Week1: Visual Culture and Everyday Life

What we see around us takes more than just seeing.

We always though visual as something that only involve our optical system but with that alone human cannot identify what he or she would see because they don’t have previous knowledge about it. This is what I learn during the first lecture where, according to Dr Chris, we can only make sense of the world through the process of vision and perception.

Visual Culture, Representation, Discourse and Ideology.

According to Mitchell (2002), visual culture is not just a social construction of our vision, but it is also the visual construction of our social field. For example, the way we 'gender' things in life. Using my brother as the discourse, I know that he is a man because I assume that he is, but how did i know that my brother is not a woman? Is it because of his physical appearances (e.g. facial hairs, Adam apple) that differs him from a female? Or the way my brother behaves that show his masculinity of a man?

All of these, according to Berger et al.(1972), are learnt assumptions. We assumed what we see because we were taught how things ought to be and thus this is why culture plays a large part in shaping our visual sense. Hence, gender is this case is socially constructed. We learn to differentiate gender because "we carried out the expectation by presenting ourselves to what is considered as normal boy/men, girl/woman, [masculine and feminine] as perceived by our society"(West and Zimmerman, 1987:125). Again these are ideologies of gender.

Representation also plays a role in the way we perceive gender. For example, in the case of my brother, he reflect himself as a man through his physical appearances and the way he behave, and through that representation I can only identify him as a male not female.

Visual Culture in Advertisement.

Noticed anything in the above pictures? These adverts actually present the representation and ideology of gender – men should buy/wear this and women should buy/wear that. Viewers who see this advert will automatically subject him or herself as the consumers of that products (according to their gender). In other words, this is how advertisement constructs our perception - by transmitting the cultural ideas of gender.

REFERENCES

Mitchell, W.J.T. (2002), “Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture”, Journal Of Visual Culture, 2002, Vol 1(2), p. 170.

West, C., and Zimmermann, D. (1987). "Doing Gender". Gender and Society 1: 125-151.

Berger, J., Blomberg, S., Fox, C., Dibb, M., & Hollis, R. (1972). Ways of Seeing. Ed. Chris W.H. Woo. in Analyzing Visual Communication. Brunei Darussalam: University Brunei Darussalam, 2010. p.11