Words as visual representations

Reading Response for Thursday, 8/29

McLuhan, Understanding Media (Chapter 9)

I came across something in chapter nine of McLuhan’s Understanding Media that I’d like to ponder on here for a few words. Within these pages, McLuhan addresses “The Written Word.” I was taken back to Susan Hilligoss’ Visual Communication class, where students learned how images and words work with each other. In his text, McLuhan asks readers the following:

“Suppose that, instead of displaying the Stars and Stripes, we were to write the words ‘American Flag’ across a piece of cloth and to display that…To translate the rich, visual mosaic of the Stars and Stripes into written form would be to deprive it of most of its qualities of corporate image and of experience, yet the abstract literal bond would remain much the same” (McLuhan, p. 82).

These lines reminded me of The Treachery of Images. Sometimes translated “the treason of images,” the 1920s painting (seen here) shows a pipe. René Margritte, the Belgian artist, painted the line below the pipe that reads, “This is not a pipe.”

The statement—“this is not a pipe”—is meant quite literally. While this is a painting of a pipe, it is not truly a pipe; rather, it’s a representation of one. Does this change the way we think, feel over the pipe?

We can see how McLuhan’s infamous line, “the meaning is the message” is applicable here. A photograph represents something, but is not the object itself. Check out this link for some additional thoughts on this subject: http://www.thediscerningbrute.com/2011/04/15/the-treachery-of-images/

Sources:

Katcher, Joshua. (2011, April 15). The Discerning Truth: The Treachery of Images. [Web Blog]. Retrieved from http://www.thediscerningbrute.com/2011/04/15/the-treachery-of-images/ 

Margritte, René. (1928-29). The Treachery of Images. [Painting]. Retrieved from http://www.rene-magritte.org/the-treachery-of-images.jsp 
McLuhan, Marshall. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: The MIT Press.