DOCUMENT RESUME AUTHOR Quest of Visual Literacy: Deconstructing Visual Images of 10P.; In: Visionquest: Journeys Toward Visual L
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 408 975 IR 018 388 AUTHOR Semali, Ladislaus TITLE Quest of Visual Literacy: Deconstructing Visual Images of Indigenous People. PUB DATE Jan 97 NOTE 10p.; In: VisionQuest: Journeys toward Visual Literacy. Selected Readings from the Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (28th, Cheyenne, Wyoming, October, 1996); see IR 018 353. PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative (142) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Critical Thinking; *Critical Viewing; *Cultural Images; Ethnic Groups; Film Criticism; *Films; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; *Indigenous Populations; Inquiry; Misconceptions; *Visual Literacy; Visual Stimuli IDENTIFIERS *Africa (Sub Sahara); *Gods Must Be Crazy (The); Visual Representation ABSTRACT This paper introduces five concepts that guide teachers' and students' critical inquiry in the understanding of media and visual representation. In a step-by-step process, the paper illustrates how these five concepts can become a tool with which to critique and examine film images of indigenous people. The Sani are indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. The culture, language and social life of the Sani has been represented in the film, "The Gods Must Be Crazy" (1984). Through the humorous images in the film, the writer-director makes jokes about the absurdities and discontinuities of African life. In films, through the manipulation of camera angles and other techniques, the viewer is given a sense of realism. Such ploys of visual representations of people demand a careful analysis to discover:(1) what is at issue;(2) how the issue/event is defined;(3) who is involved;(4) what the arguments are; and (5) what is taken for granted, including cultural assumptions. Each of these questions is explored in relation to "The Gods Must Be Crazy." In critical viewing in general, a systematic mode of inquiry should be applied which focuses on the visual, source, origins, and the determinants of media and visual constructions. By using these five concepts in critical inquiry, the ways in which the language of visuals is socially and historically produced can be examined. (Contains 13 references.) (AEF) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproducedas received from the person or organization originating it. Quest of Visual Literacy: Minor changes have been made to Deconstructing VisualImages of Indigenous People improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this Ladislaus Semali document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Abstract The purpose of this essay is to introduce five concepts that guideteachers' and students' inquiry in the understanding of media and visual representation.In a step by stepprocess, I will show how these five conceptscan become a tool with which to critique and examine film imagesof indigenous people soas to expose the oppressive spaces in the daily dose of media andvisual messages designed to provide informationand entertainment to credulous aims to be a model for teachers audiences. Thisessay contemplating to use such tools intheir own classroomsto teach critical viewing, critical thinking,and critical reading skills. Introduction In the study of visual Critical inquiry isa term currently used communication and visual literacy, critical inquiryis not used among educators that sparkscontroversy. widelyinclassroomsasatoolfor For some educators, criticalinquiry reflects a deconstructing visualimages,particularly newapproachthatallows teachersto those images thatrepresent people's culture, construct pedagogical practices whichconnect identity, or ethnicity. While with their students' experiences this has began to and provide occur in some schools, it is not students with a vision of social yet common change by practice in all schools. Withcritical inquiry, encouraging them to research theirown topics students learn to become critical and ask their own questions. consumers This approach who are aware of visualmanipulation and stands in contrast withteaching the classics stereotyping as an important projectof critical and a canon of acceptableliterary works far literacy education. removed from the students' experiences to be In order to illustrate thecurrent inquiry memorized for exams. For many other movement, I decided to apply the workwhich educators, critical inquiry isanother fad, a I and other university resurrection of old ideas researchers in critical growing out of a pedagogy have engaged inover the past 10 long history in educationof creating new years. This method of inquiry is basedon the labels for old ideas withoutany real change in rationale that if we hope classrooms and schools. to create media and visual environments thatwill help us change Critical inquiry is nota fad.It draws from oppressive literacy practices,we have to think social theory studies ofpopular culture, the critically about what kinds media in its many forms, of learning we literature, the role want to go into the classroomsand the of the state in strugglesover race, class and pedagogical spaces in whichlearning occurs gender relations, nationaland international for most students; how theseliteracy practices economic structures, andthe cultural politics are projected or articulated with other of imperialism and social, postcolonialism (Giroux, political, and ideological forces. 1987; Giroux & Simon,1989; McLaren, Hammer, Sholle, &Reilly, 1995).Simply put, critical inquiry Deconstructing Images of Indigenous means questioning. This People practice of questioning requires both teachers In this essay, I introduce and studentsto account for their a discussion about own beliefs the Sani. The Saniare the indigenous people and practices byexploring the contradictions of the Kalahari Desert in that are necessarily Southern Africa. inherent in their own These people have for lives. many years been called "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THE the "bushmen",a derogatory name coined by MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED B' Alice D. Walker 247 2 EST COPY AV ILALE TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE: INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." early European settlers in the early 1900s. Media Studies, Stuart Hall reminds us that This name has been used until recently, when media (and indeed visuals) play a significant Namibia got its independence in 1990. The role in the creation and reinforcement of culture, language, and social life of the Sani specific images of the world, the manufacture has been represented in the film: The Gods of consent, and the positioning of political Must Be Crazy(:984). As the name economic interests (Hall, 1982). "bushman" suggests, the Sani have been In the study of visual representation in portrayed in this film as a creature of the films, the complex issues surrounding culture, Stone Age that persists to be an obstacle to identity, and ethnicity are brought to bear. progress, civilization, and modernization. The dominant visual techniques and coding Inthe powerfulvisualand humorous devices employed by the producer of The images of The Gods, a South African writer- Gods, to convince viewers of the accuracy or director, Jamie Uys, makes jokes about the believability claimed in the story, combines absurdities and discontinuities of African life. the Hollywood classic cinema with ignorance He portrays the Sani culture as primitive, the associated with remote area groups (Bordwell, environment in which they live is labelled as Staiger & Thompson, 1985). paradise on Earth, and their entire existence Watching the film prompted me to think seemstoclashsharplywith"civilized" about its underlying messages in relation to societies predominant in large cities and in other films I had seen, and caused me to Western Europe. In this pixilated absurdity, wonder if the politics and representations in Uys wrote, produced, and directed The Gods, The Gods had also been in other films about in which three divergent plot-threads are Africans. The continued reassertion of white arbitrarily braided into a whole. racial hegemony and patriarchy seems to be By bringing the discussion of the film about most explicit in this film. Equally, the nature the Sani to the foreground,I expose the of the reality constructed by the film and the mistaken popular beliefs commonly portrayed values implicit in its visual representations are about Africans in movies and television, wittingly intertwined with humor and cannot especially in Travel, National Geographic, or be taken for granted. Discoveryfilms. Thishumorous Readers may be troubled in two contrasting anthropological story does not only show how ways: on the one hand, some who are different cultures perceive the same things in shocked by the obvious racism of the film totally different ways, but it does so in a may wonder why Iworry about basic shameless manner. principles of visual representation; on the A critical examination of The Gods Must other hand, many may wish that the questions Be Crazy coincides with the critical approach I pose could just be ignored, simply because, to inquiry made explicit in this essay.This in their opinion, the film was only a piece of approach provides a systematic educational art and entertainment