Practices of Looking by Marita Surken and Lisa Cartwright focuses on the term viewer rather than the term audience, because a viewer represents a individual who looks and interprets. The book suggests there are three elements needed in the production of meaning besides the product itself and its producer: the codes and conventions, the viewers and how they interpret, and the contexts in which the artwork is viewed. (Surken and Cartwright, 49).
In the chapter, “Viewers Make Meaning”, the authors suggests that although there are intended, dominant meanings in the process of creation, it heavily depends on viewers whether the meanings, or messages, will be accepted or rejected. In other words, viewers are the major players in making of meaning.
Also, the book cites two figures, the French theorist Roland Barthels and the French philosopher Michel Foucault, in order to suggest there is only “Author function” not “Author”. In other words, although there are dominant meaning the “Author” puts into the artwork, “there is no ultimate authorial meaning for readers to uncover in the text” (52). Although there is dominant, intended meaning in the process of creation, a viewer can either passively receive the dominant message or actively reject it in the process of interpretation.
Film Art by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson also discuss the idea of interpretation, but in a slightly different way. The book introduces four different ways of interpretation : Referential, Explicit, Implicit, and Symptomatic meanings.
Referential meaning is basically a plot summary of a film. Explicit meaning is what the film is trying to say, in other words, the main point of the film. Implicit meaning is something more abstract, something below the surface. Symptomatic meaning deals with social ideology and values of certain period within the film.
In the book presents the idea that “the artwork cues us [viewers or audience] to perform a specific activity” (Bordwell and Thompson, 49). In other words, the elements of the artwork trigger our thinking process. Here, the elements of the artwork become the major player or the starter in making of meaning.
Also, the book says, referential meaning “depends on the spectator’s ability to identify items” (55). Unlike Practices of Looking which suggests that viewers give some vitality to artworks, Film Art declares, although interpretations vary, there is message in the artwork and it depends on the readers [viewers] whether the meaning is discovered.
The authors of the two books would interpret the photographer, Robert Frank’s artwork, “Charleston” (above) differently.
Surken and Cartwright would probably view the elements of the photography as they are and try to be an active interpreter by examining elements, whereas Bordwell and Thompson seek for the dominant meaning, or intended meaning, by comparing and putting elements together.
Surken and Cartwright could intentionally reject to recognize the existence of an African American woman holding a Caucasian baby and try to find other elements or meanings within the artwork because it is viewer who gives the meaning to the artwork. Although the intended message of the photograph could be the relationship of the African American woman and the Caucasian baby who is taken care of, there could be some other meanings an active viewer is supposed to look for.
They would focus more on other elements such as background and colors and examine aesthetics of the artwork rather than content of the artwork to come up with viewer’s own interpretation.
Bordwell and Thompson would examine elements of the photograph first. They would focus on the relationship between the two characters rather than other elements. Then, they would conclude that the message given to us with the artwork is the irony of the image of an African-American woman cradling a white baby when race problems and issues rose in the past.
They would propose the message of the artwork by examining more content-related elements in order to come up with referential, explicit, implicit and symptomatic meanings of the artwork.
Although the two books suggest the same idea that viewers give artworks meanings differently, they propose different ideas how interpretation works in terms of making of meaning.
References:
Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin. 2003. Film Art, An Introduction. 7th. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. 2009. Practices of Looking. 2nd. New York: Oxford University Press.
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