Week 1: An iconic image

Aylan Kurdi: once a little boy, now an iconic photograph

‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is an expression that is often used. It may sound cliché, but think about how you perceive the situation in Syria or the refugee crisis: is it through photos or through written articles? Especially in a humanitarian crisis or in a war you know what is happening ‘over there’ through photos. Of course there are written words, but those news articles are always strengthened by images. Those images give extra meaning to the words. However, and that is where the media studies perspective comes in, those images are always a representation of the world: it is never actually reality that you are seeing there. In this blog post we would like to discuss how the media influences the way we perceive the world around us by using the case study of the little Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in his attempt to reach Greece. An image that immediately got described as an iconic photograph that might change history.

So, what is actually the functioning of the media? They communicate towards a broad audience. But what do they communicate? They communicate the world. The media are forms of meaning-making through representation: they represent the world in a way that is specific for that medium, and by doing so they give meaning to the world, or let you give meaning to the world. Natalie Fenton states in her article ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media’ that ‘the process of making sense of the world and taking meaning from the things that surround us is one of the main reasons why people are fascinated with the role of the media in society’.

However, and that is an important question you should ask yourself while perceiving photos like the one of the drowned Syrian boy: Do the media give meaning to this photo or does it allow you, the audience, to give meaning? In other words, you can wonder if the meaning behind the photos is ‘pregiven’. This Bourdian perspective on media makes you wonder if you, as an audience, just accept the pregiven meaning that is constructed by the media, instead of constructing a meaning of your own. Think about the Syrian boy: it is immediately connected to the refugee crisis; and receives the status of an iconic photograph. Furthermore, the media add an emotional value by elaborating on the story of the father who tried to save his family but failed in his attempt. Would you have been able to get all of this from the picture? Probably not, but through the meaning that the media has given to this photo, it all became part of much larger story: the story that now it is really the time to undertake action in this refugee crisis.

            This makes us wonder: what do media images mean for the way you interpret and evaluate the world? The French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard noticed that through mass media and mass communication the ‘real’ behind the images (and the signs they stand for) has disappeared. All that is left is representation, or simulation as Baudrillard calls it. This means that the media have gained a lot more power, because it is only in the images that the media represent that you can actually see “the real world”. Media industries therefore have also a lot to do with the notion of power. From a critical media industry studies perspective power can be seen as ‘productive’, in the sense that it produces specific ways of conceptualizing audiences, text and economics. Furthermore, power is a form of leadership constructed through discourse that privileges specific ways of understanding the media and their place in people’s lives. It is through their mediation that you perceive the world around you; and that the process of meaning-giving is possible.

            The power of the image should not be underestimated. However, the discursivation of culture did indeed lead to the misjudging of this epistemic power of the image. Sybille Krämer and Horst Bredekamp explain this in their article ‘Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text’: ‘the hierarchy between language and image […] has become indirectly proportional to the facility with which images of all kinds […]  have usurped our everyday world’. Nevertheless, they feel that the textualization of culture has reached its limits. One of these signs of erosion is the epistemological dimension of imagery: visuality has become the irreducible center for research and context of the sciences.

            Does this mean that the media are central to social processes? Krämer and Bredekamp state that these innovations in the media, caused by changing cultural techniques, are located in a reciprocity of print and image, sound and number, which in turn opens up new exploratory spaces for perception, communication and cognition. Therefore, the picture of the Syrian boy can be iconic; it’s representation through the media opens up new possibilities for meaning-making and meaning-giving. So, the power of the media is clearer now, but what is the power of this photo in particular?

            Aylan Kurdi, the victim in the photograph, is lying face down in an unnatural way. The position of the body (twisted and horizontal – a rarity as people are typically represented vertically) refers to the confusion and panic that the refugees must have experienced as they were trying to reach their destinations. The face of the little boy is unrecognizable. This anonymity creates a wider interest: he could be anyone or anyone’s son. Everything is implicit, which makes it even more shocking. There is just pathos, no logos. A feel of powerlessness strikes the viewer, because a sense of human degradation is shown by the media, but the public essentially cannot stop it. At the same time, it creates a feeling of guilt: if we opened our borders sooner, this might not have happened. The photo grasps you, and it is hard to let go of.

The photograph of the Syrian boy is powerful in itself, but it is through the representation in the media that it has become iconic already. The fact that this picture might change history makes you wonder what the reach of the power of the media can be. Aylan Kurdi suddenly made the refugee crisis a lot more personal. Could this be the beginning of a change in the history of this humanitarian crisis? We shall see…

AH – SH – MS – GV – MW

Thesis: The consumption and interpretation of iconic images is swayed by the media’s power over how information is contextualised and disseminated

Bibliography:

          -            Baudrillard, J. (1981) Simulcra and Simulation. Éditions Galilée.

          -            Bourdieu, P., J. Chamboredon & J. Passeron (1991) The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries. R. Nice (tr.) New York: Walter de Gruyter.

          -            Fenton, N. (2007) ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media', in: Eoin Devereux (ed.), Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates. London: SAGE, pp. 7-31.

          -            Havens, T. A. D. Lotz & S. Tinic (2009) ‘Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach’, in: Communication, Culture & Critique 2, pp. 234-253.

          -            Jong, de, L. (2015) ‘Waarom raken de foto’s van het Syrische jongetje ons zo?’, in: De Volkskrant, 3 September 2015. http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/waarom-raken-de-foto-s-van-het-syrische-jongetje-ons-zo~a4135050/ (accessed on 6 September 2015).

          -            Krämer, S. & H. Bredekamp (2013) ‘Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text’, in: Theory, Culture & Society 30 (6), pp. 20-29.

          -            Shalby, C. (2015) ‘Why a photo of a dead Syrian boy touched a nerve on an enduring crisis’, in: PBSNewshour. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/photo-dead-syrian-refugee-boy-puts-face-crisis-rooted-numbers/ (accessed on 6 September 2015).

          -            Smith, H. (2015) ‘Shocking images of drowned Syrian boy show tragic plight of refugees’, in: The Guardian, 3 September 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees (accessed on 6 September 2015).

          -            Sterne, J. (2014) ‘There Is No Music Industry’, in: Media Industries Journal 1 (1), pp. 50-55.