the world as we see it

b. English language

c. allow us to understand, express, and interpret meaning

a. defines representation as a process of mirroring or imitating the real. representation of realism

b. breakfast- eggs & bacon.  There are certain things that hold their value. In our culture, when we see a picture of eggs and bacon on a plate, we assume that it represents breakfast.

c. this theory doesn’t quite capture reality, it could mean something beyond that reality, convey something more, a symbol beyond what is depicted

a. It holds that it is the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique meaning on the world through language. Words or images mean what the author intends them to mean

b. denotative (explicit meaning) connotative (all that the image means to the person personally and socially) 

c. we can never know the intention of the author, hence it is viewers who make the meaning of the image

 (Olson)

a. theory that asserts that much of what has been taken as fact is socially constructed through conjunctures of ideological forces, language, economic relationships, and so forth.

b. look at an image/poster and describe...talk about how the meaning changed over time

c. in order to decode image we need to think about how the culture thinks about the image, realities are constructed through cultural ideologies

 SAUSSURE

a. structuralism is a set of theories that emphasized the laws, codes, rules, formulas, and conventions that structure human behavior and systems of meaning. no matter how much the details change from story to story the structure stays the same. Limited number of bianaries

b. James Bond movies: Bond/ villain, good/evil

c.  The task of structuralism is to make explicit rules and conventions which govern the production of meaning (acts of parole)

 BARTHES

a. examine what structuralists did not account for such as desire, play, amiguity of meanings

b. Madonna takes icons and use them in ways that give them different meanings (rosary, wedding veil, etc.), gender

(Sauserre)

a.  Langue: system of rules and conventions, pre-exists user.  Rules of the game Parole: use of language in context--expression/performance

b. Langue--Rules of Chess, the moves and Parole--ways a game of chess is played (many different possibilities). using any language, how there is a correct way (grammar/use) of that language

c. differentiate between language and how it is used. They enable us to study these two things as separate identities, and helped Barthes form theories and methods regarding the deconstruction and analysis of visual texts.

(Levi Strauss)

a. a chain of interrelated meaning/concepts that appear at the 2nd level of signification. A common sense understanding of the world, and it portrays a cultures way of thinking about conceptualizing or understanding something-- especially something that naturalizes the way of thinking. Closely related to ideology.

b. X

c. help the society to legitimize ideology--how ideology is portrayed within a society  

* Polysemy (Encoding-Decoding Model)

a. audience rejects the dominant meaning and replaces with their own.

b. any example, just describe in correct context

c demonstrates how the receiver/audience is not always at the disposal of the sender/those in power.  the audience is capable of being an active agent in creating their own meaning.

a. interpreted from dominant reading, when an audience member agrees with some of the text but not all

b. Oscars- epitome of fame, not really about what good film is about

c. demonstrates how the receiver/audience is not at the full disposal of the sender/those in power.  the audience is capable of being an active agent in creating meaning.

a. the intended or preferred meaning, take at face value  

b. any example, just describe in correct context

c. demonstrates the ability of a text to control or manipulate people’s perception.  taking a preferred reading serves the interest of those in power.  

a. A system of meanings, a systematic organization or structure of signs. Codes are made up of signs.

b. Code of Ethics is made up of socially constructed signs which determines what are “ethical” practices or not.

c. Codes are socially constructed, which means they only make sense in the culture that follows them. The meaning of codes depends on signs and the sign’s meanings depend on culture. 

 (Althusser)

a. the process by which ideological systems call out to or “hail” social subjects and tell them their place in the system.

b. Ad that says “YOU”

c. In popular culture, interpellation refers to the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into a particular ideological position. 

  (from the fiske reading) (Gramsci)

a. that dominant ideologies are often offered as common sense and that dominant ideologies are in tension with other forces and hence constantly in flux.  The term indicates how ideological meaning is an object of struggle rather than an oppressive force that fully dominates subjects from above.

b. Protesting, hegemony allows for groups to stand up to the dominant culture

c. 

a. The practice of taking terms and meanings and appropriating them to create new meanings.

b. the word “queer”; the term “queer” had been used as a derogatory term for homosexuals, but has been re-appropriated to be both a positive term for identity and as a theoretical term indicating a position through which the norm is questioned (like something weird).  

c. audience able to negotiate and resist hegemonic meaning, interaction rather than media forced on us-- represent shift of media consumer to active media producer.

a. The practice of working with whatever materials are at hand, “making do” with what one has.  It has the potential to create resistant meanings out of commodities.  

b. punk rock using safety pins

c. it reflects the power struggle between the subgroup and dominant group. the subgroup has a role in changing the meaning of everyday commodities in media culture

a. Appropriation is when a viewer takes something that they are looking at and strategically gives it another meaning. The act of borrowing, stealing, or taking over other’s work, images, words, meanings to one’s own ends.

Re-appropriation- Kills meanings that it originally had in its sub-culture

b. X

c. X

a. institutionalization of the gaze

term used to describe the relationship of looking in which the subject is caught up in the dynamics of desire through being looked at.

b. a woman in an advertisement half naked- she is being looked at by men and women and has no power to make them stop

c. affects experience

(Foucault)

a. acts of looking caught up in dynamics of desire.

b. example: the gaze can be motivated by a desire for control over its object. *keep in mind complex power relations that are a part of the acts of looking and being looked at.

c. relationship of subjects within a network of power--and the mechanism of vision as a means of negotiating and conveying power within that network 

(Edward Said)

a. Western cultures conceive of Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures as other and attribute to these cultures qualities such as exoticism and barbarism.  Orientalism sees a binary opposition between the West (the Occident) and the East (the Orient) in which either negative or romanticized qualities are attributed to the latter.  

b. arab = terrorist

c. Eastern cultures are shown as inferior compared to Western culture.

 (Foucault)

a. we behave as if we are under a scrutinizing, panoptic gaze and that we internalize the rules and norms of the society as we imagine ourselves to be always potentially under a watchful eye that expects us to perform this way.

b. obeying the car pool lane rule.

c. when people feel that they are constantly being watched, they will self regulate and obey the laws. 

 (Foucault)

a. Forcing the body to “emit signs” - to signify its relation to social norms

 b. Black Swan, constantly under surveillance, under gaze of audience to create perfect performance and disciplines her body in order to give the perfect performance that the gaze wants (director of the ballet)

c. x

 (Andrejevic article)

a. Where many (masses) watch the few (shows, those in commercials; the few watch the many.

b. big brother show

c. 

  (Benjamin’s)

a. unique existence, originality, it has a connection to the artist (indexical), its historical, it physically bears the traces of history and you have to seek the painting out, it is unique in time and space.

B Mountain- original, has history of being one thing in time and space

c. magic quality of original art pieces have. reminds us we still place value on realness and authenticity/ more meaningful than something that can be reproduce 

a. The uniqueness of the “presence in time and space” that gives an image a particular kind of aura, giving it a feeling of authenticity.  

b. The Mona Lisa- we have all seen a copy of the artwork, but we might have a different experience when we see the real thing up close

c. the pilgrimage to see an authentic work of art is part of the experience. now, you can see it on a computer screen, but it is not the same as seeing it in real life at a museum

a. Copyright is a bundle of rights to distribute, control, create your original works (art/photos/creations).

• ·      derivative: obviously derives its art straight from the original author   (in court, original artist wins)
• ·      transformative: contributes something unique and individual, original - in court, the original artist does not win because 1st amendment rights triumph if sufficiently prove “transformative” element (courts don’t judge artistic merit, just judge if it’s obvious they copied the original work)

b. X

c. people are no longer able to take credit for works that do not belong to them.

1. Mimesis
2. intent
3. social construction

1. High vs Low
2. Culture as an entire way of life
3. culture as fluid practice, artifacts of communication