Questions for Week 10

1. In his article, Parry-Giles says that "Politics in the postmodern media age is a struggle over images. That struggle forms political reality, as the media mediates the "cultural norms of the postmodern age." According to Baty, "mass-mediated rememberances [act] as the common grounds of political cultural residence." Yet when we consume these televisual images, which Stephens depicts as "a magic that may come to dwarf... other forms of communication" we are invited, via the medium itself, to forget their mediated form." I think that this is an interesting concept and especially relevant with the last election. Tina Fey's representation of Sarah Palin are images that many associated with the Republican ticket in November. How did these images from the media mediate cultural norms during the election? How did Fey's impersonations dwarf other forms of communication in the election?

2. Rose's article "Researching Visual Materials" makes the distinction between vision and visuality. She defines visuality as "the way in which vision is connected in various ways: 'how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing and the unseeing therin.'" Rose addresses the effects that tv, advertisments, newpapers and other forms of media and how they offer views on the world. How do we make these connections between vision and visuality initially? How do we construct our visuality? How do these forms of media connect our vision to out visuality?

3. "It is often suggested - or assumed - that in premodern societies, visual images were no especially important, partly because there were so few of them in circulation. This began to change with the onset of modernity. In particular, it is suggested that modern forms of understanding the world depend on a scopic regime that equates seeing with knowledge... 'looking, seeing and knowing have become perilously intertwined' so that 'the modern' world is very much a "seen" phenomena." At what point did looking, seeing and knowing become so intertwined? Is it possible to separate the three? How exactly did the modern world become such a seen phenomena? Why is it that people are always needing some sort of visual stimulation?