Monday, October 17, 2011

From SCD #2

So in my SCD I talked about the difference between pictoral icons and non-pictoral icons lookkng at McCloud and also Adolf Hitler in Burke's text. One thing that came up I found really interesting and I was wondering what you guys all thought possibly.

I started finding that while McCloud used his icons to make the author less important and the message more so, Hitler's icons (the images his language creates such as the "Aryan" and the 'International Jew') did just the opposite. Those images were full of the author's influence and voice. I found this really interesting in the case of that Aryan because that is who Hitler's intended audience was. He builds an image that he thought the people of Germany should buy into and live out. I'm not sure if the word will completely apply, but it seems very heteroglossic because those people that did take Hitler's message to heart followed a construction of Aryan Character that Hitler created, and it would be very hard to seperate those peoples' opinions from Hitler's in their speech.

I just had never really thought that Heteroglossia could be applied to the audience in a way, and I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts.

3 comments:

  1. I wouldn't say McCloud used icons to make the author less important; rather, I'd say that his use of icons helped the reader to better understand the author's message. It allowed the reader to place themselves in the text, giving them a relationship between the text and themselves.

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  2. Jerehar--
    I agree with you. I think McCloud used icons and the contrast between simple and detailed to bring focus to his ideas, whereas Hitler brought focus to his icons and to himself and Aryans.
    I cite the frames where McCloud says something like, "would you pay attention to me if I looked like this.." and fills the picture with a more detailed image of himself (p. 36). My answer is, no, for the moment, I wouldn't have.
    I also think Hitler's writing, is, like you said, a good example of heteroglossia. There are the two different voices-- the words on the page, and there is the political message/statement they carry.

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  3. This is a really interesting idea; I wonder if then there is somewhat of an icon-relationship with the author. In Hitler's case, he was trying to build himself up and make himself into an icon-of-sorts for his movement. In the case of McCloud, he wants to disappear into the message. This then reflects the initial idea of icons acting as a means to amplify through simplification.

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