When I think about it I can’t find any evidence that the “visual” aspect of literacy has ever been separate from our general literal abilities. Even if we discount the fact that people once drew pictures on stones to function in tandem with their stories, there is no one who could argue that we do not all imagine some visual image in our minds when we read text or hear stories. The visual is essentially inseparable from literacy and as Messaris says, “it can be argued that, by acquiring visual literacy, people enrich their repertoires of cognitive skills and gain access to powerful new tools of creative thought.” I personally think that we’ve already been engaging cognitively with with the visual, however what Messaris is getting at is that with new forms of media this literacy is growing ever more complex. I like how how Messaris uses the cinematic form to emphasis this, especially in his analysis of the “close up” or movement of the camera and its effects on the viewer. Messaris states that “By controlling the viewer’s positioning vis-a-vis the characters, objects, or events in an image, including the image sequences of film or television, the images producers can elicit responses that have been conditioned by the viewer’s experience of equivalent interrelationships with real-life people, things, and actions.” What Messaris is referring to here is the analogical aspect of so prevalent with the visual form, especially the moving cinematic form. In real life we have access to “close-ups.” Our eyes work like cameras. The focus in and out of objects and people in our periphery, and even scan across lines so that we can position ourselves in place and even time. The cinematic visual functions in much the same we. The camera can examine a face and elicit emotion in the viewer much like a person can with say the face of a lover a desired object. In fact we’ve been doing this from the beginning, as we can see when babies deeply examine and scan their mother’s faces to understand emotion and respond emotionally. In fact we learn how to “read” faces long before we learn how to read words. I see what Messaris is saying more as a going back to our roots and in doing so, developing cognitive skills, related to “reading” (understanding emotional cues, intent, and even literary elements like foreshadowing) by incorporating a new form of literacy. Yes as the article states, the viewer already naturally does this but does not know it. Messaris emphasis, with regards to the the visual film form, that “because they appear to be simple extensions of our every day, real-world perceptual habits, we may interpret them without much conscious awareness or careful scrutiny.” And here I think that this is all the more a reason to tach visual (film) literacy in the classroom, since we are already naturally equipped, at least subconsciously, with the skills and techniques to engage with the medium. All that remains for us is to bring these skills to the fore and from there who knows what other forms of visual literacy may emerge.
Work Cited
Messaris, P. (1998). Visual Aspects of Media Literacy. Journal of Communication, 48(1), 70-80
Naz