The Codes of Gender

Written and directed by MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape, showing how one of American popular culture's most influential forms communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.

Taste: Cultural Products

Smiley Logo

There is a famous scene in Forrest Gump. One day the eponymous character, played by Tom Hanks, goes for a run – and doesn’t stop. For more than three years he jogs across America, attracting acolytes who keep pace behind him. When a truck drenches Forrest with mud, a fan hands him a yellow T-shirt to mop his face.

After Forrest returns it, the man discovers that the mud has imprinted the cloth with a simple design: a schematic smiley face, consisting of two narrow oval eyes and a beaming grin with dimple-like creases at either end, contained within a circle. It’s a “Eureka!” moment: the man recognises the potential of the design at once, and we understand that he will start flogging similar mass-produced merchandise.

Forrest, of course, is a fictional character. But the man with the yellow T-shirt is an amalgamation of two real-life brothers from Philadelphia who are credited with turning the smiley face into a global fad.

Whatever its origins, the smiley has now been a prominent part of Western visual culture for half a century. Perhaps the secret of its success is its simplicity. What it stands for can be easily moulded by its context.

“The smiley face has gone through the same evolution as the baby-boomer generation,” says the American journalist Joan Gage, who is researching a book on the subject. “In the Sixties, he symbolised happiness, innocence and the American dream. By the Seventies, he was taken over by LSD and drug culture. Then there was the emergence of Watchmen. And now contemporary artists like Banksy have adopted the smiley face as a symbol of evil. I think they’re commenting on modern society: they’re rejecting the America of the Sixties. It’s a political statement.”

Read the full article @ The Telegraph 3/2/12

Semiotics

Semiotics

View more presentations from Rob McMinn

Reading Images and Products

For more information on Reading Images and Products use this link.

Analysis of cultural products using semiotics and process toolkits

Print media; magazine covers; flyers; posters; CD and DVD covers;

Vist Semiotics for Beginners for a more comprehensive guide.

Here are some of the key terms that you should become familiar with to analyse print based media for the AS Communication and Culture exam.

• Anchorage • Barrier • Channel • Connotation • Denotation

• Decode/Encode • Genre • Gatekeeper • Medium • Message

• Mode of address • Noise: barriers to communication • Semiotics

• Sign • Symbol • Text • Redundancy • Polysemic • Signifier/signified

• Preferred/Aberrant/Oppositional/Negotiated/Dominant – Readings

• Open and closed texts: allow a range of readings or limit them

Sample Analysis 1

Sample Analysis 2

Useful terms for print based analysis

Print based analysis

View more presentations from Rob McMinn

Piecing together Guernica

Pablo Picasso's monochrome painting of the 1937 bombing of the town of Guernica remains one of his more famous works. The tapestry version sits at the UN, acting as a powerful visual statement against the horrors of war. But there is much meaning beneath this famous work, writes Picasso expert Gijs van Hensbergen.

For a detailed visual analysis of the symbolic meanings present in this famous painting visit BBC News Magazine.

Barcode.tv

Media, Branding

Objects fill our spaces and shape the ergonomics of day-to-day living; we design, manufacture, purchase and use them in response to needs, wants and functions. Far more than tools or decorations, they’re extensions of our relationship to the surrounding world; every object reveals something about the person using it.

With 100 short films by 30 Canadian and European directors, this interactive documentary for the National Film Board of Canada explores society’s relationship with objects and, with new perspectives, shakes up our habitual ways of seeing them. Through the web and iPhones it extends the concept of interactivity by diverting user attention away from screens and back to the real world.

Exploration begins through a simplified nav that gives visitors the fewest choices possible: Search, Scan, Share. By scanning the universal symbols of consumerism (bar codes), the site drives an experience through the objects surrounding each user and brings them to life through documentary content that promotes interaction between online and offline, encouraging people to use objects as gateways to discovery.

Visit the interactive site here.

Visual Analysis: Meaning In Composition

To reduce the concept to a crude rule of thumb in the composition of a shot in a movie: A person located somewhat to the right of centre will seem ideally placed. A person to the right of that position will seem more positive; to the left, more negative. A centered person will seem objectified, like a mug shot.

Now what do I mean by "positive" or "negative?" I mean that these are tendencies within the composition. They are not absolutes. But in general terms, in a two-shot, the person on the right will "seem" dominant over the person on the left.

In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left. The top is dominant over the bottom. The foreground is stronger than the background. Symmetrical compositions seem at rest. Diagonals in a composition seem to "move" in the direction of the sharpest angle they form, even though of course they may not move at all. Therefore, a composition could lead us into a background that becomes dominant over a foreground.

Tilt shots of course put everything on a diagonal, implying the world is out of balance. I have the impression that more tilts are down to the right than to the left, perhaps suggesting the characters are sliding perilously into their futures. Left tilts to me suggest helplessness, sadness, resignation. Few tilts feel positive. Movement is dominant over things that are still. A POV above a character's eyeline reduces him; below the eyeline, enhances him. Extreme high angle shots make characters into pawns; low angles make them into gods. Brighter areas tend to be dominant over darker areas, but far from always: Within the context, you can seek the "dominant contrast," which is the area we are drawn toward. Sometimes it will be darker, further back, lower, and so on. It can be as effective to go against intrinsic weightings as to follow them.

Taken from:

How to read a movie

By Roger Ebert

Visual Analysis: The Taxonomy of Film Posters

This blog has distilled movie poster design into 13 categories. Despite the lighthearted approach and overwhelming generalisations of the critique, the visual analysis is spot-on. Composition, colour, perspective and typefaces are all considered.