Copyright, Trademark and Ownership

Copyright infringements, ownership and trademark issues are not easy to resolve. There is often a gray area between what is okay to publish and what is not. Sturken and Cartwright state the biggest factor in determining the fair use of property is whether or not the copy is promoting or adding to the original piece. (208) As our society adopts more advanced technologies it is difficult to prove clear copyright violations. Sturken and Cartwright ask the question: How do courts find the difference between transformation and the derivation of a piece of work?

Below is an example post I have written for this discussion. This commercial definitely made me question its intentions and reminded me of the California Celebrities Rights Act of 1984 (207) mentioned in the reading. You do NOT need to answer the questions in my example. 

In 2009, Direct TV released a commercial with David Spade promoting satellite television. The advertisement used a scene from the film Tommy Boy, which caused debate among viewers. Chris Farley's family approved the commercial, making this a case of morality. David Spade and Farley's family defended the commercial; however, people felt it was in poor taste. Is this an issue of exploitation of the dead or a way to honor the late actor's career? Since Farley is synonymous with the character Tommy from the film, does this affect his likeness?

Research an article, court case or issue that interests you! What you post is not limited to legal conflicts, but can touch upon what is morally right or wrong within this week's topic. From a celebrity's likeness/persona to the pros and cons of digital images compared to analog photographic images, there are numerous options to explore. Ask questions to engage others and give your opinion. 

Blogger:
Lone Ranger 

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “Copies, Ownership and Copyright.” 204-220. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University., 2009. Print.

Perspectives on Infographics and The Guerilla Girls

Infographics are an integral part of conveying information within our society and so it is important to know how Infographics can potentially be misleading. From the reading on Infographics, the author explains how charts can lie, and how "even if the original data is good, your graphical representation of the data may not be" (11). Below are two graphs taken from different FOX News broadcasts which show extremely misleading information:

Figure 1 : Misleading Cost of Gas

In Figure 1, we can see how the bottom scale of the graph jumps from last year, to last week, to current. This is by no means an accurate time-frame to make a line graph out of, and so while the graph shows an increase in the cost of gas over time, it really isn't saying anything meaningful in terms of statistical data. Perhaps "last week" had particularly high gas prices, and "current" could mean literally anything from one week later to years later. Not only this, but the Y axis only measures 10 cents per line, making a small increase appear to be a huge jump when it's really not.

Figure 2: Misleading Unemployment Rates

Figure 3: Unemployment Rates with Indicator lines

In Figures 2 and 3, you can see directly with the added lines how the data is not portrayed correctly on the graph, as 8.6% is literally adjacent to 9.0%. In all of these graphs, the creator is manipulating the Y axis to make the change seem more significant than it actually is.

Prompt 1: Misleading Infographics are still a big problem in society, so for discussion, can you find any other examples of ways in which Infographics are being used to portray skewed or false information? In what other ways might Infographics be particularly harmful and/or helpful to society? Could Fox News be misrepresenting the data to promote a certain political ideology?


The Guerrilla Girls is a movement composed of female artists who fight for equality in the art world. Often, the posters they create are meant to incite a certain political or social ideaology pertaining to the status of female artists in a largely patriarchal society. From the reading on Guerrilla Girls, “The famous query by feminist artists and art historians goes, ‘Why haven’t there been more great women artists throughout Western history?’ The Guerrilla Girls want to restate the question: ‘Why haven’t more women been considered great artists throughout Western History?” Below are two Guerrilla Girl images.

Figure 4 - Michele Bachmann

In Figure 4, we see an image of Michele Bachmann with a caption that reads, “Even Michele Bachmann believes we all have the same civil rights” with an equal sign covering her mouth. The overall message seems to be calling for an equality that the person on the poster claims to exist, that clearly doesn’t.

Figure 5 - Guerilla Girl

Figure 5 shows a picture of a nude model wearing a gorilla mask. The caption suggests that women artists are under-appreciated and yet a vast majority of art depicting the naked human body are of women. The implication is then that even in the art world, women are seen as objects in a patriarchal society, something that the Guerrilla Girls aspire to change

Prompt 2: In Figure 4, what do you see as the overall message? Do you think there is something oppressive about the “equal” sign and where it is situated in the image, and if so do you think that it creates something contradictory? In other words, is the implication of “shutting out” Michele Bachmann contradictory of equality in sense of free speech? Feel free to share any other examples images that seem to incite messages of equality, specifically in terms of gender.

Applying Different Theories of the Gaze: bell hooks and Sturken & Cartwright

This week, we are reading bell hooks' "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" and Sturken & Cartwright's "Changing Concepts of the Gaze."  Each theorist provides a new insight and outlook on the gaze.  In bell hooks' article, she details the role of black women as spectators, both historically and in today's society.  Sturken and Cartwright's text examines a reversal of the gaze that occurs when men are portrayed as sexual objects.

Prompt 1:

Sturken & Cartwright's "Changing Concepts of the Gaze" states:

Contemporary visual culture involves a highly complex array not only of images and spectators but also of gazes.  Whereas many contemporary advertisements continue to sell products through traditional gender codes by portraying women in demure, seductive poses for a possessive male gaze, other ads play off these traditions by reversing them and showing both the pleasure of looking at men as objects and the power of women in action. (Sturken and Cartwright 133)

The text illustrates how modern media often reverses traditional roles of the gaze. Many films and advertisements turn men into sexualized objects and subsequently give women power as the gazers.

Figure 1: Movie Still from Magic Mike

Retrieved from: New York Times' Website 

Consider the film Magic Mike. One could argue that Magic Mike defies the concept of the traditional male gaze.  In the movie, Magic Mike's entire body is on display while he's dancing provocatively for the females surrounding him.  His character is ultimately subject to the gaze, as myriad women fawn over his physique. 

For this prompt, we propose that you find another example of a movie, commercial, or advertisement that contradicts the traditional concept of the male gaze. Please post your findings and discuss how they reverse the stereotypical male gaze.  You could also further examine Magic Mike as an example.

Figure 2: Magic Mike Film Trailer

Retrieved from: YouTube 

Prompt 2:

Figure 2: Man with Raw Steaks
Retrieved from: NY Daily News

This image is of a muscular man with multiple raw steaks on a plate looking directly at his viewers. In "Changing Concepts of the Gaze," it says that "contemporary theories that engage with issues of race, ethnicity, and sexuality as factors in the construction of the gaze allow for much more nuanced understandings of the processes of identification with the image and the complex ways in which images interpellate spectators" (Sturken and Cartwright 136).  This man's gaze can represent several things to many different people as suggested above.  Think from the perspective of either a vegetarian, an elderly woman, or a homosexual male.  What might his gaze mean?  Is it effective in advertising the meat?  How might this image be different if the gaze was on the meat instead of the viewer?

Citations:
bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” The Feminism and Visual 
Culture Reader, ed. Amelia Jones. London: Routledge, 2003. 94-105. Print.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “Changing Concepts of the Gaze.” Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ., 2009. 130-136. Print.

Blog Post:
Brittany Andersen and Kayola Davis-Tabb

Act of Looking: Difference, Representation, and Male Gaze in Media

Gaze and it's effects on the viewer is the subject for this week's readings, with a link to the MissRepresentation film in regards to how women are treated. The reading explains gaze, stating it “helps to establish relationships of power...awarding more power to the person who is looking than the person who is the object of the look.” (111) Being the viewer of the image grants authority over that which they are looking at, but also gaze within an image creates situations of dominance

“There is a long tradition in art of understanding the female nude as the project and possession of the male artist. In these paintings, the women are posed as objects of an active or ‘male’ gaze, and their returning looks are more often downcast, indirect, or otherwise coded as passive.” (123-124)

1) The following Calvin Klein ad, a classic representation of male gaze in media, features three men fondling a nearly nude woman. In this image, male fantasies of domination are projected on to a passive female, successfully asserting the prominence of male perspective in our culture.

Figure 1, Calvin Klein jeans advertisement

Retrieved from: https://mahagha.wordpress.com/tag/advertising/

Please respond to at least one of any of the following questions regarding Figure 1:

• “In systems of representation, meaning is established through difference” (111).

Only the men in the image are wearing the advertised jeans. What do you believe is the implication/purpose of this “difference?” What do you have to say about the ad’s disparities in representation--there being 3 men and only 1 woman? Does this say something about the ad’s intended audience?

• “The act of looking is commonly regarded as awarding more power to the person who is looking than to the person who is the object of the look” (111).

Who are we forced to focus on in this image--the three male figures, or the single female figure? Who is “looking” and who is the “object of the look?” What do you think this aesthetic choice says about gender roles, power and representation? Feel free to also draw on past readings such as Bordo’s "The Empire of Images", discussions we have had in class and on the blog, and the documentary we watched, Miss Representation.

2) “In systems of representation, meaning is established through difference.”(pg. 111) Essentially everything we understand about representation comes from knowledge of one side and basing the other side on it's opposite (in the sense that we know what culture is because it is the opposite of nature, or what Eastern countries are like because they are the opposite of our own Western ideologies).

I would like you, the viewer, to consider the following picture.

Figure 2, Opposite Sides (Illustration by Malcolm Evans from http://www.evanscartoons.com/index.php)

From understanding only one side of the picture, we start to make generalized assumptions of the other side. These assumptions translate into stereotypes, and eventually, these become common ways of viewing these opposite side (here, “white” or western culture versus eastern culture). Instead of ask your opinion on this, I implore you to look over your initial thoughts on images of other countries, cultures, and people different from you (that I ask you put here). What are these thoughts and where do you think they stem from? (I am asking you to open up a bit and be honest about your own possible bias toward other cultures, and explore possibilities as to why and how to correct them)

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “The Gaze and the Other.” Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ., 2009. 111-120. Print.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “Gender and the Gaze.” 123-136 Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ., 2009. 123-129. Print.

Realism in Images

A picture says a thousand words, but does Realism make the list? While photos are meant to portray unbiased truth, the myth of photographic truth still lingers in our culture today. Digital editing software allows normal photos to be altered in both positive and negative lights. According to the French theorist, Roland Barthes, “...myth is the hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are specific to certain groups, are made to seem universal and given for a whole society” (p.20).

Option 1: In Figure 1, Time magazine darkened the skin tone of then suspect, O.J. Simpson because of the “...historical convention of using darker skin tones to connote evil and to imply guilt” (p.25). At the time of the release of the Time magazine, Simpson wasn’t even on trial yet, and before he even had a fair chance, was viewed as a murderer because of his darkened skin tones, stereotyping him as a criminal. 

As a starting point, some of these questions may help you think about how color and digital editing affects our culture. Why do you think a world renowned magazine, such as Time, went to such lengths to darken Simpson’s skin tone? Do you believe the darker image makes him look like more of a criminal than that of the lighter image? Do you think American’s would have reacted more positively to Simpson had the original image (on Newsweek magazine) been placed on news stands? How do you think the colors affected readers of Time? If you saw this picture as an adult in 1994, would you view Simpson as a criminal? Why or why not?

Figure 1, Digital editing done by Time and real picture on Newsweek magazine

Retrieved from: http://jonmwessel.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/oj-simpson-time-magazine-cover-controversial-darkened1994.jpg?w=604

Option 2: "To explore the meaning of images is to recognize that they are produced within dynamics of social power and ideology. Ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures. Images are an important means through which ideologies are produced and onto which ideologies are projected" (22-23). Looking back to last week, where we focused on how women are portrayed by the media, take a look at Figure 2, and apply this week's reading about images, ideology, and representation. Why is photoshop used to alter the appearance of models? What does it represent for companies, products, and society? This is a still taken from the below video, Figure 3, that goes through this process. What does this say about the ideology of our society?

Figure 2,  before and after photoshopping, still from video
Retrieved from: http://dslrs.net/dslr/dslr-photography/movie-shows-photoshop-body-retouching-taken-to-extreme/

Figure 3: Photoshop makes anything possible video

Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cPnfjwKfkSk

"Image Authentication and Forensics | Fourandsix Technologies - Photo Tampering throughout History." Image Authentication and Forensics | Fourandsix Technologies - Photo Tampering throughout History. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. "Images, Power, and Politics." Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ., 2009. 1-46. Print.

Women in the Media and Society

So this week we are reading “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies” by Susan Bordo and we are watching Miss Representation in class. Susan Bordo discusses how images and the media portray ideals for women and girls. Plastic surgery and age defying methods are a focus at the beginning, but then she transitions to gender differences for toys and videos by talking about her daughter. Miss Representation depicts how society sees women and how the media portrays them. For example, how men see woman in politics and how women feel the need to compete with other women.

For this blog posting we have two options for discussion:

Figure 1: Halle Berry - Catwoman.
Retrieved from: http://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/the-top-ten-catwoman-actresses-2/

Option 1: Miss Representation talked about women in film and television. The point was made that there are very few women protagonists that are complex or have story lines void of love stories or involving any men sexually/romantically. An argument could be made that Catwoman is an example of such a woman protagonist. Not only are there few women protagonists, but also few producers, writers, and directors that are women in the industry. We propose that you find an example of a woman protagonist who is not what the film deems the “bangable” hero or the chick flick heroine. On the flip side, we propose that you find a blatant example of such a “bangable” hero or a classic chick flick heroine. Try to post a video, image, trailer, or movie poster that you can find with one these women and discuss how they are an example of one of these stereotypes or not.

Option 2: In “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies” by Susan Bordo, there is a point about gender and advertisements along with consumer items. If you ever walked into a toy store there is a girl aisle and a boy aisle. The only aisles that sometimes you can find gender neutral toys are the baby aisles. We would like it if you could find an advertisement that is gender neutral for toys or any other consumer item. Or find one that is so completely stereotypical, that it is very obvious. On the other hand, find a toy or an example from a store that is gender neutral as well. Think about Susan’s article and make argument about how this reflects and affects children in our society. Below we've included commercials that we found are very gender specific, along with one little girl's opinion about toys and gender.

Figure 2: Nerf Strike Commercial. 

Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjla695Ju0

Figure 3: Easy Bake Oven Commercial. 

Retrieve from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lreImESlrG0

Figure 4: Riley on Marketing.

Retrieved: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas

For this weeks blog we’ve decided to put focus on the first essay.  I never really get a chance to talk to other classmates about interesting essay topics and what we plan on writing on so now I’ll do the most interesting thing i can.  I invite you all to engage in an open forum for so we can pick each other brains.  Now you don’t have to necessarily post your thesis statements however you could post your examples of visual rhetoric and say why you find it interesting (or uninteresting).  

Option 1:

Now because we’re allowed to write about anything, I’d assume anything we chose to write about for this essay is a personal choice and perhaps gives insight into who we are (to some extent).  And really, what I’m most personally interested in, is aesthetic.  So do you think your visual is aesthetically pleasing?  Why or why not?  Provide some analysis on colors used, typeface/font, shapes, etc.  There is much opportunity in this option to use what you know and the best part is, we get to see into the minds of other students which is rare for any class.

Option:2

The readings we've done in class have helped familiarize us with terminology and visual concepts. Many of these terms and techniques will be utilized in your first essays. As an alternative to going in depth into your essay's topic, cite and discuss a particular section of a reading (or an entire reading itself) and discuss why the reading helped you gain a stronger understanding of visual rhetoric. What did you consider to be very useful to you or excellent advice? What was confusing? Use this space to discuss any material you may not have understood or need some clarity with. How did having the student example essays help you think about your own essay? Was there anything these students did that you found to be effective?

A quick note from Dave to start things off:

Originally I was going to write about something different but instead I switched it to the subject of music videos, specifically one of my favorite ones.  Music videos are hard for me to write about because I wear my biases on my sleeve and of course the song is capable into persuading you to like any accompanying visuals regardless of what they are.  However I’ll apply a trick I learned from a film class and watch the video with sound and then without it. This video is more aesthetic with sound than without it.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10oBReNHcEA