#visual cullture

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Analysis | That Ohio protest photo looked like a zombie movie. Zombie movie directors think so, too.

Angry faces pressed against glass is “classic horror,” says the director of “Fear the Walking Dead.”

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What Resulted When a Photographer Gave Rural Children Cameras

Twenty years before the term “socially engaged art” entered the lexicon, Wendy Ewald realized that, when she gave cameras to children, they created “more powerful and more intimate pictures than I could.”

[walksintoapegbar]

Critical Perspectives - Planning The Essay

I haven’t really posted much here outside of the initial rush of posts - other than summarising early lectures, I haven’t written much about my experiences with Critical Perspectives or the thought process behind my essay, which I’ve just uploaded the poster for, so I guess now’s a good time to start. While I write my essay on my other monitor. Fun.

When we were given our question, I think a lot of people didn’t understand it (I did, at least, so I hope I wasn’t alone); “Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text”. At first, I think a lot of people assumed it meant literal text, such as a book, which I’m glad it wasn’t as I had no ideas for books. Then they elaborated it also didn’t mean entire series or films, which was a bit of a pain as that was all of my ideas. As it turns out, a “cultural text” in this case meant any publicly-accessible image we could write about critically. So, I got to thinking about what images i could critically analyse.

The Fender Stratocaster, an iconic guitar.

My first plan was to write about the design of an electric guitar - specifically, the Fender Stratocaster, an iconic guitar design that’s been replicated or imitated by many guitar companies. I have an interest in music, and I own a bass guitar with a similar style, so it seemed like a good choice. I could talk about the design itself and why it’s designed that way, why it became such an iconic design and why so many companies try to replicate the design for their own use. However, I wasn’t sure it was the best decision for my essay; outside of the topics mentioned here, I didn’t really have any other ideas for discussion topics, and my knowledge of the design of guitars is limited at best - I only knew the name Stratocaster thanks to a friend - so I put the idea to one side as a backup if I couldn’t think of anything else.

I had my second essay idea on my way to a Critical Perspectives lecture, where we were supposed to have our final ideas for our cultural texts; red-cyan 3D glasses. Again, they’re an easily-recognisable design and allowed me to write about the possible thought process behind the design, but it also gave some other interesting conversation topics. For example, red-cyan 3D glasses have appeared in popular culture over the years, ranging from David Tennant’s portrayal as the 10th Doctor in Doctor Who in the mid- to late-2000s through to Back To The Future in the 80s, where every film featured a character wearing a pair of the iconic glasses. They also allowed me to talk about 3D cinema, with its rise to popularity in the 1920s and its resurgence in the last decade and a half. Plus, I already had a solid idea for the poster, so I changed my idea and got to researching that same day.

Upon retrospect, was it a good idea to change my idea? I think so - as I write this, I’ve already hit upon more topics than I could’ve for the Fender Stratocaster, and I’m around the halfway point in terms of word count. Plus, it seemed like an interesting concept for an essay (to me, anyway - I hope our lecturers agree).