Spencer A.

Mosley

September 24th, 2015

Prof. Amber Ward

Art 133 (AM)
Unit 2 Paper
The article Interpreting Visual Culture shows the power of images; the good and bad of
it. Michael Ray Charles work, as noted by Spike Lee, does show the dark side of interpreting
images. It also shows the arbitrary nature of interpretation. The middle schoolers and theyre
sports tees isnt necessarily bad or good, its honestly a little bit of fun rooting for your team and
having rivals. My friends and I have bonded over liking different teams. The kindergarteners
showed the true power of images through marketing; with all the iconic images on kids
products, they dont even need to know how to read to ask for something. Lastly, the
preschoolers and the safe connotation they put on the soft, round, huggable teddy bear shows the
reader that the power of images can be good. It all depends on how we use them.
I chose Interpreting Visual Culture as the article to analyze mostly because of how it
hit home. Im not much for visual analysis, but the words used were so powerful, as they
described the underlying connotation that being black holds in our society even contemporary
society. Still today most images of a black man or woman show us as a novelty item or a
caricature of what it really means to be black. To this day people are still surprised when they
find out I dont play basketball. Yes, this is partly because Im tall, but the only reason the words
stumble out of their mouths so clumsily is because there is something else that came to mind
first; the fact that Im black and tall. In fact I was a swimmer, something else that always
surprises people due to another stereotype. That just shows how certain images affect us. We all
know these stereotypes not to be true, but subconsciously we believe they are true.
References
Barrett, T. (2003). Interpreting visual culture. Art Education, 56(2), 6-12.