{"id":10800,"date":"2012-01-06T23:30:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T03:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=10800"},"modified":"2012-01-06T23:30:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T03:30:40","slug":"forumization-and-its-malcontent-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2012\/01\/06\/forumization-and-its-malcontent-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Forumization and Its Malcontent (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a><\/p>\n

Finding One’s Inner Photo Critic<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I noted at the end of\u00a0my previous post<\/a>, since prospective participants in the several forums in which I participated in December underwent no actual assessment of qualifications, each forum inevitably included at least one person less familiar than the rest with common reference points who brought the discussions to a grinding halt by posting something variously na\u00efve, dumb, garbled, or all three.<\/p>\n

In one of those forums, the prime exemplar of that set of qualities hijacked the thread by opining that the general public doesn’t need specialist photo critics because its members are “fully equipped with or without such guidance to draw their own conclusions and make intelligent decisions [in relation to] their understanding of images.”<\/p>\n

\"Gregory<\/a>

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn at Rome's Mouth of Truth in William Wyler's 1953 film "Roman Holiday."<\/p><\/div>\n

She refused to provide any proof to buttress that remarkable assertion \u2014 understandably, as it’s hard to come by. For some readily available contrary evidence, consider this: Substantial evidence indicates that more than 40 percent of women are unhappy with their bodies, a number virtually unchanged since 1984. (For some scholarly citations in support of this position, go to\u00a0“Beauty and Body Image in the Media”<\/a>\u00a0at the Media Awareness Network. See also Shaun Dreisbach’s March 2009 Glamour<\/em> article, “Exclusive Body-Image Survey: 16,000 Women Tell Their Body Confidence Secrets.”<\/a>)\u00a0Considerable data indicates they feel this way mostly as a result of comparing their real physical selves to\u00a0the visual images of women promulgated by the mass media \u2014 images, mostly photographic, that are taken as normative, even if idealized unrealistically using makeup or other methods during production or altered post-production via Photoshop and other such means.<\/p>\n

These women do indeed “draw their own conclusions” from such images, in many cases deciding that to achieve desirability they need to match the unrealistic appearance of the women in those images. The “intelligent decisions” they make in response thereto range from radical, expensive, unnecessary, and often dangerous cosmetic body-modification surgery to self-starvation and even bulimia and anorexia in their efforts to mirror the look of those images.<\/p>\n

\"Oneal<\/a>

Oneal Ron Morris, Miami Gardens Police Dept. mug shots, 11\/18\/2011.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sounds to me like a large cohort of women who desperately need to get in touch with their inner photo critics. And the best way to do so, I continue to argue, involves regular engagement with a real-life role model, an actual photo critic, who can exemplify \u00a0an analytical attitude toward manipulation via lens-derived imagery, thus helping them\u00a0“just say no” to lunatic behavior like paying qualified surgeons to stuff them with\u00a0breast implants that now have to be removed due to a risk of cancer because they contain industrial-grade rather than medical-grade silicone gel<\/a>; or\u00a0getting so Botoxed that you lose the ability to express anything facially except rodent surprise<\/a>; or\u00a0“going to pumping parties,”<\/a>\u00a0where women gather for low-cost, medically unsupervised silicone injections in body parts like the buttocks, breasts, or chin; or\u00a0paying some demented yoyo off the street to\u00a0inject a mixture of cement, ‘Fix a Flat’ tire sealant,\u00a0mineral oil, and super glue into their buttocks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fully equipped to make intelligent decisions about images, my ass (and theirs), so to speak.<\/p>\n

Oh, That “‘Intellectual’ Crowd”<\/strong><\/p>\n

But back to our story. The participant who hijacked\u00a0the forum thread in which I participated this past December had only begun her takeover of the discussion with the following pronouncement:<\/p>\n

“What makes the ‘intellectual’ crowd think they need to guide citizens in their understanding of images? I think people are fully equipped with or without such guidance to draw their own conclusions and make intelligent decisions. I feel like the sort of theory and criticism we are discussing here belongs now and has always belonged to the esoteric realms of the the [sic] graduate seminar classroom.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A.<\/a>(N.B. This was\u00a0one of two forums \u2014 out of four altogether \u2014 that I joined specifically because they involved group discussion of my November 2011 lecture, \u201cDinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism.\u201d\u00a0You\u2019ll find the text here.<\/a>\u00a0And you’ll discover that its main subject is the disappearance from the pages of mainstream, general-audience periodicals of mainstream critical writing about photography written in accessible language \u2014 in other words, precisely\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0the kind of writing directed toward or popular in “the esoteric realms of the the [sic] graduate seminar classroom.”)<\/p>\n

In response to that peculiar assertion, for which she offered no supporting evidence, I wrote,<\/p>\n

While I think of myself as a “public intellectual,” in cultural historian Morris Dickstein’s terms, I’ve never thought of myself as part of “the ‘intellectual’ crowd.” Nor, I think, does such a unitary cohort exist, except as a fantasy. (As it happens, the form of Marxism to which I adhere is what’s known as Groucho deviationism: I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member \u2014 including any “‘intellectual’ crowd.”)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And while I’ve taught post-secondary since 1970 I’ve done so only part-time, almost entirely in undergraduate or continuing-education contexts, so I don’t consider myself an academic.\u00a0I should add that the types of outlets for critical writing whose unavailability I mourn in my talk \u2014 newspapers like the\u00a0[New York] Times<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0[New York]\u00a0Observer<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 are disdained by the academic world, where publication of a single footnoted essay in an obscure, small-circulation but “peer-reviewed” journal still trumps my 120 essays in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I don’t see my role as critic as leading people by the nose, or telling them what to think, but simply \u2014 in a citizenly way \u2014 visibly and publicly modeling critical thinking about my particular area of knowledge, by providing clearly articulated opinions and substantiated arguments off which to bounce their own ideas. With that said, I consider the notion that the general public is “fully equipped with or without such guidance to draw their own conclusions and make intelligent decisions [in relation to] their understanding of images” overly optimistic, though I certainly wish it were so.<\/p>\n

We’ve Only Just Begun<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I thought this might deflect her, and enable the already ongoing discussion of serious issues in that thread to continue. But, as I said, she’d only just begun. Disregarding those gentle correctives, she launched her next salvo:<\/p>\n

“I guess I just think that one of the great things about the internet is that anyone can have a voice here. You don’t have to be inducted into the somewhat cult like world of the “educated” to do so. What makes the opinion of a certain highly informed person more valid than that of someone who is not informed? . . .\u00a0I think giving the general public the reigns [sic] creates freedom in the exchange of ideas that is not present in a world where only certain people decide what is valid.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I wrote back,<\/p>\n

\""A<\/a>Goodness me! I didn’t realize that by going to school I’d been “inducted into the somewhat cult like world of the ‘educated.'” (Now where did I put that decoder ring, and the handbook with the secret handshake?)\u00a0I do agree with the Nelson Algren character who says “Smart from books ain’t so smart,” but I’ve never taken “educated” as synonymous with merely “smart from books” \u2014 also true of most of the intelligent people I’ve known. I believe, as they do, that you don’t really “own” knowledge until you’ve tested it in the real world.<\/p>\n

And I frankly don’t know how to respond to the question “What makes the opinion of a certain highly informed person more valid than that of someone who is not informed?” To paraphrase, what makes the opinion of someone who knows something about a subject more valid than that of someone who knows nothing about it? This query seems to conflate the belief that everyone’s entitled to an opinion (with which I agree) with the notion that all opinions carry equal weight (with which I certainly disagree).<\/p>\n

Undeterred, she retorted thus:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“I don’t think I’m conflating anything. I do believe that all opinions hold equal weight until someone comes along and says otherwise. That’s kind of my point. Here’s a question I don’t think you can dismiss so readily: Do you think it’s possible that there are uninformed opinions out there that may shed light on an image in a way that an informed opinion cannot? I can see that I’ve offended you and for that I apologize, but I do think that someone should challenge some of the ideas in your essay.”<\/em><\/p>\n

(To be continued.<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I frankly don’t know how to respond to the question “What makes the opinion of a certain highly informed person more valid than that of someone who is not informed?” To paraphrase, what makes the opinion of someone who knows something about a subject more valid than that of someone who knows nothing about it? This query seems to conflate the belief that everyone’s entitled to an opinion (with which I agree) with the notion that all opinions carry equal weight (with which I certainly disagree). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15],"tags":[78,383,384,520],"class_list":["post-10800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-life","category-news-commentary","tag-body-image","tag-oneal-ron-morris","tag-online-forums","tag-threadjacking","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}