CantrellD+In-class+responses

Visual Rhetoric and Our World-3/8/12

Graduate student Tim Smith graced us with his presence to talk with us about visual literacy, and film rhetoric, among other things. He talked first about frame deconstruction, referring to Derrida and Foucoult, and we looked at a particular shot from //Yes Man.// We noticed the dominance displayed by the man's spread apart legs, and the woman's submissiveness displayed by her crossed legs and folded arms. We noticed how their faces were positioned in the shot, which helped to draw your gaze just to them. Tim's main point in this was that we receive messages all the time from images, but most people don't know //how// they receive them. He then talked about montage theory, and how with the camera lens you are able to record reality, but then afterwards the images can be rearranged (edited), and thus you can essentially rearrange reality. Each shot is a unit of meaning, and when you put them together they collide creating new meanings. Intellectual montage was discussed an example was combining a war scene and a slaughter scene to evoke a certain emotion. He talked about collage, Salvador Dali, and Dadaism. The main thing I got out of this part was in terms of how film rhetoric has evolved, there's always a relationship between art and culture; dadaism for example was a reflection of the chaos of WWI. His main thesis is how to use visual literacy in teaching writing, as anymore, the world is filled not just with language, but images accompanying the language.

Week 2 Glossary Definition:
 * Cases**

-Situational occurences that can be examined in isolation, or within a context. //-EX:// In terms of //Law//, Ramage uses the example of a Supreme Court decision (1896) that railroad companies should have alternate seating for black and white passengers, but that the decision did not imply any inferiority in terms of the black race. Looking at it in isolation, the decision (case) could seem 'innocent'; but looking at the history, and our knowledge of slavery and violence towards blacks, the //case// takes on a darker hew. So 'circumstances alter cases' and "one must look beyond the words on the page to the cirumstances that gave rise to them and to the consequences that flow from them to determine how to understand and judge them" (24)-Ramage (Danica Cantrell)