Semiotics & Visual Culture Research Journal

Literature Visualized Research Journal By Nienke Sinnema 2556805 24 October 2014

Seven Weeks; Seven Essays 1: All Photographs Are Accurate 2 2: Larry Clark and the Pleasure of Looking 6 3: On the Subject of Dead Marilyn 12 4: All that is Left is a Penis 15 5: Between You and I 19 6: I’m (not that) Sorry 22 7: While I forget I exist 27

Assessor: Roel van den Oever

Nienke Sinnema 2556805 – Literature Visualized – 24 October 2014

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1: All Photographs Are Accurate

In defending his notion of the image as ‘natural sign’ through the concept of likeness,

Ernst Gombrich argues that “photographs just look like the world; we can see what a

picture is of without having to learn any codes” (Mitchell 87). Charles Sanders Peirce

agrees with him to a limited extend when he testifies that “photographs […] are in

certain respects exactly like the objects they represent” (qtd. in Silverman 22). It is in

this explicit phrasing of ‘certain respects’ where I find space to counter Gombrich’s

initial vision. I follow Mitchell, who sheds a clear light on the difficulties in the

distinction between natural and conventional signs. “Pictorial signs are riddled with

convention” (Mitchell 80). It follows then, that meaningful consumption of images

must be more than “opening your eyes and seeing objects in the world” (Mitchell 85).

Photographs invite us to engage. As Susan Sontag contests: “The ultimate

wisdom of the photographic image is to say: ‘There is the surface. Now think – or

rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this

way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible

invitations to deduction, speculation, fantasy.” (23) Through a close reading of

Richard Avedon’s 1957 portrait of Marilyn Monroe [Figure 1] I will illustrate the

added value of semiotic analysis, namely by using the tools provided to us by Roland

Barthes.

Barthes proposes a model of denotation and connotation, which is specifically

connected to the cultural context in which meaning is produced. He stipulates the

existence of cultural codes; “off-stage” voices that repeat and confirm a dominant

ideology or myth (Silverman 50). Zooming in on Avedon’s portrait, it is exactly the


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deconstruction of the myth of Marilyn Monroe as cheerful, flirtatious Hollywood

superstar that gives this image its striking appeal.

Up to the publication of Avedon’s photograph, the existing still and moving

images of this platinum blonde female icon represented and helped reaffirm the

mythic persona of Marilyn Monroe. It is from this context, and with this knowledge,

that we look at Avedon’s image today. On a denotative level we see a black and white

medium close of a mature and pensive woman in a sequenced halter top, looking off

to one side of the camera, arms hanging submissively by her sides. We recognize her

as Marilyn Monroe, there is a ‘likeness’ as Gombrich would argue, but there is also an

‘unlikeness’, which forms an important ingredient for this image on the connotative

level. This woman is for once not flirting with the lens and we seem to uncover the

Hollywood invention off-duty. It is not the carefully crafted character of Marilyn

Monroe that we encounter through the lens of Avedon, but the-girl-behind-the-image,

the actress behind the character, “we see Norma Jean”, as the photographer Vik

Muniz puts it in New York Magazine in 2007 (qtd. in “The Title of”). While the myth

is uncovered, in this brief moment, Marilyn Monroe seizes to exist. It is in this sense

that Avedon’s photo illustrates Sontag’s comparison between camera’s and guns: “to

photograph someone is […] a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time” (14).

Barthes’ semiotic model shows us that we can do more with images than just

seeing what they are of. We should look at the primary, descriptive level of the image

as denotative sign, and then move beyond it; consider images as invitations for

analysis and for reflection on the culture and conventions in which they were

produced (in this example, five years before Marilyn Monroe’s tragic suicide) and

consumed. Gombrich acknowledges that “a photograph is not a replica of what is

seen” (Mitchell 83) quite in the same way as Socrates argues that an image is


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necessarily imperfect (Mitchell 92). We need to be aware of the relevant cultural

codes to recognize the unlikeness that gives Avedon’s artwork its specific weight.

Even though photographs are used as proof and accepted as truth, they are never

objective and their meaning can change through time and place. The paradoxical

position of the image as natural versus the image as conventional sign may be best

articulated by Avedon himself: “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the

truth” (93).

Figure 1. “Marilyn Monroe, Actress, New York” by Richard Avedon, 1957


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Word count: 701

Works Cited:

Avedon, Richard, In the American West. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Reissue edition (1985). 93-97 Mitchell, W.J.T. “Nature and Convention: Gombrich’s Illusions.” Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. 75-94. “The Title of This Photograph Is Marilyn Monroe, Actress, New York City, May 6, 1957” New York Magazine. 24 October 2007. 31 August 2014 < http://nymag.com/ news/features/31523/> Silverman, Kaja, “From Sign to Subject, A Short History.” The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. 3-53. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 1977.


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2: Larry Clark and the Pleasure of Looking In talking about things visual, from the people around us, to billboards on the streets,

to trees, to art objects, to photographs and any other type of visual reproduction, there

is a primary given: “we only see what we look at” (Berger 1). To look is an act of

choice, and if we look at someone else’s image, our understanding of that depends on

our way of seeing. We can deploy different ‘ways of seeing’, as John Berger explains:

“Every image embodies a way of seeing. […] The photographer’s way of seeing is

reflected in his choice of subject. […] [B]ut our perception or appreciation of an

image depends also upon our own way of seeing.” (3) And “the way we see things is

affected by what we know or what we believe” (1).

As our ideological context colours what we see (and conveniently ignore) and

thus how we attribute meaning, Mieke Bal, in her reading of Bathsheba, proposes yet

another way of looking. According to her we must “reverse the perspective and look

at the image, including its problematic details, as a text, composed of sign[s]: take it

literally” (“Reading Bathsheba” 137). Instead of approaching the image with “a set of

predetermined assumptions, values […] and associations” (“Reading Bathsheba”

119), we should focus on the act of looking, engage in a dialogue with the image itself

and “locate the detail in relation to a […] narrative which it qualifies or even

challenges” (“Reading Bathsheba” 124). Different ways of looking can generate

different possible stories, possible meanings. Instead of trying to smooth things over

into a coherent whole, Bal proposes we let these different readings co-exist and

embrace the incoherence and dissemination it brings forth.


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Let us choose then an image with which we can encounter possible conflicting

outcomes of different ways of looking. Following Roland Barthes, I will opt for an

image that does not just have ‘studium’, but also captures me through ‘punctum’. I

recently came across such an image in an exhibition in Foam Photography Museum; a

photograph of a naked, wet, smiling girl with explicit tan lines and a peculiar mark on

her left thigh, taken by Larry Clark circa 1975, part of a project titled Teenage Lust

[Figure 1]. This mark on her left thigh interests me powerfully. It raises many

questions on what could have caused it, and triggers fantasies about the life this girl

must be living. The image affects me and I will use this affect to engage with it

through the ways of looking Mieke Bal is proposing.

This photograph encourages three different ways of looking. First we can

approach it as autobiographical image, generating the narrative of male voyeurism, in

which we are invited to share the viewpoint of Larry Clark (who was to make Kids 20

years later, a film which fascinated me when I was a teenager myself). The second is

a narrative undressed of its pre-text, just the image itself as a collection of signs; an

image of a woman who is actively exposing her nakedness, inviting me personally to

look at her body, her emotion and her direct environment. This triggers a different

interpretation; one that I find is quickly turning into an intimate dialogue between two

women who are aware of the cultural codes they are subjected to. Finally we can look

at the image as part of what is said to be a controversial project; a historical and

geographical document portraying a specific generation’s rejection of the pursuit of

the American Dream. In all three readings, the explicit absence of bathing apparel

signifies a different meaning, causing a notion of distortion, which draws me in as

“reader and (…) interpreter” (Bal, “Reading Bathsheba” 120).


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In the first reading, the woman in the image is on display; she is there because

she is being looked at by Clark. Her bikini is absent for the sole purpose of exposing

her female ornaments, for his and our pleasure, encouraging a “sexual response based

on objectification” (Bal, “Reading Bathsheba” 122). Clark takes “visual possession of

the naked woman” (Bal, “Dis-semination” 149) and I have no difficulty imagining his

arousal upon this sight. This puts us in the position of the voyeur and turns the woman

into a personal object of desire. What strikes me is the woman’s willingness to be

seen, she is “available for eroticism” (Bal, “Dis-semination” 149). Unlike Susanna in

Bal’s reading of Rembrandt’s work, she does not make an appeal to me as viewer to

turn my eyes away, quite the opposite, she invites me to look closely, to feel the

comfort with which she is naked, to see the fun with which she has no rush to apply

her towel. This brings me to the second reading of the image.

In her actively being there, addressing me, wanting to be read, the woman

takes charge, it becomes ‘her image’ instead of Clark’s image. Following Bal’s

argumentation, her participation in the structure of looking makes for a textual

reading that cannot be dismissed as voyeuristic. Clark is being sidelined, and with

that, my own way of looking is foregrounded. The absence of the bikini now signifies

‘freedom’. The woman invites me to undress as well and experience the pleasure of

being naked with her, not for the sake of displaying body parts, but for the sake of not

being hindered by clothes. Her being naked is clearly motivated by the towel, and the

tan lines show that she does indeed wear a bikini when she is out in the sun.

Nonetheless, her comfort and smile remind me of the times I went swimming in

deserted lakes without any clothing and the freedom which I felt at doing so.

‘Deserted’ being the operative word here, in quite the same way as her tan lines

uncover the cultural codes that we are both subject to. We know how we should


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behave (i.e. dress) as young women in public space, even though the pleasure of being

naked is apparent in both our experiences. This tension between how we ‘should’ act

and how we ‘want to’ act brings me to the third and final reading.

According to the introduction to Clark’s exhibition in Foam, his “controversial

project reveal[s] a youth culture, which […] was totally unknown to the greater

public”. At the time of its release in 1983, the project “caused a great deal of

commotion due to the rawness of the images, but the truth of what they revealed also

gave them an iconic status” (Introduction to Tulsa & Teenage Lust). The series this

specific image belongs to is said to be a rejection of the contemporary ideology,

namely the aversion to conform to the ideals of the American Dream. Within this

context, the absence of the woman’s bikini is not so much a personal event, but a

signifier for exactly that ideological rejection; not doing what you are supposed to,

instead doing what feels good in the moment. This reading coincides with the

previous one, be it on a different level, gaining meaning through its relation to a

specific geographical and historical setting.

What I have tried to demonstrate with these three different modes of reading is

that they do indeed generate three different narratives that are conflicting as well as

complementing, connecting as well as opposing different points of view. Where I

initially thought that Bal’s dissection of these different ways of seeing would interfere

with the pleasure of looking itself, I now realize the exact opposite is true. I unfolded

(for myself primarily) her point that “there is not one monolithic way of looking and

that looking is not a unified and a-temporal act” (Bal, “Dis-semination” 155).

Through this reading I was at once Barthes’ Operator, Target, and Spectator and my

inability to round up this exercise into a coherent whole is probably what Bal wanted

me to experience. As for the element that drew me to the image in the first place, its


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‘punctum’; the peculiar mark on the woman’s left thigh, all three readings provide a

reason for its exposure. Different images of the same woman within the Teenage Lust

series helped eliminate the idea that this might be a coincidental shadow. But whether

it is a beautifully shaped bruise, a birth mark or the result of a pattern in the bikini she

usually wears, is yet to be deciphered. And ironically, for us to rule out the latter

option, she would have to return to wearing the bikini which was so explicitly absent

to begin with.

Figure 1. “Untitled”, part of the series Teenage Lust by Larry Clark circa 1975


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Word count: 1424 Works cited: Bal, Mieke. “Dis-semination: “Rembrandt” and the Navel of the Text”. LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory. 2.2 (1990): 145-66. Bal, Mieke. "Reading Bathsheba: From Mastercodes to Misfits." Rembrandt's Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter. Ed. Ann Jensen Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 119-46. Barthes, Roland. Part One of Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 1980. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. 3-60. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972, reissued in 2008. Introduction to Tulsa & Teenage Lust by Larry Clark, on display in Foam Photography Museum until sept 12th 2014.


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3: On the Subject of Dead Marilyn “Art ‘thinks’” (Van Alphen xiv). “Art is self-analytical” (Mitchell 36). Art exposes

and art can rewrite (Van Alphen xix). But art cannot do that all by itself. In order for

(new) meaning to be attributed, art has to engage with the viewer, hail us in; address

us as the object for its “gaze” (Mitchell 75). Marlene Dumas’ 2008 painting Dead

Marilyn [Figure 1] did exactly that. It left me rather uncomfortable and makes a good

case for the agency of art.

What we see in this painting is the grim, unpolished, lifeless face of Marilyn

Monroe (further referred to as MM), who died of a drug overdose in 1962. Dumas

made the painting after an autopsy photo of the Hollywood superstar. It affects me; I

feel I am violating MM by looking at her this way. She spent her living years

carefully constructing the image of flirtatious sex symbol, catering to the pleasure of

the male gaze, never exposing her dark sides. The discrepancy between how we know

her and how we see her now disrupts the link between signifier and signified, it

(literally) shows a loss of self, shaping MM “as simulacrum” (Van Alphen 25).

Dumas’ painting exposes the mythical dimension of representation. It shows that MM

was constructed in terms of a stereotype. Her feminine image was “nothing but

costume” (Rosalind Krauss qtd. in Van Alphen 30). Like Warhol and Sherman,

Dumas “proposes the subject’s identity as the product of her images” (Van Alphen

30), and she takes it a step further. Through this artwork, MM’s death is fixed, and

Dumas foregrounds this fixity, denying MM’s subjectivity altogether. We are now

lead to understand what she was not, but no alternatives are offered.


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Dumas’s painting also questions the identity of the subject position. It exposes

how discourse around MM determined what we were supposed to think and believe.

In order for us to “take meaning”, we wilfully identified with the position that was

constructed for us (Hall 56). And this feeds our feeling of discomfort. By looking at

Dumas’ painting, we as viewers realize that we had a part in her death. Following

Barthes, we let MM become an image, alienating her from her ‘inner essence’. We let

her be assimilated into what we expected her to be. Her means of escaping this doxa

may have ultimately resulted in her drug overdose.

As Dumas explains in an interview about this painting, it is not just a portrait

of MM’s death. Dead Marilyn also expresses “a certain end of a certain era” (audio

recording MoMA). She refers to America’s involvement in the Iraq war at the time

the painting was made. What she implies is that this painting could signify the

undermining of America’s hegemonic power. It could lay bare that this power too was

constructed by discourse. And on a different level, this is also “a portrait of one’s own

potential death” (Dumas qtd. in audio recording MoMA). It makes MM human, a

human being without a distinct identity. We too are subject to discourse; this could

just as well be us.

Like the examples in Mitchell’s account of metapictures, Dumas’ painting also

provides us with a second order discourse that tells us something about images. In that

sense it can be viewed as a metapicture in itself. But unlike most of Mitchell’s

examples, this image does not refer to its own making, but to the bigger context of

representation and how the myth of MM came into being through the images that

exist of her. Dumas’ painting is currently on display at the Stedelijk for our aesthetic

pleasure, but as I have tried to demonstrate, it is exactly the disruption of this pleasure


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that influences our thought, exposes the power of discourse, and rewrites the present

memory of Marilyn Monroe.

Figure 1. Dead Marilyn by Marlene Dumas 2008 Word count: 623 Works cited: Barthes, Roland. Part One of Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 1980. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. 3-60. Hall, Stuart. Chapter 1 of Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997. 13-74. Mitchell, W J T, “Metapictures”, Picture Theory: Essays on Visual & Verbal Representation, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. 35-82 Van Alphen, Ernst. Introduction and Chapter 2 of Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. xiii-xxi, 21-47 Audio interview with Marlene Dumas. MoMA retrieved 18 September 2014 < http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/16/1014>


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4: All that is Left is a Penis1

Reading is writing. This seems to be the shortest way in which we can summarize

Barthes’ proposition of reading as one way to distinguish between Work and Text. In

declaring the death of the author, Barthes emphasizes the value of the text as a

playing field, inviting the reader to do exactly that; play, engage, collaborate. It is up

to the reader to ‘re-produce’ meaning, or to give birth to the text, as Jonathan Gray

puts it in his Theory of Paratexts (31). As such, the text is a network of signifiers,

which resonate with the individual reader in endless associations, affiliations, and

experiences.

According to Steven Price, the screenplay can be viewed as text because it

participates both within the textual and the cinematic sign system. The screenplay

engages the director and actors in an ‘activity of production’ and in that sense it is not

a ‘closed work’. But I cannot agree with Price’s claim that in a screenplay, “meaning

is deferred” (41), not with the infinite and disseminative characteristics Barthes has in

mind. According to Barthes, “the Text […] answers not to an interpretation, [not]

even a liberal one” (159), whereas the screenplay, as Price concedes, “prioritises

ready comprehensibility” (41). The screenplay then, has a practical communication

function, which limits the possibilities of ‘play’.

Barthes encourages the reader to “produce the text, open it out, set it going”

(163). I would like to do just that with a photograph I came across at the Unseen

Photo Fair in Amsterdam in September this year. It is a photo by Charlotte Dumas of

the cropped side of a horse [Figure 1]. The physical work was displayed in the stand

1 This title alludes to the black French writer Frantz Fanon who is quoted by Stuart Hall: “'One is no longer aware of the Negro, but only of a penis; the Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis'” (Hall 230).


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of Galerie Paul Andriesse and was reproduced in a special publication presenting The

Unseen Premieres: “work that has never been shown before in a gallery, institution or

online”. This raised my expectations, and influenced the mind-set with which I

approached the text.

Dumas’ photograph disturbed me because it did not feel like something I had

never seen before, quite the contrary, this image reminded me of many things I had

seen, or heard before. This was an image about the horse torturer currently active in

the Netherlands, an image about a column on cropped horse photographs I read last

week, it was an image about the passion of my high school friends, and, most

interestingly, this for me became an image about the potency of black men. Each of

these associations triggers new chains of signification, demonstrating the

impossibility of narrative closure.

I would like to return to my associating this image with the potency of black

men. What lead me to ‘read’ the photograph in this way? On a denotative level, this is

an image of a horse. As the accompanying publication explains, the ‘work’ is “an

intimate animal portrait”. It may be considered intimate in the sense that we are so

close to the horse that it does not fit in the frame. The horse is cropped at its chest and

halfway down its back legs. This framing raises emphasis on the penile region,

without showing a (substantial) penis directly. The horse’s skin is black and shiny,

muscles are tensed and one of the back legs is slightly set back. These elements

remind me of the images of black athletes that Stuart Hall discusses in “The Spectacle

of the ‘Other’”. To be more specific, the meaning of Dumas’ image changes by me

reading it in the context of these other images (Hall 232).

This inter-textual reference emphasizes essential characteristics in Dumas’

image. It now insists on the horse’s blackness, beauty and strength, as well as its


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passivity; it is primarily there to be looked at, by us. This resonates with the

stereotypical representation of black men as described by Richard Dyer in his analysis

of the naked study of the black male Paul Robeson (qtd. in Hall 256). The stereotype

is advanced by the underlying fantasy that “[b]lacks are really super-men, better

endowed than whites and sexually insatiable” (Hall 263). Even though “black men

have adopted […] sexual prowness […] as a means of survival against the repressive

and violent system of subordination” (Mercer and Julien qtd. in Hall 262), this fantasy

is essentially nourished through its visible absence: “[T]he deeper meaning – lies in

what is not being said, but is being fantasized, what is implied but cannot be shown”

(Hall 263). This notion of censorship brings me back to Dumas’ photograph. The

angle and framing turn the horse into an object, it is ‘fetishized’ and through that, the

image “takes us into the realm where fantasy intervenes in representation” (Hall 266).

Through the notion of substitution, Dumas’s horse “becomes eroticized, invested with

the sexual energy, power and desire which cannot find expression in the object to

which it is really directed” (Hall 266), namely, what Kobena Mercer calls the “big

black penis” (qtd. in Hall 262).

I have tried to demonstrate how Dumas’ ‘intimate animal portrait’ can be read

as portraying the potency of black men as well. My interpretation may not be the

preferred meaning, but through argumentation it becomes valid nonetheless. In

reading the image this way, I moved away from the Work, and opened up the Text as

a “’meta-message' [about] ‘race', colour and 'otherness'” (Hall 229). As everyone

approaches the text with a different set of references, this same horse portrait will

resonate differently with different Unseen visitors. And that is exactly what Barthes is

after. The Text refuses to fix meaning and engages the reader in a dialogue, which

endlessly echoes cultural language “in the movement of a discourse” (Barthes 157).


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Figure 1. Untitled “intimate animal portrait” by Charlotte Dumas. Photographed by Paul van Esch at the Unseen Photo Fair 2014. Word count: 938 Works cited: Barthes, Roland.''From Work to Text''. 1971. Image-Music-Text. Ed. and Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana P. 1977. 155-164.

Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997. 225-90. Gray, J. Show Sold Separately: Promo's, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010. 1-62. Price, Steven. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 1-62.

The Unseen Premieres. Unseen Publication obtained during Unseen Photo Fair, 18 September 2014.


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5: Between You and I On page 36 of Understanding Comics, the cartoon character of Scott McCloud asks

us whether we would have listened to him if he looked realistic instead of simple

[Figure 1]. He continues to attest that he would “DOUBT it” (37), addressing the

notion of non-visual self-awareness. To be fair, I have less doubt about my

capabilities as a listener. I do not agree with his line of arguing, which singles out

drawing techniques, and conveniently ignores the power of (verbal and gesticulate)

language, which has firmly established the listener’s subject position in the preceding

35 pages.

Character Scott argues that when you see a realistic drawing of a face, you see

the face of another. When you look at a (simple drawing style) cartoon, you see

yourself. The cartoon resembles our non-visual self-awareness, so we naturally

identify with it. This identification should help us to internalize the message. He

continues to claim that “I am just a little piece of you” (37).

McCloud’s implicit claim that identification is the best way to receive the

author’s intended message is in itself debatable. However, I do understand how

character Scott is a little piece of me in the sense that meaning is constructed in the

dialogue between the comic and myself. Following Foucault’s analysis of Las

Meninas, for me to understand the meaning of this comic, I have to subject myself to

its discourse and become the ‘ideal listener’ (Hall 60). The question is, what place is

constructed for me as subject-listener who is reading and making sense of

Understanding Comics?


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To find the answer, I looked at the 35 pages of the book preceding the

question regarding my listening. In these pages, Character Scott is given a name

(Scott McCloud), and is introducing what he aims to do with the book. As a ‘subject

of speech’, he is thus very closely related to the ‘speaking subject’, the author Scott

McCloud. Character Scott refers to himself as “I” 38 times in these pages. And, more

importantly, he immediately addresses me, the ‘listener’ with “you” 26 times, for

instance on page 25 “Do you hear what I’m saying?” and in our original question

“Would you have listened to me if I looked like this?” (36).

Understanding Comics is a discourse in Benveniste’s sense that it is an

“utterance assuming a speaker and a hearer, and in the speaker, the intention of

influencing the other in some way” (Silverman 46). Within this discourse, I find my

position as subject through this use of the word ‘you’. Following Althusser,

interpellation occurs when I recognize myself in this ‘you’ and take up its subjective

residence (Silverman 48). I am the reader/listener that the ‘I’ in the comic is

addressing and as such I am not encouraged to identify with character Scott, but I am

placed in direct opposition to him.

It follows then, that my cognitive response to character Scott depends on my

acceptance of the role of listener in opposition to that of speaker. It is not the

identification with character Scott that makes me listen to his message; it is the

identification with the ‘you’ he is addressing. As such, it would not matter whether he

is drawn in a realistic or simple style. Even if he is reduced to a simple smiley, the

non-visual self-awareness is sabotaged by the power of language. Character Scott

claims he drew himself in a simple style because he wants me to become him, but I

suspect it might also have to do with the fact that he already drew himself 184 times

in the first 35 pages. I have sincere doubts that the message would be any less


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comprehendible if it was narrated by the actual Scott McCloud, let us say, in a Ted

Talk, and I think Mr. McCloud has to concur as he gave exactly such a talk in January

2009.

Figure 1. Character Scott in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, page 36 Word count: 647 Works cited: Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997. 56-61. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Silverman, Kaja, “From Sign to Subject, A Short History.” The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. 3-53.


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6: I’m (not that) Sorry Ekphrasis is “the name of a minor and rather obscure literary genre” (Mitchell 152),

but it gains in relevance if it is considered as a more general topic, namely “the verbal

representation of visual representation” (Mitchell 152). In this verbal representation of

visual representation lies a certain ekphrastic hope; the idea that words can make us

see something; “the overcoming of otherness” (Mitchell 156). These utopian

aspirations are difficult to keep up once texts actually encounter “their semiotic

‘others,’ those rival, alien modes of representation called the visual […] arts.”

(Mitchell 156). Text and image are placed in direct opposition and an analysis of this

structure exposes certain allegories of power. Like the ‘self’, the text is considered to

be active, speaking; giving a voice, while the ‘other’, the image, “is projected as a

passive, seen and (usually) silent object” (Mitchell 157).

Thus, ekphrasis invests verbal representation with the power of “giving voice

to a mute art object” (Mitchell 153) and this is what resonated when I was watching

reruns of the Dutch television programme De Beste Singer Songwriter van Nederland.

In the particular episode I watched, the contestants were asked to write and perform a

song based on a World Press Photo of their choosing. In an attempt to apply W.J.T

Mitchell’s theory on ekphrasis to a product of contemporary popular culture, I will

analyse the song of the winner of this episode, Stef Classens.

Classens chose to write his song about the renowned image of a man holding a

woman in the rubble after the collapse of a five-storey garment factory in Bangladesh.

The image is photographed by Taslima Akhter and titled “Final Embrace” [Figure 1].

The song was given the title “Written in the Book of Life”. The lyrics go as follows:


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Darling I can promise you one thing

Darkness will fall when angels start to sing

And if I had one more chance

I would turn your dreams into plans

I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you

I wish, awoken by grief, your spirit speaks

I’ll meet you on the other side

And I’m sorry that I couldn’t fight for

A happy ever after

What spirit speaks between the devil and the deep blue sea

I’m sorry, I’m sorry princess

I’m sorry, so sorry, I’m sorry princess

And I took your hand with mine

At the time we said goodbye

But now our names are written in the book of life

In this example, “the ‘otherness’ we attribute to the image-text relationship” (Mitchell

162), is echoed in the content. On the one hand we have the active white male singer

and on the other the silent repressed ‘others’ who were subject to the horrible

consequences of our system of mass consumption. In his ‘working through’ the

“ekphrastic and the other”, Mitchell proposes to add a third dimension to the structure

of meaning making. He speaks of a ménage à trois between the text, the image and

the reader (164). In working through Classens’ performance of this song, I would like

to add a fourth and fifth element. First, the (formerly insignificant) workers are

captured by a press photographer, who gives the photo a title and brings the workers


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to the stage of the World Press Photo exhibition. Second, the photograph is captured

in a song (lyrics & music) by Classens. Third, the song is performed by Classens,

making for a textual, musical and visual experience. Fourth, the song as performance

is received by me as audience, already acquainted with the photo it referred to. And

fifth, is it up to me as viewer to reconvert the performance and relate it back to the

image.

Let us start with the last of these aspects; how do I address meaning to the

photograph in relation to the song as it is performed in this episode of De Beste Singer

Songwriter van Nederland? We could assume that the ‘preferred meaning’ of the

image is for us to realize our guilt in the fate of the Bangladeshi workers. We should

not buy cheap clothes, as they can never add up to proper working conditions. This

interpretation resonates in the performance of Classens, who as civilized Westerner

embodies Benveniste’s linguistic ‘I’ and loudly exclaims his apology on stage. And

yet, as viewer of this performance I do not internalize the guilt; I do not truly feel

sorry. For us to understand where my lack of empathy comes from, we have to look in

more detail at the text related to this photograph.

Both the photographer Taslima Akhter and songwriter Stef Classens invest the

documentary image with a narrative “implying trajectories of plot, character and past

history” (Smith 185). First there is the title of the photo, “Final Embrace”, which

gives the destiny of the workers a romantic edge, even though according to the World

Press Photo website “the relationship between the two people is not known” (“Final

Embrace”). This courtship is further worked out in the song lyrics. Classens gives a

voice to the male other. Between the words ‘darling’, ‘princess’, ‘promise’, ‘I’m sorry

that I couldn’t save you’, and ‘I took your hand with mine’, the romantic relationship

between the man and woman is firmly established. They were not alone; they died


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together, in an amorous final embrace. (On a side note, the relationship is firmly

established through ideological assumption; the man should have protected his

princess. In the ekphrastic construction, the woman is still “silent and [only] available

to the gaze” (Mitchell 163).) Moreover, they did not die for nothing, they can ‘meet

on the other side’, there is still a promise of ‘a happy ever after’ and most importantly,

through the photograph and the song, the workers’ names are ‘written in the book of

life’. With the words they chose, Akhter and Classens transformed this fatal tragedy

into a romantic fairy tale. This makes it easier for us to distance ourselves from the

consequences of our consumptive behaviour. On Barthes’ connotative level the

ekphrasis seems to imply: ‘It’s a shame that we did nothing to avoid this, but what

you get in return is a romantic love story in the book of life, which is bigger than life

itself. So don’t feel too sorry for yourselves’.

I have tried to show how the performance by Classens reconfirms the existing

discourse of otherness. It exposes “the social structure of representation as an activity

and a relationship of power/knowledge/desire” (Mitchell 180). Classens is interested

in making us see the tragedy, but even more so, see the romantic side of it. Through

this use of romantic narrative, he places a symbolic frontier between “Us and Them”

(Hall 258), a frontier we can hide behind, without feeling remorse.

“Written in the Book of Life” was originally performed by Stef Classens on the 30th of June 2014 at Bittterzoet in Amsterdam as part of the Dutch television show De Beste Singer Songwriter van Nederland. The performance can be viewed via this link <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yeCAUkW8SM> (retrieved on October 19th 2014) or via Youtube search terms “Stef Classens Written in the Book of Life”.


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Figure 1. “Final Embrace”. Photographed by Taslima Akhter, 25 April 2013. 3rd Prize Singles at World Press Photo 2014.

Word count: 1006 Works cited: Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997. 225-90. Mitchell, W. J. T. "Ekphrasis and the Other." Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. 151-81. Smith, Hazel. "'Why I Am Not a Painter': Visual Art, Semiotic Exchange, Collaboration." Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: Difference/Homosexuality/Topography. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000. 166-94. “Final Embrace”. Photographed by Taslima Akhter, 3rd Prize Singles at World Press Photo 2014. 25 April 2013. 19 October 2014. <http://www.worldpressphoto.org/ awards/2014/spot-news/taslima-akhter?gallery=1125526#fullcontext>


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7: While I forget I exist2

Censorship incites our desire to see, to want to imagine. This is, in short, what

Richard Meyer proposes when he claims that “censorship of visual art helps to create

and sustain a symbolic space (or screen) of obscenity onto which any number of

different pictures may be projected” (8). As Foucault contests, censorship “induces

pleasure, it forms knowledge, it produces discourse” (qtd. in Meyer 16). In order for

our sexuality to be repressed, we constantly need to consider it, define what is or is

not acceptable and through that, we assign ourselves an identity in relation to it.

“Power mechanisms […] functioned in such a way that discourse on sex […] became

essential.” (Foucault 23) Censorship does not simply mute or constrain us, it renders

blank space sexually meaningful and triggers us to invent and recognize new

signifiers, or metaphors, in reference to sex. Judith Butler’s argument on language is

thereby also relevant for Meyer’s discussion on images. She claims that “the

censorship of language must be understood as a ‘productive form of power’” (Meyer

16). When images or words are taken out of circulation, we replace them with blank

space or with (other) words, both of which trigger mental images; they appeal to our

desire to want to imagine.

Meyer’s ‘symbolic space’ solicits “the sexual and creative possibilities that

our culture labors to keep hidden” (196). The manifestation of the gay movement in

our (visual) culture is said to have given “form to the repressed materials and

forbidden fantasies of ‘straight’ culture” (Meyer 161). Like Mapplethorpe’s art,

2 The title alludes to a quote from the biography of Robert Mapplethorpe by Patricia Morrisroe. Here Mapplethorpe claims that while he has sex or while he is behind a camera, he “forgets he exists” (193). For me this quote represents how you can be so immersed in what you are dealing with, that you forget to reflect on the mechanisms that influence how and why you are dealing with that thing in the first place.


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explicit nudity in visual culture addresses the pleasure of what we consider sexual,

personal and social freedom; it represents the “sense of contentment in casting off the

constraints and ‘hang-ups’ of the dominant culture” (Meyer 162). This manifestation

creates the illusion that we can rethink our submission to ideology; the illusion that

we can free ourselves from discourse altogether. But, as Foucault contests, this is

indeed only an illusion; we can move from one discourse into another, but never

outside of discourse. "Discourse […] constructs the topic. It defines and produces the

objects of our knowledge. It governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked

about and reasoned about.” (Hall 44) In other words, there is no meaning outside of

discourse.

While we feel liberated, we are thus still subject to discourse and we always

construct our (sexual) identity in relation to this discourse. Through an overemphasis

on sex, we are censoring, or repressing, ourselves, we must be something that is

imposed on us. Censorship may actually be at its most powerful, when the imposed

discourse becomes invisible; when we believe that what we find normal is not

influenced through the ideology in which we are immersed.

As a woman, I may feel liberated by the changes in culture that Meyer is

discussing. The art of Robert Mapplethorpe invites me to also dare to take off my

clothes, embrace my sexual freedom and show off my body with pride. Perhaps I

would also like to take self-portraits of myself as naked, sexual being. In doing so, I

would feel liberated. But as Laura Mulvey points out, this (hypothetical) self-portrait

would underline that I would then too, be subjected to a discourse. “Woman, then

stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic

order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic

command, by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as


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bearer of meaning not maker of meaning.” (Mulvey 484) I would position myself as

something valuable enough to be looked at, but I would still not take charge and do

the looking myself.

This struck me as I was reading Richard Meyer’s fourth chapter. He shares

with us several images published in the American pre-Stonewall era. We see

“erotically exposed male bodies” with strategically placed props so as to avoid

“prosecution on charges of obscenity” (Meyer 170). These images were catering to

the gay male gaze; men to be looked at by other men. As I noticed that I too could

experience pleasure in looking at these male bodies, I immediately corrected myself

and felt it was inappropriate to feel aroused by semi-naked gay males. I have

internalized this sense of censorship to such as extend, that I actually believed my

own feelings to be abnormal. It is against this experience and against the theory of

visual pleasure by Laura Mulvey, the incitement to discourse by Michel Foucault and

the power of censorship by Richard Meyer, that I would like to discuss two fashion

advertisements; one which was banned by the British Advertising Standards

Authority (ASA) in 2003 and one which, surprisingly, was not.

The first advertisement is for the shoe brand Patrick Cox [Figure 1]. It shows a

handsome teenage male in a gym, who appears naked accept for his shoes and a

basketball that is carefully positioned to hide his penis. The image was shot by David

LaChapelle and banned by the ASA because it was “likely to cause serious offence”

(ASA qtd. in Cozens, “’Explicit’ Shoe Ad”) and considered "deliberately ambiguous

and sexually provocative" (ASA qtd in Billings). It is interesting to understand why

this image, which does not differ much from the pre-Stonewall examples that Meyer

published, was prohibited in the United Kingdom in 2003. But what is even more


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interesting, is how a Gucci advertisement which is clearly more explicit and at least

equally sexually provocative, was tolerated by the ASA in that same year.

In this particular Gucci ad [Figure 2] we see a woman with her panties pulled

down to expose the letter "G" shaved into her pubic hair, and a man kneeling down

beside her. The photo is shot by Mario Testino. The ASA accepted this advertisement

because it was “unlikely to cause a serious or widespread offence” (ASA qtd. in

Cozens, “Close Shave”). “They believed the image was ‘playful’ and showed how

men and women’s sexual roles were changing.” (Cozens, “Close Shave”) This

example clearly illustrates how the Advertising Standards Authority applies a double

standard in its assessment of man versus woman on display as sexual object. What is

in their view likely or unlikely to cause offense, does not relate to sexual provocation

and the hiding/revealing of private body parts as such. Instead, it demonstrates what is

considered offensive through dominant ideology, and illustrates that positioning the

male as erotic object, whether catering to the pleasure of the female or the gay male’s

gaze, is still not considered acceptable in current day Western man’s self-acclaimed

liberal culture.

Both advertisements were reproduced innumerable times on news casting

websites and blogs, illustrating that censorship also “generates the publicity and

recirculation of the very works it seeks to suppress” (Meyer 209). We can only hope

that this explicitly visible censorship will in turn influence our desire to see and

explore our (female) way of looking and recognize that what we believe to be normal

depends on the mechanisms of the discourse we are subject to.


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Figure 1. Banned Patrick Cox Ad, Photography David LaChapelle, 2003

Figure 2. Approved Gucci Ad, Photography Mario Testino, 2003


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Word count: 1074

Works cited: Billings, Claire. “Patrick Cox Wannabe ‘Buggery’ Ad Banned by Watchdog” Brand Republic 4 June 2003. 12 October 2014 < http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/ 181772/Patrick-Cox-Wannabe-buggery-ad-banned-watchdog/ Cozens, Claire. “Close Shave for Gucci Ad” The Guardian 26 February 2003. 12 October 2014 < http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/feb/26/advertising> Cozens, Claire. “’Explicit’ Shoe Ad Steps into Trouble” The Guardian 4 June 2003. 12 October 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jun/04/ advertising.uknews> Foucault, Michel. Part one and Part two of The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. 1976. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 2-35. Hall, Stuart. Chapter 1 of Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997. 13-74. Meyer, Richard. Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 4 of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art. Boston: Beacon P, 2002. xi-xii, 1-31, 158-223. Morrisroe, Patricia. Mapplethorpe: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1995. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Film and Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. 483-494.

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