In the most recent issue of The ALAN Review, there are great articles on film and comics -- even an article written in comics form. It's a good-looking issue.
I was very honored to have guest-edited the issue, and you can see me playing a character I might as well have called "Mr. Incredulous" in my introduction. I was given the charge of situating these essays on the acceptance of newer or possibly "new-to-you" forms into and as YA Lit and decided to give my intro a twinge of the ironic, sardonic, and downright snarky.
I figured, what would the staunch literary traditionalist say about this issue? I concluded it would be something like "It's come to this??" But, deep down, this traditionalist would also be excited (or at least adequately emotionally flustered) about where the articles were pushing adolescent literature and literacy.
You might also see me refute the idea that we're becoming a more visual culture. "WHAT???? Why would YOU say that??" you might ask.
Allow me to explain:
We have to take into account that many of the folks who are telling us that we're moving from a print culture to a visual culture are very much wrapped up in print culture. So, what might be the norm for them might not be the norm for everyone else. Scholars who have to get tenure through the printed word -- and often, that also means the printed page, not alternate forms, for better or worse -- might not have noticed that many of us have been in a visual culture for generations, centuries, even, if they don't value making interdisciplinary connections in their fields of the humanities or social sciences. Perhaps, long ago or even still, there were/are no posters in that office in the Ivory Tower.
As well, some folks seem to glom on to this idea of visual literacy like human beings have only recently developed eyeballs. Remember, the textual is also the visual. There's not a distinction there really, except in how certain graphein (to invoke Kress, or for comics scholars, Groensteen) have been signified or codifed. We read using our eyes; similarly, we use them to view paintings, read comics, etc. Isn't anything we do that filters information through the eyes an act of visual literacy on some level?
Or, as I put it with my students: When do you think we were more attuned to our visual senses, especially in how they related to our other senses? When we were hunting and gathering while playing Grand Theft Auto, or when we were actually hunting and gathering for survival?
So, I don't really think we're entering an era where we're becoming a more visual population, its just that we've become more aware of how the visual is being used to persuade us and influence our thinking and actions. This has lead to us also becoming more aware and accepting of how we can use visual elements of culture to educate folks across the overlapping literacies, from functional to critical, than we might have been fifty or a hundred years ago.
So, really, we don't need to over-sell visual literacy. As those who haven't felt the love of the printed word or the pressures of publishing might remind us, not only have visual forms always been with us and part of us, they often sell themselves as forms of literacy. If only we're willing to see what's available for our viewing.
Not that a little media awareness and knowledge of rhetorical technique isn't a helpful thing, of course. The ones that need the selling the most are those who are most dead set against it as a concept or reality. The real Mr and Mrs. Incredulouses. I'd like to think we can reach everyone, but I've been in education for a long time now. Perhaps the way to handle those most opposed to forms of literature and art that integrate more visuals than more traditional forms is to watch them reading their "imageless" books and humor them as they fool themselves into thinking they are having a pure literary experience without any of those pansy-ass visuals getting in the way. ;)
"But those letters are images too" you want to call out, but let them build the evidence for us while thinking they're making the case against. Sometimes, that is all you can do.
Anyway, go read TAR 37.3. Enjoy the articles -- and Mr. Incredulous!
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