Intertextuality and Vis Rhet

To be honest, I think history plays enough of a major role in visual rhetoric that a proper definition—or at least discussion of a definition—would not be adequate unless history is mentioned.  Our experiences, our community history, what we’ve seen, what’s important, what’s our values, what’s possible—these are all related to how we construct meaning in the world; thus, they contribute to how visuals become meaningful to us.

Intertextuality plays a major role in our understanding of images—the elements of other images working to create meaning (I’m just going to throw in the word gestalt in here to keep that in mind).  How would we then create meaning through intertextualtiy if there were not preceding images to re-appropriate, remix, or reproduce elements of it? But also, our recurring experiences with those elements associate them with emotions, thus values, which are connected to our community ideology and history.  The ideology travels through our history and are reshaped with new contexts, new situations.  These new contexts and new situations are part of a community history which shapes the ideology.  And, not to beat a dead horse here, ideology shapes how we understand visuals.

I feel it would be apt to use an image here as an example.

 The satire of this image of Romney is understood by understanding the elements of images that preceded this one.   Through intertextuatliy, we associate this picture with the Obama poster, but we recognize why its satire by knowing what the previous image meant and how this new image is being used: to exaggerate a unlikable characteristic of Romney.  The Obama poster exists in our community’s history and (depending on where you are on the political spectrum) values are associated with these images. The values, of course, are shaped by our experiences in our community.  So, history plays a large role in understanding this satire.

But there’s another aspect of history that I want to talk about: understanding a picture in its historical context.   

This image of John McCain, if created and used today as a form of argument, would be completely irrelevant considering McCain isn’t running for president anymore, but if we look at it in its historical context, we can better understand what the image meant for those voting in 2008.  While I’m discussing recent history that we can all still remember well, I want to emphasize older images that we may be viewing within a context that images may not have been meant for.  By not understanding those historical contexts, we may not be productively or fairly characterizing the intent.  However, this is me on my soapbox—as much as I say we should be doing this, the hoi polloi is not.  But it’s just something I thought we should be considering as visual analyzers.