Week 13 Rumination
This week we examined Gries still life with rhetoric. We examined the History of the 2008 Obama Hope campaign, as well as the four characteristics of visual ideographs. These characteristics are ordinary images, high-order abstractions, culture bound and warrant certain uses of power. Remixes and parodies are a major theme of this chapter. Shepard Fairey first remixed the original Obama photo by changing the word “progress” to “hope”. Above are two examples of the Obama Hope parody. A parody is referred to as an imitation of a particular style for comic effect. In the first image Obama was replaced with the fictional character the Joker and the word hope was changed to joke at the bottom of the campaign. You even see the political sticker originally on Obama changed to a smiley face which is Joker’s signature. In the second image, Obama was changed to a zombie. They remixed the image and turned the president into something else and added the word brains to support the image. Another thing I wanted to talk about within this chapter is Media Viruses. According to Douglas Rushkoff, there are three kinds of media viruses. These three kinds are Intentional, Co-opted or bandwagon and self-generated. I looked into Rushkoff and his popular book Media Virus: Hidden Agendas In Popular Culture. This book uses media activism as a way to empower others. He coined the term “media virus” to convey how ideas can spread and develop in a place with greater interactive communication. I was intrigued by the different ways he described and examined media viruses. Rushkoff believes popular media both manipulates and is manipulated by others. We experience this daily with social media. Individuals become influenced by the things they see or hear on various platforms. In this same sense, people bandwagon football teams and other popular media. This is what Douglas Rushkoff expresses within his book.
