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Final Exam Material
Understanding Visual Culture
Dr. Alla Myzelev
This is an exhaustive list of the questions that will help you to prepare for the exam.
As you will see most of the questions have answers. Please note that these answers
are GUIDELINES only. In other words you have to use your judgment, your
examples and most importantly your words to answer on the exam. The questions
on the exam will be similar but not exactly the same.
Note: Some questions have bold emphasis. These questions should be addressed
with particular attention as they can be used for larger essay questions. I will
explain further in class.
Chapter 1
Define the following terms:
1. Representation
2. Semiotics
3. (Myth of) Photographic truth
4. Positivism
5. Studium
6. Punctum
7. Empirical
8. Denotative meaning
9. Connotative meaning
10. Ideology
11. Modernism
12. Postmodernity
13. ____________ refers to the use of language and images to create meaning about
the world around us.
a. Interpellation
b. Reproduction
c. Interpretation
d. Representation *
14. Explain how René Magritte’s work The Treachery of Images plays with ideas of
representation. (Ans: He points to the relationship between words and things,
since this is not a pipe itself but rather the representation of a pipe; it is a painting
rather than the material object itself.)
15. ___________, a philosophy that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, holds
that scientific knowledge is the only authentic knowledge and concerns itself with
truths about the world.
a. Postmodernism
b. Realism
c. Positivism *
d. Classicism
16. Why does photography fit the positivist way of thinking? (Ans: In positivism,
machines were regarded as more reliable than unaided human sensory perception
or the hand of the artist in the production of empirical evidence. Photography
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seemed to suit the positivist way of thinking because it is a method of producing
representations through a mechanical recording device (the camera) rather than
the scientist’s subjective eye and hand (using pencil to sketch a view on paper, for
example).
17. In the television news image of the student protest at Tiananmen Square in
Beijing in 1989, what are the denotative and connotative meanings of the image?
(Ans: Whereas its denotative meaning is simply a young man stopping a tank, its
connotative and iconic meaning is commonly understood to be the importance of
individual actions in the face of injustice and the capacity of one individual to
stand up to forces of power.)
18. Explain how Marilyn Monroe is an image icon. (Ans: She was a star who was
regarded as the embodiment of female glamour. Her wavy blond hair, open smile,
and full figure were the stereotypical components of an American beauty ideal.)
19. Describe Roland Barthes’s theory of myth as it is used in this chapter. (Ans: For
Barthes, myth is the hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings,
which are specific to certain groups, are made to seem universal and given for a
whole society. Myth thus allows the connotative meaning of a particular thing or
image to appear to be denotative, literal, or natural.)
20. Describe two ways in which art works receive social value. (Ans: Beliefs about a
work’s authenticity and uniqueness, as well as about its aesthetic style, contribute
to its value. The social mythology that surrounds a work of art or its artist can also
contribute to its value.)
21. Explain how the Weegee images and the images of Emmett Till are examples of
the practices of looking. (Ans: In The First Murder, Weegee calls attention to
both the act of looking at the forbidden scene and the capacity of the still camera
to capture heightened fleeting emotion. The images of Emmett Till showed in
shockingly graphic detail the violence that was enacted on a young black man for
looking at a white woman, and made visible the oppression of blacks in the time
period thereby using images to expose the devastating aspects of violence.)
22. We make meaning of the material world through understanding objects and
entities in their specific ____________.
a. Symbolism
b. Theoretical contexts
c. Cultural contexts *
d. Social constructs
23. Throughout its history, photography has been associated with ________.
a. Realism *
b. Symbolism
c. Myth
d. None of the above
24. Give one argument for the position that photographs are objective renderings of
the real world that provide unbiased truth. (Ans: Photography seemed to suit the
positivist way of thinking because it is a method of producing representations
through a mechanical recording device (the camera) rather than the scientist’s
subjective eye and hand (using pencil to sketch a view on paper, for example).)
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Chapter 2
Define the following terms:
1. Interpellation
2. Bricolage
3. Producer
4. Kitsch
5. Avant-garde
6. Taste
7. Connoisseurship
8. Habitus
9. Institutional critique
10. Marxism
11. Hegemony
12. Reception Theory
13. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory that categories of taste and distinction trickle down from
the upper, educated classes to the lower, less-educated classes system does NOT
allow for:
a. The particular patterns of minority, immigrant, or countercultural values
and distinction *
b. How the practices of collecting and exhibiting art and artifacts contributed
to how viewers make meaning
c. A financial context in which work is expected to appreciate in value over
time
d. None of the above
14. The process of appropriation by mainstream marketers and producers of
alternative cultures or subcultures is termed:
a. Bricolage
b. Counter-Bricolage *
c. Pastiche
d. Interpellation
15. The term _______________ describes the way commodities from their original
context are given new meanings so that, in the terminology of semiotics, they
create new signs. An example of this is the use of the safety pin as a form of body
decoration by punks in the 1970s.
a. Signifying practices *
b. Transcoding
c. Dominant hegemonic
d. Oppositional
16. Give an example of an image and its dominant hegemonic, negotiated, and
oppositional readings. (Ans: American Idol. Dominant hegemonic reading - is the
idea that ordinary people can rise to stardom and celebrity purely on the basis of
their talent, which is sometimes presented as “natural” rather than acquired or
learned. A negotiated reading of the show might see the Idol shows as
entertainment that offers an image of success that is blatantly obvious to viewers
as fantasy, as constructed mythology. An oppositional reading of the shows might
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also interpret the show as an example of the myth that everyone has equal
opportunity to succeed, when in fact it is fundamental to the structure of
capitalism that only a few achieve power, wealth, and fame).
17. What are the three elements involved in the production of meaning of an image
besides the image itself and its producer? (Ans: 1) the codes and conventions that
structure the image, 2) Viewers, 3) the contexts in which it is viewed/exhibited).
18. Explain what the authors mean by the following statement: “Viewing, even for
the individual subject, is a multimodal activity.” (Ans: The elements that come
into play when we look may include not only images, but also other images with
which they are displayed or published, our own bodies, other bodies, built and
natural objects and entities, and the institutions and social contexts in which we
engage in looking)
19. What is the traditional meaning of the term interpellation? (Ans: To interpellate,
in the traditional usage of this concept, is to interrupt a procedure in order to
question someone or something formally, as in a legal or governmental setting (in
a Parliamentary procedure, for example).
20. How does advertising seek to interpellate viewers? (ans: Advertising seeks to
interpellate viewer-consumers, in constructing them within the “you” of the ad.
The message of the image, even if not intended for me, nonetheless draws me in
as a spectator, interpellating me, even though I know I am not the person it was
meant for.)
21. The authors state that a “producer” can mean:
a. An individual maker
b. A plurality of creative individuals
c. A corporate conglomerate
d. All of the above *
e. None of the above
22. Explain the difference between Barthes’s and Foucault’s understanding of the
“author.” (Ans: for Barthes, the author is ‘dead’ because the text offers a
multidimensional space that the reader deciphers or interprets. There is no
ultimate meaning for readers to uncover in the text. Foucault uses the concept of
an "author function" rather than an "author." The function of the author or
producer is linked to the idea that “someone” (an artist, a company) must stand
behind any given image.)
23. Explain why the example of the film Titanic illustrates the concept of global
cultural flows. (Ans: These new meanings were produced by viewers who
spontaneously used the text to share emotions about a difficult cultural transition.
As the author of the Britannica entry writes, “Titanic served as a socially
acceptable vehicle for the public expression of regret by a generation of aging
Chinese revolutionaries who had devoted their lives to building a form of
socialism that had long since disappeared.)
24. True/False: Neither interpretation of the movie Titanic in China is more or less
accurate than the other. (T)
25. Describe the differences between low culture and high culture. (Ans: High culture
has traditionally meant fine art, classical music, opera, and ballet. Low culture
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was a term used to refer to comic strips, television, and at least initially, the
cinema.)
26. Explain the process of “textual poaching.” (ans: Textual poaching was defined by
de Certeau as a process analogous to inhabiting a text “like a rented apartment.” i
In other words, viewers of popular culture can “inhabit” that text by negotiating
meanings through it and creating new cultural products in response to it, making it
their own.)
27. __________ is informed by experiences relating to one’s class, cultural
background, education, and other aspects of identity.
a. Interpretation
b. Taste *
c. Knowledge
d. Understanding
28. Explain how the Lava Lamp is an example of kitsch that gains value in a second
level of meaning. (Ans: With the broad resurgence of interest in 1960s music, and
visual and clothing styles in the 1990s, the lamp was back in vogue, to the delight
of the company that bought out the original U.S. manufacturer after the lamp fell
out of favor during the 1980s.)
29. According to Bourdieu, how does taste classify? (Ans: Social subjects, classified
by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make,
between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which
their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed.”)
30. Diagram Clifford’s map of the art-culture system. (Ans: see Fig. 2.7 Art-Culture
System Chart)
31. What are some of the viewing practices viewers can engage in institutional
contexts? (Ans: Some practices are in concert with institutional missions such as
art pedagogy (listening to audio commentaries, for instance), and some in
defiance of them (moving quickly through an exhibition and skipping over many
works within it).
32. Museology is
a. The study of music
b. The study of museums *
c. The study of art history
d. None of the above
33. What Dadaist artist developed and displayed the “readymades”?
a. Dalí
b. Haacke
c. Wilson
d. Duchamp *
e. None of the above
34. Explain Marx’s definition of ideology. (Ans: Marx thought of ideology as a kind
of false consciousness that was spread by dominant powers among the masses,
who are coerced by those in power to mindlessly buy into the belief systems that
allow industrial capitalism to thrive.)
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35. Explain Althusser’s definition of ideology. (Ans: Ans: Ideology is the necessary
representational means through which we come to experience and make sense of
reality.)
Chapter 3
Define the following terms:
1. Spectatorship
2. Gaze
3. Modernity
4. Flâneur
5. Discourse
6. Panopticon
7. Biopower
8. The inspecting gaze
9. Colonialism
10. Postcolonialism
11. Orientalism/Occidentalism
12. Cinematic apparatus
13. Scopophilia
14. Voyeurism
15. Identification
16. Psychoanalysis
17. To gaze is to enter into a(n) _________ activity of looking.
a. Interpretational
b. Relational *
c. Foundational
d. None of the above
18. For Rene Descartes, when does the world become known?(Ans: when we
accurately represent it in thought)
19. Explain the philosophical foundations of modernity. (Ans: The philosophy of
modernity was based on an ideal of the liberal human subject as a self-knowing,
unified, and autonomous entity with individual human rights and freedoms.)
20. What are some of the hallmarks of modernity? (Ans: increased urbanization,
industrialization and technological change linked to industrial capitalism and
supported by an ideological faith in these changes as being integral to progress.)
21. How did modernization differ in the U.S. and the Soviet Union? (Ans:
Whereas modernization was part of instituting a capitalist economy and a liberal
democracy in the United States, for the Soviet Union modernization in the form of
industrialization and technological advancement was tied to a Communist ethos of
equal benefits and living conditions for all citizens.)
22. _________ is an ornate style of modernism that evokes a machine aesthetic and
was originally conceived as functional design, called “art moderne.”
a. Art Deco *
b. Dadaism
c. Cubism
d. None of the above
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23. Foucault’s subject is never autonomous but is always constituted in relationships
of power that are enacted through ___________.
a. Discourse *
b. The gaze
c. Modernity
d. None of the above
24. How does the Flâneur observe life? (Ans: as an urban dandy who observes life
through the windows of the new city amidst the visual spectacle of the many
goods available for mass consumption)
25. According to ____________, the liberal human subject never really existed as
such but rather was an ideal against which emerges a subject who is radically split
at the very time that it comes into being.
a. Freud
b. Lacan *
c. Foucault
d. None of the above
26. What is the difference between viewing and spectatorship? (Ans: While in
everyday parlance, the terms viewer and spectator are synonymous, in visual
theory, the terms spectator (the individual who looks) and spectatorship (the
practice of looking) have added meanings that derive specifically from film
theory. Not only is the spectator’s gaze constituted through a relationship between
the subject who looks and other people, institutions, places and objects in the
world..)
27. In modernity, the gaze is made through a relationship of subjects in the
_______________.
a. Modern state
b. Political system
c. Panopticon
d. Discourses of institutions *
e. None of the above
28. Describe Foucault’s view of “madness.” (Ans: According to Foucault, madness
is defined through the varying discourses of medicine, law, education, etc., and
includes: statements about madness which give us a certain kind of knowledge
about it; the rules that govern what can be said and thought about insanity at a
particular moment; subjects who in some ways personify the discourse of
madness—the paranoid schizophrenic, the criminally insane, the psychiatric
patient, the therapist, the doctor; how the knowledge about madness acquires
authority and is produced with a sense of the truth; the practices within
institutions for dealing with these subjects, such as medical treatment for the
insane; and the acknowledgement that a different discourse will arise at a later
historical moment, supplanting the existing one, producing in turn a new concept
of madness and new truths about it.)
29. _______________ has often been a central factor in the functioning of many
social discourses since the nineteenth century (Ans: photography)
30. Who originally designed the panopticon? (Ans: Jeremy Bentham)
31. Foucault argued that modern societies function through________.
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a. Coercion
b. Cooperation *
c. Collaboration
d. None of the above
32. According to Foucault, the idea of expertise and who has it is a fundamental
aspect of ______________. (Ans: power relations)
33. According to Foucault, modern power produces ___________. (Ans: knowledge)
34. How does photography help produce Foucault’s docile bodies of the modern
state? (Ans: the vast array of media and advertising images that produce
homogeneous images for us of the perfect look, the perfect body, and the perfect
pose.)
35. Describe the difference between the gaze and the act of looking. (Ans: The gaze,
whether institutional or individual, thus helps to establish relationships of power.
The act of looking is commonly thought of as awarding more power to the person
who is looking than to the person who is the object of the look.)
36. Describe how Derrida’s “binary oppositions” explain otherness. Ans: The
category of the norm is always set up in opposition to that which is deemed
abnormal or aberrant in some way, hence other. Thus, binary oppositions
designate the first category as unmarked (the “norm”) and the second as marked,
or other.)
37. What are some characteristics attributed to Orientalism? (Ans: The representation
of all Muslims as fanatics or extremists, or the representation of the Middle East
as mysterious, unknowable, and sensual are examples of how Orientalism
functions)
38. What is crucial to the experience of cinema spectatorship? (Ans: the cinematic
apparatus)
39. Describe what John Berger means by “men act, women appear.” (Ans: the
imaging of men showing men in action, while women are to be looked at)
40. How did the film Thelma & Louise defy traditional formulas of the gaze? (Ans:
the viewer’s identification through the narratives asks all viewers, men and
women, to identify with the two female protagonists in a genre (the road movie,
the buddy film) that has been traditionally male. As such, it defies the simple
definition of the male gaze of Hollywood cinema)
Chapter 4
Define the following terms:
1. Abstraction
2. Realism
3. Aesthetics
4. Episteme
5. Soviet realism
6. Camera obscura
7. Colonialist appropriation and authorship
8. New realism
9. Perspective
10. Avant-garde
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11. Cartesian space
12. Enlightenment
13. Renaissance
14. Scientific Revolution
15. Playable media
16. How do visual codes and conventions allow us to make assumptions about an
image, such as Cameron’s work? (Ans: Formal aspects – tone and color, dress of
the subject, soft focus technique. Particular visual styles can thus help us to date
an image, evoking an earlier moment in history.)
17. What would a photo done in Cameron’s style today signify? (Ans: We would
regard it as a copy of a former realistic style, a nostalgic remake, and not as
realistic in contemporary terms.)
18. What is the goal of realist art? (ans: to reproduce reality as it is)
19. True/False: Realist approaches have often been put forward as a direct means of
political expression, sometimes to challenge the status quo of realist
representation. (T)
20. True/False: There is a universal standard for realism. (T)
21. ______________ is a classical pictorial representational style of painting that was
embraced as state policy in the Soviet Union in 1932.
a. Poetic realism
b. Cubism
c. Socialist realism*
d. Dadaism
22. Why did the Stalinist Soviet state aim to enforce the Socialist realism style of art?
(Ans: Stalinist Soviet state aimed to enforce art styles that could be used to
promote nationalism among people in the countryside unfamiliar with the newer,
more abstract style of work forwarded as more realist by the avant-garde in the
1920s)
23. _______________ is an approach to filmmaking developed in France during the
1930s.
a. Poetic realism
b. Cubism
c. Socialist realism *
d. Dadaism
24. Give three characteristics of the Poetic realist style. (Ans: dark and lyrical style
influenced by Surrealism)
25. Who introduced the term episteme?
a. Ferdinand de Saussure
b. Roland Barthes
c. Michel Foucault *
d. Dziga Vertov
26. True/False: Later epistemes are better and more advanced epistemes. (F)
27. The organization of objects in space as seen from the position of a single fixed
subject positioned before the frame-as-window on the world was developed
during the __________ period.
a. Modern
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b. Enlightenment
c. Ancient
d. Renaissance *
28. Plato regarded techniques for rendering depth as __________. (Ans: deception)
29. Who developed the linear perspective system? (Ans: Brunelleschi)
30. Who proposed that perspective, as it developed from the Renaissance period
forward, became the paradigmatic, spatialized form of the modern worldview
associated with the rationalist philosophy introduced by Descartes in the
seventeenth century? (Ans: Panofsky)
31. Who believed that realism is achieved by making a composite of views and parts
from a variety of observed forms? (Ans: Dürer)
32. What characteristics make many impressionist works popular for reproducing?
(Ans: This may be because much of the subject matter of Impressionism, with the
exception of some of the work of Vincent Van Gogh, is cheerful and pastoral.)
33. Where does realism of the virtual stem from? (ans: the embodiment of ideal
or composite elements)
Chapter 5
Define the following terms:
1. Reproduction
2. Dialectic
3. Appropriation
4. Montage
5. Authenticity
6. Fair Use Doctrine
7. Copyright
8. Digital
9. Analog
10. Contextualization
11. Indexical
12. Iconic
13. Photography was developed in the nineteenth century and was an outgrowth of
what?
a. Positivistic interest in documentation and classification
b. Modern concepts of time and spontaneity
c. Modern desire to contain landscape in a mechanically reproducible form
d. None of the above
e. All of the above *
14. Give three examples of visual technologies employed today. (Ans: digital
photography, motion picture film, electronic media (TV)).
15. In this chapter, the term reproduction is used in different contexts. Identify
and explain each of these contexts and give examples of each. (Ans: 1) printing
press creates a “exactly repeatable visual or pictorial statement.” 2) In the
Renaissance religious art was sometimes reproduced in the form of replicas
(hand-hewn, hand-painted copies), and an “original” bronze sculpture required
casting the true original, the work in clay, from a plaster mold. Thus, in the case
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of Bronze sculpture reproduction was, paradoxically, a means to making an
original work. 3) the quality of photographic reproducibility did not meet the art
market’s criteria of originality. If there is an original material form that we can
point to in photography, it would be the negative which holds great value as the
source of prints.)
16. Do technologies have agency? Explain your answer using examples to
support your claims.
17. The motion experiments of what nineteenth-century photographer helped the
development of cinema?
a. Jaques-Henri Lartigue
b. Eadweard Muybridge *
c. Louis J. M. Daguerre
d. None of the above
18. Aside from the actual camera, what technological development allowed for the
widespread use of cinema? (Ans: projector)
19. How does the answer to the previous question change the viewing experience of
film? (Ans: It was the ability of people to assemble in a group before a projected
image, and not simply the ability to make and view moving images, that allowed
the cinema to become a form of mass entertainment)
20. What is “invisible editing”? (Ans: In the 1930s and 1940s directors, camera
operators and editors perfected techniques through which relatively short shots
could be linked together with matches on action, continuity of direction, and other
codes leading the spectator not to notice the cuts from shot to shot.)
21. Identify three forms of printmaking. (Ans: engraving, etching, woodcuts, and
lithography)
22. What elements give photography what art critic Clive Bell calls “significant
form”? (Ans: the unique qualities of the photographic surface, black-and-white
imagery, and shadow and light that the technique afforded, and which would
arouse aesthetic appreciation within the terms of photography’s own distinct
codes)
23. Compare photography as an artistic medium and photography as a method of
copying using specific examples to support your answer.
24. How does “authenticity” in a contemporary context differ from Walter
Benjamin’s definition of authenticity when he refers to the aura of a one-of-a-kind
work of art? (Ans: the authenticity of the aura cannot be reproduced.
Traditionally, authenticity has meant genuine and reliable, not false or copied.
The authentic is regarded as more “real” than the copy. Yet, the concept of
authenticity is used in many different ways today. Authenticity can refer to
seeing, or structuring an image, as if without the help of the many technologies
available to us today)
25. What is the objective of Marcel Duchamp’s “L.H.O.O.Q.”? (Ans: to take a
painting that had achieved sacred status in the history of art, and essentially write
graffiti on it, an act of playful insolence toward the artworld’s reverence toward
masterpieces.)
26. According to Benjamin, how does reproduction alter the status of the original
object? (Ans: : (1) that the reproduction of a singular image (such as a painting)
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has an effect on the meaning and value of that original image, and (2) that the
mechanical reproduction of images changes their relationship to rituals of
meaning, use, and value in their respective markets)
27. Give examples discussed in the chapter of reproduction’s “democratizing” effect
on political art specifically. (Ans: Benjamin saw reproducibility as a potentially
revolutionary element, because it freed art from its revered status as unique ritual
artifact in traditions of iconic reverence and exchange. Art, newly understood as
existing in forms designed for reproducibility and circulation, could be a
democratizing force and could now become engaged in a more fluid socialist
politics that included reception by the masses through the broader circulation of
copies. The photo of Che Guevara illustrates this.)
28. Describe Sherrie Levine’s work, Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans.
a. What issues does Levine raise regarding copyrights? (Ans: questions
about ethical and market issues concerning copies and originals)
b. What artist challenged Levine’s statement on appropriation and
copyrights? (Ans: Michael Mandiberg)
29. Explain the difference between copyright and trademark.(Ans: Copyright, taken
literally, means the right to copy. The term refers to not one but a bundle of rights.
This bundle includes the right to distribute, produce or copy, display, perform,
and to create and control derivative works based on the original. A trademark is a
symbol, word or phrase used to identify a manufacturer’s product and distinguish
them from the good of others.)
30. A digital image is different from a traditional film photograph in that it does not
have a(n) __________.
a. Mode of reproduction
b. Light source
c. Negative *
d. All of the above
e. None of the above
31. Explain how artist Chuck Close creates very large paintings that reflect the tonal
precision of photographs. (Ans: Close photographs his subjects, draws a grid over
the photograph and a much larger canvas, and then paints the image one square at
a time.)
32. Name two artists who paint self-consciously using a photographic style. (Ans:
Chuck Close and Eric Fischl)
33. Give two examples of photo manipulation to produce more aesthetically pleasing
“documentary” images. (National Geographic moved the Egyptian pyramids
closer together or TV Guide put Oprah Winfrey’s head on the body of another
woman, or in 2007 when CBS doctored an image of news anchor Katie Couric for
its public relations magazine Watch! to make her look slimmer.)
34. What comment does artist Deborah Bright make through photo manipulation in
her work? (Ans: She comments ironically on the representation of compulsive
heterosexuality in classic Hollywood films.)
35. True/False: What changed with the digital photograph is the ability to manipulate
the image and the fact that these techniques have become widely available and
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accessible to the middle-class consumer, making image production and image
reproduction an everyday aspect of consumer experience. (T)
36. Explain this statement: “Digital archives are thus not just a new technical form.
They are also a new way of experiencing history and memory.” (Ans: A family
photo album now exists in the form of duplicate compact discs that can be sent to
family members far and wide, or image files to be sent via e-mail, all of them of
equal quality, or they can be accessed on web sites set up privately or through
photo services established to facilitate personal databases like these. The family
photo album moved online, and is often much more publicly available than
before.)
37. How does digital photo manipulation change the way a photograph is seen as an
example of Peirce’s indexical sign? (Ans: What happens to the idea of
photographic truth when an image that looks like a photograph is created on a
computer with no camera at all? In Peirce’s terms, this marks a fundamental shift
in meaning from the photograph to the digital image. Here, index gives way to
icon, since we take these computer-generated images to resemble real-life
subjects in an iconographic or symbolic way.)
Chapter 6
Define the following terms:
1. Alienation
2. Convergence
3. Cyberblitz
4. Public sphere
5. Print capitalism
6. Electronic capitalism
7. Masses
8. Mass media
9. Public culture
10. Propaganda
11. Countersphere
12. Counterpublic
13. What did Marshall McLuhan mean by “the medium is the message”? (Ans:
There is no such thing as a message without a medium, or a message that is not
impacted in its potential meanings by the form of its medium.)
14. The idea of _________was introduced in the nineteenth century to describe
changes in the structure of societies undergoing industrialization and the
emergence of a massive working class.
a. Publics
b. Masses *
c. Media
d. Counterpublic
e. None of the above
15. Explain what Emile Durkheim meant by the “determination” of a crime in
industrialized society. (Ans: collective sentiments and a collective conscience
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came to determine what constituted a crime, rather than the collective simply
standing in judgment of actions predetermined to be criminal.)
16. ______________ describes social formations in Europe and the United States that
began during the early period of industrialization and culminated after World War
II.
a. Publics
b. Mass media
c. Mass society *
d. Postmodernity
e. None of the above
17. What does it mean to speak of people as members of a mass society in terms of
how they receive their messages? (Ans: To speak of people as members of a mass
society is to suggest that they receive their messages through centralized,
broadcast forms of national and international media.)
18. Explain the difference between the one-way broadcast model and the narrowcast
model. (Ans: broadcast (with one central source broadcast a signal to many
venues) and narrowcast media (targeted, via cable and other means, to niche
audiences).
19. ____________ is a term that has been used since the 1920s to describe those
media forms designed to reach large audiences perceived to have shared interests.
a. Publics
b. Mass media *
c. Mass society
d. Postmodernity
e. None of the above
20. What were the primary traditional mass media forms of the twentieth century?
(Ans: radio, network and cable television, the cinema, and the press [including
newspapers and magazines])
21. What are some ways in which John F. Kennedy was the first media president of
the U.S.? (Ans: He was the first to be subject to the media coverage of television
to a full extent.)
22. Explain Raymond Williams’s idea of “television flow.”(Ans: the concept that
viewers’ experience of television involves an ongoing rhythm that incorporates
interruption (such as changes between programs and TV commercials))
23. What are some of the elements that shape our perception of television news?
(Ans: casting, costume, make-up and hair style, composition and editing of image
and sound)
24. True/False: Freedom to choose among a broader range of consumer products can
be equated with freedom of expression. (F)
25. True/False: Majority taste thus emerges in contexts like YouTube as an indicator
of potential industry success. (T)
26. Describe the ideas behind Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child project. (Ans: The
idea behind this initiative is that if participation in a global network becomes
recognized by the “haves” as a requisite for democratic participation in everyday
life, it becomes the responsibility of those with access to transfer or disseminate
the technology to those who do not have the means to buy into it for themselves.)
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27. Herbert Schiller states that the mass media function, in effect, as a tool of
_____________.
a. Colonialism
b. Postmodernity
c. Cultural imperialism *
d. None of the above
28. Who noted that only a few thousand professionals are responsible for the
acquisition and distribution decisions for television markets around the world and
that these professionals base their decisions not on audience tastes but on
institutional incentives?
a. Timothy Havens *
b. John Fiske
c. Robert McChesney
d. Ien Ang
e. None of the above
29. Who introduced the argument that mass media forms changed the dynamics of the
flow of information by making more information directly available to nonliterate
people, thus making possible a more democratic flow of information?
a. Timothy Havens
b. John Fiske*
c. Robert McChesney
d. Ien Ang
e. None of the above
30. Who proposed that the very notion of audience is imagined or constructed within
the commercial and public service sectors as a convenient way to conceptually
group together potential consumers, which, although convenient for marketing
purposes, cannot capture viewers’ specific and diverse tastes, interpretive
strategies, and practices?
a. Timothy Havens
b. John Fiske
c. Robert McChesney
d. Ien Ang*
e. None of the above
31. Who argued that new technologies continue to serve as powerful tools for
propaganda or mass persuasion?
a. Timothy Havens
b. John Fiske
c. Robert McChesney *
d. Ien Ang
e. None of the above
32. Describe how Triumph of the Will is an example of the way that practices of
looking can work in the service of overt nationalism and idolatry.
33. Who called for the use of the presses by revolutionary student and worker groups
rather than governments and corporate interests? (Ans: Walter Benjamin)
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34. Explain the hypodermic needle model of media effects. (Ans: the media have a
direct and immediate effect on audiences, fostering passive follower behavior
along viewers “drugged” by media texts that “inject” ideas into their viewers.)
35. Explain the idea of the homogenization of culture. (Ans: Commodified culture
produces a kind of pseudoindividuality in which certain kinds of talentless
celebrities evoke uniqueness when they themselves are without individuality.
36. Compare and contrast Walter Lippmann’s and Jürgen Habermas’s concepts
of a public sphere.
Chapter 7
Define the following terms:
1. Logo
2. Brand
3. Flâneur
4. Genericide
5. Metacommunication
6. Culture jamming
7. Détournement
8. Commodity fetishism
9. Commodity sign
10. Global consumerism
11. Consumer culture
12. Industrialization
13. Bureaucratization
14. Ideology
15. Sign
16. Signifier
17. Therapeutic ethos
18. Protestant ethic
19. Lacan’s “lack”
20. Coolhunters
21. What kind of promises does advertising make to the viewer?(Ans: the promise of
better self-image, better looks, more prestige, and fulfillment)
22. True/False: Consumerism has taken hold quite differently in different societies
precisely because of the social values and economic and political systems under
which they operate. (T)
23. Explain how shopping was transformed from a mundane task, in which the
consumer purchased unbranded bulk goods by standing at a counter and
asking a merchant for them, into an activity of leisure and entertainment.
24. Describe Walter Benjamin’s understanding of the arcades.(Ans: the shopping
arcades as the essence of modernity, in which the street is turned into a kind of
interior space and the unruliness of the city is made manageable.)
25. What did writer Emile Zola call “cathedrals of commerce”?
a. Restaurants
b. Public parks
c. Arcades
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d. Department stores *
e. None of the above
26. In the nineteenth century, why were flâneurs only men? (ans: respectable
women were not allowed to stroll alone in the modern streets)
27. Who argued that in thinking about the figure of the flâneur we should consider
not only gender but also sensory ability?
a. Margaret Bourke-White
b. David Serlin *
c. Catherine Gudis
d. Lizabeth Cohen
e. Pierre Bourdieu
f. None of the above
28. Who noted that the outdoor advertising industry credited the movies with creating
new kinds of viewing strategies and a familiarity with speed (and large-scale
images) among consumers?
a. Margaret Bourke-White
b. David Serlin
c. Catherine Gudis *
d. Lizabeth Cohen
e. Pierre Bourdieu
f. None of the above
29. Who defined the “consumers’ republic” as an economic and cultural context in
which the highest social values are equated with the promises of consumerism, so
that consumerism is understood by citizens to be the primary avenue to achieving
freedom, democracy, and equality?
a. Margaret Bourke-White
b. David Serlin
c. Catherine Gudis
d. Lizabeth Cohen *
e. Pierre Bourdieu
f. None of the above
30. Advertisements speak the language of _____________. (Ans:transformation)
31. Define economic capital according to Pierre Bordieu. (Ans: material wealth and
access to material goods)
32. Define social capital according to Pierre Bordieu (Ans: who you know, your
social networks and opportunities they provide you)
33. Define symbolic capital according to Pierre Bordieu. (Ans: prestige, celebrity,
honors)
34. Define cultural capital according to Pierre Bordieu (Ans: the forms of cultural
knowledge that give you social advantages).
35. True/False: Many ads address consumers about their relationship to a particular
product rather than a brand. (F)
36. True/False: Many advertisements depict family as a site of harmony, warmth, and
security, an idealized unit with no problems that cannot be solved by
commodities. (T)
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37. What is the difference between the marked and unmarked categories? (Ans: the
unmarked category is the unquestioned norm and the marked category is the one
seen as different or other)
38. Explain what Stuart Ewen means by the term “commodity self.” (Ans: the idea
that our selves, indeed our subjectivities, are mediated and constructed in part
through our consumption and use of commodities.)
39. How did the Frankfurt School define pseudo-individualism? (Ans: a feature of the
products of the culture industry, in which a false sense of individuality is sold
simultaneously to many people)
40. Explain the difference between use value and exchange value in Marxist theory.
(Ans: Commodities have both use value, which refers to their particular use in a
particular society, and exchange value, which refers to what they cost in a
particular system of exchange)
41. Explain the “creative revolution” in advertising (Ans: advertisers and marketers
began to see themselves as creative professionals rather than craftsmen who
worked according to scientific rules about how persuasion works).
42. Why did advertising begin to appropriate the language of the counterculture in the
1960s? (Ans: to aim to make certain brands seem hip and cool)
43. In a consumer society, there is a constant demand for ____________. (Ans: new
products)
44. What is the goal of the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF)? (Ans: “To Advertise is
to Exist. To Exist is to Advertise. Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal
and singular Billboard for each citizen.)
Chapter 8
Define the following terms:
1. Simulation/simulacrum
2. Hyperreal
3. Metanarrative (or master narrative)
4. Authenticity
5. Neoliberalism
6. Anime
7. Intertextuality
8. Distanciation
9. Ethnography
10. Spectacle
11. Pastiche
12. According to Baudrillard, how was Western culture epitomized in the late
twentieth century? (Ans: by the dull flickering of computer and television
screens)
13. Who described the late twentieth century as a period during which images became
more real than the real?
a. Raymond Williams
b. Jean Baudrillard *
c. Vivian Sobchack
d. David Harvey
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e. None of the above
14. Who critiqued the theory of simulation on the grounds that in celebrating the
technologically augmented and simulated body it fails to acknowledge the
vulnerability of the lived body?
a. Raymond Williams
b. Jean Baudrillard
c. Vivian Sobchack *
d. David Harvey
e. None of the above
15. Who argued that we are experiencing a “phase of time-space compression that has
a disorienting and disruptive impact upon political-economic practices, the
balance of class power, as well as upon cultural and social life”?
a. Raymond Williams
b. Jean Baudrillard
c. Vivian Sobchack
d. David Harvey *
e. None of the above
16. How does Jean-François Lyotard characterize postmodern theory?
17. What idea is always in question in postmodernism?
a. Authenticity *
b. Family
c. Culture
d. Simulation
18. Who wrote that of the responses to the space-time compression of
postmodernism, a kind of blasé been-there-done-that is one option but that
postmodernism can also open up toward a space of community, localness, and
respect for otherness, for resistances, and for social movements?
a. Raymond Williams
b. Jean Baudrillard
c. Vivian Sobchack
d. David Harvey *
e. None of the above
19. What does the term “becoming” mean for Gilles Deleuze? (Ans: It captures the
importance of moving beyond negative historical precedents in order to create
something new)
20. How does narrowcasting figure in the realm of Japanese anime? (Ans: the postwar
escalation of production of narrowcast genres of manga (comics) and anime
(animated film) geared to specific age and gender demographics)
21. How is postmodernism distinguished from modernism in relation to the concept
of the new? (Ans: modern thought as well as modern art and literature was very
much about a sense of the new, the avant-garde, the radical new idea. In
postmodernism, the sense that everything has been done before gives way to
relentless quoting and remakes, a context in which the only way to get noticed is
to be ironic, fashionable, to quote.)
22. Identify three hallmarks of postmodern culture. (Ans: References to nostalgia for
other historical periods; reflexivity; pluralism and multiple subjectivities)
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23. What two artists employ the role of photography as a form of portraiture of a
simulation? (Ans: Lee and Sherman)
24. Give two examples of changing and performing identity in pop icons that point to
broader issues of identity and the postmodern body. (Ans: Madonna and Michael
Jackson)
25. What is one of the key strategies of pastiche? (Ans: a questioning of the status of
the original)
26. How is the horror film Scream (1996) a parody of the genre of horror films that
knowingly taps into viewer’s knowledge of the genre’s conventions and
formulas? (Ans: the film constantly refers to the conventions of horror films in
which characters are always killed after they have sex, or are attacked after they
say “who’s there?” The film is peppered with dialogue about the movies).
27. Explain how the postmodern musical artist acts as independent producer,
making decisions not only about style but also about publicity and release
strategies that are typically controlled by record companies and producers.
Chapter 9
Define the following terms:
1. Positivism
2. Empiricism
3. Visuality
4. Taxonomy
5. Physiognomy
6. Phrenology
7. Eugenics
8. Morphing
9. Cyborg
10. Technological determinism
11. What urge did visiting the Paris morgue and viewing corpses satisfy in
nineteenth-century Parisians, according to Vanessa Schwartz? (Ans: the desire to
look)
12. Art historian Erwin Panofsky wrote that the rise of __________ in the
Renaissance period was integral to Renaissance art. (Ans: anatomy)
13. What are some of the ideas that da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” symbolizes today?
(Ans: a symbol of the interrelationship of the human body to mathematics and
structure.)
14. Relate the motif “Seeing the unseen” to visual technologies in the 19th and
20th centuries.
15. What does the painting by Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic (1875), depict?
(Ans: It depicts Dr. Samuel Gross at age seventy in a fancy black coat, presiding
in a theater-like setting at the Jefferson Medical College. Dr. Gross is at the
center of the composition and he is brightly lit, surrounded by assistants and by
figures in the shadowy background. But the body under surgical intervention
draws our attention.)
16. What two recent manifestations of the imaging anatomy have demonstrated that
the early practices of anatomy theaters retain a visual power? (Ans: The Visible
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Human Project and the Body Worlds exhibition)Why is the Body Worlds
exhibition disturbing? (Ans: The Body Worlds project is disturbing not only
because it involves the transformation and display of actual bodies but also
because in doing so it transgresses particular categories.)
17. True/False: The camera image has been essential to producing images of evidence
and scientific fact. (T)
18. In what ways were photographs used in science in the late 19th-early 20th
centuries? (Ans: Photographs in these contexts provided visual records of
phenomena and experiments)
19. What are the two very particular kinds of images used in science image-making?
(Ans: (1) images of medical patients and scientific specimens, which were widely
deployed to create systems of categorization; and (2) images taken of the body’s
interior)
20. How are the phenomena of physiognomy, craniology, and phrenology connected?
(Ans: the outward physical human body, and most particularly the cranium and
the facial features, could be read for signs of temperament, moral capacity, health,
or intelligence)
21. According to scholar Kelly Gates, how is the problematic history of seeing the
body’s exterior as evidence of moral and intellectual standing connected to
modern face recognition technologies? (Ans: this problematic history of seeing
the body’s exterior as evidence of moral and intellectual standing can be seen as
the legacy of contemporary facial recognition technologies.)
22. ___________ provides an instructive example of how visual knowledge is highly
dependent on factors other than sight. (Ans: Ultrasound)
23. Why is ultrasound (sonography) so popular among obstetricians and their
patients, and why does its use continue in the routine monitoring of normal
pregnancies? (Ans: The image is understood to have the power to encourage
emotional bonding more than textual descriptions or graphic abstractions of the
fetus ever could.)
24. How do sonograms serve a nonmedical cultural function that justifies the
technique’s use? (Ans: The medical image of the fetal sonogram became a
cultural rite of passage, in which women and their families get their first “portrait”
of the child-to-be in sonogram form)
25. True/False: Images generate strong emotional responses in their viewers, whether
or not they are “truthful” in what and how they represent and whether or not we
are aware that they are manipulated. (T)
26. The idea that the truth lies beneath the surface and needs to be seen to be fully
understood has prevailed in Western culture since ___________.
a. Modernity
b. Postmodernity
c. Grecian times *
d. Medieval times
27. Who wrote Birth of the Clinic? (Ans: Michel Foucault)
28. Why would an ultrasound image taken by a doctor will be perceived as more
reliable than a woman’s description of her bodily sensations of pregnancy(“felt
evidence)”? (Ans: vision is understood as a primary avenue to knowledge and
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sight takes precedence over the other senses as a primary tool in the analysis and
ordering of living things.)
29. The looking Foucault describes is crucially linked to what other activities that
give meaning to what vision uncovers? (Ans: experimenting, measuring,
analyzing, and ordering)
30. How has genetics emerged as a new and potentially problematic marker of
biological and cultural difference, taking the place of nineteenth-century
physiognomy?(Ans: gene therapy is used to map differences among human
subjects and has the potential to be used to designate those who are outside the
“norm” in troubling ways)
31. What metaphor is used in the Human Genome Project (HapMap)? (Ans: its
rendering of the body as a kind of accessible digital map, something easily
decipherable, understandable, and containable)
32. What image does the Human Genome Project (HapMap) use on its marketing
materials?(Ans: Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man)
33. __________ has been a major force in the development of morphing not only in
the art world, but in the crossover between art, science, and the broader culture
(Ans: Nancy Burson)
34. How do pharmaceutical DTC ads interpellate viewers?(Ans: these ads interpellate
consumers as subjects in need of chemical modification, as outside the norm, as
subjects whose modification through the consumption of pharmaceuticals will aid
them in becoming happier, more normal, and more fulfilled.)
35. How did ACT-UP use images to get mainstream media to pay attention to the
AIDS crisis? (Ans: ACT-UP used images as an integral aspect of their
provocative public interventions that aimed to get mainstream media to pay
attention to the AIDS crisis.)
36. True/False: Representations of science in popular media have no influence on
how scientists do science.
Chapter 10
Define the following terms:
1. Postindustrialization
2. Globalization
3. The global subject
4. The global gaze
5. Global village
6. Cultural imperialism
7. Imperialist paternalism
8. Postcolonialism
9. Diaspora
10. Hybridity
11. Cosmopolitanism
12. Transnationalism
13. Indigenous
14. Ethnoscapes
15. Mediascapes
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16. Disneyfication
17. What was one of the key historical demarcations of the concept of the globe?
(Ans: 1960s space travels of the U.S. and the Soviet Union produced the first
photographic images of earth as seen from space)
18. With the declaration of_________ in 1970, the investment in the idea of a unified
planet carried a great deal of currency. (Ans: Earth Day)
19. What is one of the key factors in changing perspectives on visualizing the earth
and on ways of situating ourselves within the globe? (Ans: The use of satellites to
produce and to circulate images)
20. In 2008, why did Las Vegas appear with greater resolution than many other cities
in the United States in Google Earth? (Ans: because it is of great interest to
tourists.)
21. What was Ronald Reagan’s logic in releasing Global Positioning System
technology to the world? (Ans: If satellite images could help us track enemy
movement, they could also help us track ourselves, allowing us to plot our
movements more carefully in a world whose borders are more open for passage,
but not necessarily more free of defenses)
22. What’s geocaching? (Ans: hiding small trinket-filled waterproof capsules, or
caches, along with a log, in remote or odd locations, then post GPS coordinates as
well as descriptive clues about the location of the hidden capsule to geocaching
logs online)
23. How was Donald Duck used to promulgate U.S. propaganda? (Ans: Donald
Duck and Mickey Mouse covertly “sell” to South Americans the belief that the
United States is a place whose values and cultural practices should be emulated,
and whose economic presence should be welcomed.)
24. What is the paradox of globalization in the early twenty-first century? (Ans:
the new liberalization and policies of open media flow have not created a more
democratic flow of information for the people)
25. What argument does Robert Foster make about that Coca-Cola’s global brand
marketing?
26. What is an irony of global marketing? (Ans: that many global brands sell
themselves not as global products but as locally sensitive choices)
27. What does the Starbucks brand signify in the U.S. versus in Tokyo? (Ans: a new
freedom to engage in capitalist signifiers of consumption and western tastes in a
society whose popular drink is not coffee but tea)
28. What does Thomas L. Friedman mean by his Golden Arches theory?(Ans:
No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever waged a war against one
another. Gains (figured dubiously in the example of McDonald’s) motivate
mutual cooperation.)
29. What is meant by the terms Bollywood and Nollywood? (Ans: It may be the case
that some of the dominant film industries around the world are named after
Hollywood, such as Bollywood cinema, the Hindi-language sector of the Indian
film industries, and Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry of the digital era.)
30. How has “franchise culture” has emerged as a dominant global influence in
television programming? (Ans: that program formats such as Who Wants to be a
Millionaire, Idol, Survivor, Big Brother, and The Weakest Link, many of which
24
originate in the Netherlands and Great Britain, are franchised out throughout the
world, with localized version of the shows. Thus, these formats “travel” around
the globe and are modified for local markets within the codes of the genre.)
31. How does the Bond series exemplify the conventions of genre? (Ans: The Bond
series exemplifies the conventions of genre, and was the source of Umberto Eco’s
well-known structuralist analysis of plot conventions and binary oppositions
(Bond/Villain, Bond/Woman, Duty/Sacrifice, Chance/Planning, and so on).
32. In the example of the Tamil nation, how can the Web facilitate political
connections among people who are separated from their homelands? (Ans:
This cyberspace address is a symbolic site where this diasporic community
maintains and generates unity in the absence of a real geographic home.)
33. How did the Zapatistas use style as a key factor in their global image? (Ans: In
order to mask their identities in the face the Mexican government oppression, they
wear black ski masks that have become iconic of their political struggles.)
34. Give an example of the use of museums to create the image of urban centers as
creative economies. (Ans: the Guggenheim signaled the museum’s identity by
commissioning well-known architect Frank Gehry to design the building, which is
now an icon of museum tourism.)
35. The discourse of ______________ is a strong, sometimes antagonistic and
sometimes consolidating, force with the discourse of free global transmission.
(Ans: sovereignty and local rights)
36. Whereas in the 1990s institutional critique took place between institutions,
Cruz’s work suggests that in the 2000s the site of action is where? (Ans: at the
margins and in the spaces that cannot be contained within the formal structures of
institutional discourse)
i
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xxi.