The Image Curation project was tough to get started. We had a difficult time picking out what we wanted to do for our slideshow, but once we decided the ball got rolling and we finished within hours. We ‘danced’ around ideas like strange book titles, children’s drawings, and shapes but finally decided on the theme of glasses. We began our search for glasses and found that a lot of the search results that came up were of images of glasses or sunglasses on celebrities. I found even when I went online and looked for certain businesses photo’s they were all promoting sunglasses on celebrities and how to steal their style- like they were the most important and even the center of everyone’s daily life. Celebrities have been made into people whom we envy and want to be like. It’s almost as though, we are not seeing the world unless it is through their eyes, their beliefs, and values. My group and I got together the next day and we discussed how we all had noticed how glamorized their lifestyle has been made and used this as inspiration. So each of the members got together and searched for 10-15 pictures each with celebrities wearing glasses and making them look beautiful. At the end, we have the few very harsh, sad photos of children in third world countries wearing glasses that are made of paper, or straw and tape. This we thought examined a political aspect showing that just because you see something all the time portrayed in a certain way, doesn’t mean that it’s the only way that it can be presented.
I was having a hard time looking at these photographs from a semiotic point of view so I called up Cara and asked her for her assistance. She discussed a couple things with me including the notion of poverty being accepted in today’s society, as well as the obvious sexual appeal that is portrayed by the celebrities.
The pictures we chose were all of celebrities wearing glasses, or sunglasses and in every shot (correction, almost every shot) the celebrity wearing the glasses was shown in a very beautiful pose, with a huge smile or sexy smirk. The most sexual of the photographs were those used to actually sell the sunglasses. “When an image occurs in an advertisement, we assume that it is there to help sell a product, as by depicting an instance of someone enjoying possession and consumption of the product. Thus we have in these standard deployments of text and image the harmonious relations of explication (by text) and illustration (by image)” (Dillon 1). This only suggests just what we have been told and shown for years, sex sells. However, sex is not the only thing being used to sell glasses. Celebrities are shown wearing them –They are shown being strong, beautiful, rich, and everything that you want, or want to be. They use people’s envy to lure them into buying the glasses by showing them how happy they can be, how successful they could be, how beautiful... if they only bought the glasses. This is discussed in John Bergers Ways of Seeing.
The very end picture that Cara had found was that of a little boy wearing home-made glasses. They were bent out of shape, made of straw and tape. The boy looked as though he was a young refugee and he looked as though he did not have much. Much alike the celebrities shown he seemed to be very content, regardless of the fact that he may not have as much money or power. Unlike the celebrities we do not envy him, but because of his smile and what appears to be an unbroken spirit we accept him. His poverty is saddening but we also accept that because we have been a witness to poverty for years. There is no shock value in poverty anymore, and I feel less inclined to help out because I know there are hundreds of other people out there already doing so much for the poor. We see it every day in our own country (there are families that are too poor to even feed their own children). This is what is meant by poverty being accepted in today’s society.
Here is our slideshow;
(to be added)
Dillon, George L. "Art and the Semiotics of Images: Three Questions About Visual Meaning." 1 Dec. 2000. Washington University. 24 Nov. 2007
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