Читать книгу Visual Communication - Janis Teruggi Page - Страница 45

Technology allows people to easily create visual memes from their own photos or others' images and share them on social media. For example, when Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews interviewed star NFL player Richard Sherman after a close‐fought game, Sherman shouted that he was the best corner in the game, launching scores of memes that called on visual popular culture. The memes, mashups of Sherman photos and images of the Incredible Hulk, an alien, and a bully, tended to characterize Sherman as a scary and frightening individual (Figure 2.4), possibly even threatening to Andrews (Page et al., 2016).

Professionally, from retouched photos in fashion spreads and ads to digital effects in video and motion pictures, enhanced images are part of our daily media consumption. They're not all without harm. Depictions of thin, attractive female models and celebrities in movies, on television, and in advertising have been shown to lead young women to have unreasonable expectations about their own bodies and to undermine their self‐ confidence: a negative consequence of seeing those images (Gleeson and Frith, 2006). A magazine retoucher for Vogue magazine reported altering 144 pictures in the magazine for fashion articles and for advertising (Orbach, 2011). Some critics might argue that the images thus are not authentic and represent a false “reality” to readers of the magazine. Others might argue that everyone knows that such images are carefully posed, chosen, and fine‐tuned to present clothing and other products in the most appealing fashion.

Figure 2.4 Meme depicting Richard Sherman as The Predator film character.

Source: Athletize.