Ideology And The Image

To what degree, Nichols asks, does ideology inform images in films, advertising, and other media? Does the cinema or any other sign system liberate or manipulate us? How can we as spectators know when the media are subtly perpetuating a specific set of values? To address these issues, the author draws from a variety of approaches -- Marxism, psycholanalysis, communication theory, semiotics, structuralism, the psychology of perception. Working with two interrelated theories -- ideology and image-systems, and ideology and principles of textual criticism -- Nichols shows how and why we make emotional investments in sign sytsems with an ideological context.

While ideology has been treated widely in CDA-literature, the role played by the interaction of text and image in multiplying meaning and furthering ideological stances has not so far received a lot of attention. Mediating Ideology in Text and Image offers a number of approaches to such analysis, offering students and academics valuable tools for identifying possible discrepancies between the world and the way it is represented through various mediational means. The authors' common aim is one of assisting the audience in reading between the lines, thus offering a variety of approaches that may contribute to a better understanding of how ideologies possibly work and how they may be denaturalised from text and image. The articles in part I look at rhetorical strategies used in meaning construction processes unfolding in various kinds of mass media. Part II focuses on the re-semiotization of meaning and looks at how analysing the combination of text and image may contribute to a better understanding of ideological processes brought about by multimodal resources. Foreword by Ruth Wodak.

"[Mitchell] undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. . . . The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read."—Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement

This book addresses the function and status of the visual and verbal image as it relates to social, political, and ideological issues. The authors first articulate some of the lost connections between image and ideology, then locate their argument within the modernist/postmodernist debates. The book addresses the multiple, trans-disciplinary problems arising from the ways cultures, authors, and texts mobilize particular images in order to confront, conceal, work through, or resolve contradictory ideological conditions.

In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, these early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature. Children’s books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices. Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images. A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form. Spotlighting three thematic threads – communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda – The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.

By crossing disciplinary boundaries in the field of the humanities, this volume aims to elucidate Muhammad s visualization in the West vis-a-vis his image in Islam. It does so not by relegating materials to geographical and/or linguistic spheres or by separating texts from images. Rather, it seeks to place various articles in thematic and theoretical conversation so as to explore more broadly how the Prophet has been constructed, visualized, narrated, encountered, revised, adapted, and adopted in multiple cultural traditions, in European and American traditions and in the world of Islam from the medieval era until the modern period."

Exploring gender, race, nation and narration, this groundbreaking study isolates how mainstream cinema works to bestow value upon certain lives and specific socio-cultural identities in a hierarchical and partisan way. Dedicated to the popular, to the pol

Image and Representation is a clear and straight-talking introduction to two of the most important concepts in film and media studies. Exploring media language and representation throughout a variety of visual texts, the book offers a balanced, in-depth guide to the essential theories and key issues. The book begins by introducing the basic components of image analysis, including mise en scene, framing and anchorage. It then elaborates on these key ideas to provide the reader with a more advanced understanding of media language and representation. From the contribution of semiotics and debates around authorial intent, to ideas about hegemony and issues around propaganda, Nick Lacey offers approachable explanations of complex ideas and terms. The new edition is also now updated to reflect recent changes in the field, with particular attention paid to new media technologies. Each chapter is packed with memorable examples from a wider range of media and provides greater global perspective on today's media landscape. Gradually building up the reader's knowledge to encourage independent thinking, this is an essential resource for students taking courses in media, cultural, communication and film studies at school, college or university.