Representation and Interaction

This chapter is more fun to me than previous ones. There are several things I found interesting, upon which I have some thoughts to share.

1. I think the disjunction between the “represented” and “enacted” is socially constructed.

In the chapter, it mentioned that social relations in images can be “represented” rather than “enacted.” (116) For example, people won’t lower eyes when they found characters in the painting starring at them. However, it doesn’t mean the painting is not good enough or realistic enough to convince viewers to enact. That’s because people believe they don’t have to enact because that is only a picture.

Here I have a personal story. Last Thanksgiving holiday I went to Florida, and there in a private gallery I saw wax figures for the first time. It was a figure of an old housekeeper in black suit. I knew it was not real, however, when I tried to look at him closely, I felt uncomfortable looking into his eyes directly, and I cannot help lower my eyes for several times. Perhaps, it is our instinct or conditioned reflex to enact to people or something looks like a person. For instance, babies tend to smile back to a smiling face in a picture or on TV. However, under the social rule that we don’t have to give reaction to an image, we force ourselves not to enact in front of a picture or a wax figure.

The disjunction is not in the image, but in our mind.

2. I like the theory that the represented participant is “demanding” something from the viewers by looking at them. I was so impressed by the famous advertisement poster of army recruitment that I cannot help pose myself in that way when I found a very American hat. (Taken in that Florida trip)

3. It talks about the social relations suggested by images between the viewer and represented participants. Close shots suggest involvement relation, and long shots contain detached feeling to the represented. However, I know another theory about the effects of close shots and long shots to viewers’ feelings.

In a film editing class in college, the instructor told us that close shots were made to force viewers to focus on one single part of a person or an object. Due to the limited information of the scene, it doesn’t need much time and effort for viewer to finishing reading it. So the movie can move to next scene very soon. This kind of editing is like fast food, quick and easy to understand, and it heavily used in Hollywood commercial films, especially action films. On the other hand, long shots are comparatively slow and hard to understand, and they are more often used in art movies.

4. I was curious when I read “as we know, the Chinese do not use the art of perspective. They do not like to see everything from a single point of view.” (131) According to my knowledge on Chinese classic painting (Chinese modern painting is no much different from western painting.), it is right to some extent.

Chinese artists are not satisfied with what they see in reality. They want to draw something beyond their sights, something from their imagination.

For example, this landscape painting uses the frame size of long shot. However, it is not possible for the producer to have such a big view when standing on the mountain. He may be able to see the passerbys and trees by the path, but the mountians and tree far away are not likely to be visible to him from his point of view.

Another example, the house on the mountain was too clear to be real. It is more obvious that the producer used a lot of imagination, instead of observation.