Analysis of a Static Image
Core Value II of the Writing Arts Department emphasizes the importance of Information Literacy, a phrase more expansive than Literacy, which we ordinarily associate with written texts, the ability to read, write, and interact with language.
Your Guide to the First-Year Writing Program devotes a large section to a full description of the components of various media (including visual media), from which this is an excerpt:
Core Value II: Close and critical reading/analysis is necessary for listening to and questioning texts, arriving at a thoughtful understanding of those texts, and joining the academic and/or public conversations represented by those texts.
Writers create texts to communicate ideas, and they make specific compositional choices in their writing to achieve their goals. These choices are in terms of language, materials/mediums (physical and/or digital), and other compositional elements, including typography, layout, design, images, sound, editing, and more. As readers, we must analyze these elements to determine the authors’ meanings, as well as the ideologies that have shaped the ideas and how they are expressed/presented through texts. Readers engage with texts not only to understand their meanings and listen to other authors but also to question them.
We’ll begin that practice today by examining the header image for our class blog, the set of photographs that morph former President Donald Trump’s official photograph with that of current President Joe Biden’s.
You’ll notice, of course, that the images get weird toward the middle, where an unholy alliance between the two men results in something nobody would willingly elect: a 50/50 Donald Biden or Joe Trump.
As an image without context, it can mean whatever the viewer chooses for it to mean.
- It could be used, for example, to demonstrate how similar America’s presidents are or choose to be portrayed. The somber suits and blue ties, the choice of patriotic backgrounds, the straight-ahead poses and big-toothed smiles are apparently part of how presidents choose to see themselves, or how Americans choose to see our presidents.
If you were doing a research paper and discovered this image while scouring the academic databases of scholarly articles, you would consider it a “source.” The methodology of this course, after finding sources, is to ask and answer two questions:
How effectively did the author USE this material to demonstrate a meaningful and clear claim?
How can I respectfully use this material to demonstrate
my own meaningful and clear claim?
As a class of 22 students and 1 professor, we might answer the first question 23 different ways, depending on what claim(s) we thought the author of the graphic intended to make.
Further, if we each decided to incorporate the graphic into visual/textual arguments of our own, we might produce 23 different arguments. Let’s look at two and answer the Big Questions about them.
.
Of the two, which seems the more reasonable interpretation? Is it clearer now which message the creator intended? Or can the image be used equally well to convey both messages? What does this tell you about the power of images? What does it say about the power of language to frame how we experience what we see?
In Class Exercise
As a Reply to this post, argue for the effectiveness of each of the static image “posters” above. Then use each poster as a source to make your own claim about America, or elections, or the presidency, or these two presidents. In other words, answer the two questions about each of the two posters.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
I believe the second poster is most effective. In a time where our democracy feels so flimsy, seeing something like this and reading “keep thinking you have a choice” tugs on what most Americans are worried about, that in actuality, we don’t have one. The first poster more so just argues for a new candidate, saying its up to us to make the change. There is a lot of that out there already so that poster feels like old news.
I find that the two posters have varying degrees of effectiveness.
The first one is, not great. I understand the point that it is trying to make, that change has occurred and that it will continue to occur. It is just that the change between the two is very minimal, the facial structure seems similar from afar and they both seem pretty old. “The rest is up to us” also just doesn’t exactly mean anything when only the old guy at the top changes.
The second one is, alright. It’s pretty good at contrasting how the leader changed, yet you can’t exactly tell how you got from point A to point B. It’s good at making the image cleanly shift to the next guy, so that while you know something did change it seems as if the new guy is the same as the old. Not too sure about the thinking you have a choice part, but the main topic of nothing changing is good.
Rather than replying to these statements I am doing my own. The statement I would choose to use with this photo sequence is “The lesser of two evils is still evil”
Poster 1: This poster is less effective because its words implies that change is upon us, but the image shows a person morphing between two different people. I claim that this poster says that elections are important because they create change.
Poster 2: This poster is more effective because it shows the person morphing between two different people with its words implying that they are the same person despite looking different. I claim that this poster says that elections are unimportant because regardless of who we elect nothing meaningful will change.
I’m leaning towards the second poster to be a more reasonable interpretation because the two major word choices that I see that are clearly different between them is the two words of change and the same. When we hear the word change, we would expect to see a clear distinct difference while the same is similar to each other. The bold statement in the first poster “The changed has already started” didn’t spark or support the image that it is shown because if we look at the image face value, all we see is two white men that looks identical even if we don’t know who they are. However, on the second poster where it counteracts the first poster by saying that there is a change, but they are the same as the previous one such as we see two men in the image that are different people but the same characteristics.
Both of the creators have a firm intentions on what they are conveying their messages on the image. The first creator of the first poster intentions is that we will make a change, we will move forward, and it’s time to take out the old, and into the new. On the contrary, the second creator of the second poster has a strong claim that the choices we make are an illusion because what we get is the same white men to be our next candidate.
Images are a powerful source with captions to get a brief overall summary of what is happening that is in front of you. For the reason why I was leaning towards the second poster because of the facts that happens each year that every new president we get is a white men besides 2008-2009. Not just because of the colors of our skin, but the current election candidates that we get weren’t much in our favor where they stated a change of going back in time than moving forward. We expect the change for the future, not a change to the past.