Blog Assignment # 3

 As I started to read Roland Barthes's "Rhetoric of the Image," I didn't quite understand it. I had to re-read it several times. Yet, I’m still a little confused. However, I managed to find two quotes that I found interesting.

“Today, at the level of mass communications, it appears that the linguistic message is indeed present in every image: as title, caption, accompanying press article, film dialogue, comic strip balloon.” (274)

I liked this quote because it’s true, we do live in a society where every image has some caption to it. Whenever we see a picture, there is always some writing in the image. Author Barthes states that this country still continues to be a “civilization of writing.” We need words to be able to understand the message the image is trying to tell us.   While reading a billboard, we first read the caption and then proceed to look at the picture because we want to better understand what the billboard is trying to tell us.

While reading a newspaper comic strip, we not only like to see images but we also like the caption that comes with the image. The image might have some humor to it but it’s probably going to be funnier with the some caption added to it. Most of us if not all would prefer to read books with words on it, instead of just having to look at a book with pure images. 

“As will be seen more clearly in a moment, all images are polysemous; they imply, underlying their signifiers, a ‘floating chain’ of signifides, the reader able to choose some and ignore others. “ (274)

This second quote relates to the above quote. All images can be interpreted differently. They can have different meanings and the person reading it can choose to go with a certain meaning and disregard the rest. This could be problematic because in reality the image was meant to have the meaning that people disregarded. This is probably the reason why many images have some caption to it.

I like this quote because I have seen several images and thought of several different meanings that image could have. Yet, I didn’t know exactly what it was they were trying to tell everyone.

 These two quotes I found really interesting and easy to understand. After reading the article and focusing on that Linguistic message, I found myself relating more and more to this section. Author Barthes stated that were a society of writing and therefore, Images should be accompanied by caption. If the advertisers want us to get the right message, then they need to have some sort of words, captions to better help us understand the message they are trying to tell us. 

 

This photo was taken at the Santa Monica Pier. 

This is what I saw when I rode the fairest wheel.