Berger and McCloud | |
|
In a flurry of angry shouts, the distinguished lecturer Ward Connerly spoke out to the audience about race, gender, class, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation and their relevance to affirmative action and the UC school system. Sitting in the audience tonight, I could not help but notice the visual differences between those for and those against the speaker. They were as clear as black and white. Human identity can be broken down by simply asking a person what they "are". Some answers might be height, width, weight, as well as age, ethnicity, race, all descriptions that are totally implied, and defined by sight. All responses are confined to egotistical visual aspects. McCloud offers the idea of how the iconic smiley face is deemed as a universal representation of a human face free of some more distinct human features, eye color, hair, nose, skin color, and ethnicity. It is this simplicity of the icon, that according to McCloud creates a sense of involvement, a vacum in which the reader puts himself or herself into the comic, into the fantasy world of the image. In a many ways, we see ourselves in everything and everybody else we see. Berger also proposes a similar notion of visual egocentrism in the viewer when it comes to painting. In the chapter of nude paintings, Berger notes the use of vanity in the form of a mirror in nude paintings of women, visually condemning the nude woman for her vanity, boosting the viewer's ego and in a way justifying any lustful thoughts he might have viewing the painting. This is a prime example of human tendency to judge others based solely on visual differences. The visual world is indeed a powerful force of medium, from which we humans make our own personal discriminations and biases.
Race relations in America have always been a source of conflict in the past, as they are today. The fundamental distinctions of race are purely visual, based on facial features and skin color. We humans are extremely visible beings. Man is captivated, influenced, and ultimately bound to the visible media he interprets from his visual surroundings. Berger and McCloud both portray this understanding of visual influence in human ways of seeing, as visible in color and race as it is visible in paintings and comics. |