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Frames of Experience: Visual Culture, Teenagers, and Identity

By Ima Goodwriter

January 28, 2013

Ms. Barnhart, English 141 AP
Frames of Experience: Visual Culture, Teenagers, and Identity

Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields

of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the
film its true means of exercise . . . the film makes the cult value recede into
the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but
also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The
public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.
-- Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,
1936
While Walter Benjamin recognized the growing apperception aligned
with the advent of film as a growing artistic medium in 1936, he very well
could have been writing about twenty-first century life. Specifically in the
more technologically developed nations of the world like the United States,
individuals are bombarded with images almost as if the majority of the
moments of their days comprise a film of existence. From advertisements to
image-centered social networking to television to cultural icons infused in
fashion, Americans often absentmindedly stroll through the film of life without
much attention to the visual culture that surrounds us. While adults may be
more apt to cast a critical eye based on maturity and experience, it is
teenagers who are perhaps the most profoundly affected by their
surroundings without even attending to how and why they are affected by the
images that create the frames of experience. Teenagers not only comprise a
significant consumer audience for advertisement and entertainment media
that create much of this film-like existence, but also comprise the faction of
humanity who is most searching for identity. According to Kopano Ratele &

Norman Duncans explanation of developmental psychologist Erik Eriksons

model, most teenagers fall into the identity versus role confusion category in
which teenagers question who am I? and seek an integrated image of
oneself as a unique person (134). While parents, formal education, and
other factors still significantly impact a teens search for identity, visual
culture is a growing factor. Because of this significant shift in culture, it is
important for secondary educators to heighten teens awareness of the vast
and rich visual components of their cinematic understanding of the world
around them and to assist in creating a public that is not absent-minded
examiners, but rather develop what Benjamin explains as a generation with
more acute presence of mind.
Before broaching the subject of the exploration of visual studies and
teen identity in the secondary curriculum, however, it is important to first
understand the importance of representation and culture in general. Stuart
Hall in his text Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices explains where representation and cultural identity intersect: To
put it simply, culture is about shared meanings (1). He continues describing
what Hall developed in his 1997 work Productions of Culture/Cultures of
Productions as the circuit of culture. The elements of an intricate web of
representation, regulation, consumption, production, and identity work
together to produce shared cultural values and meanings (1). Representation
in terms of language, images, and other shared concepts operate, then, as
systems or sets of practices. As a result, through this cultural circuit Hall
posits meanings are produced at several different sites and circulated
through several different processes or practices and he continues that this

meaning is what gives us a sense of our own identity, or who we are and
with whom we belongso it is tied up with the questions of how culture is
used to mark and maintain our identity within and difference between
groups (3). The implications of this practice in the visual cultural realm with
teens then is that with each interaction with images and even the social
interactions with which they take part, they are constructing conceptions of
shared meanings.
Take, for example, the typical constructs with which high school
students often associate themselves. By visually representing themselves as
Goth wearing black clothing, dark eye makeup and studded collars, they are
working with the inclusion/ otherness (or what Hall terms exploiting
difference) of identity in a visual manner. Stuart Hall explores this in a
wider scope of representation beyond language in terms of semiotics in his
chapter on The Work of Representation. He develops the idea of reading
cultural components like fashion treating these activities and objects as
signs, as a language through which meaning is communicated (Hall 36). He
further explains on page 37 in the semiotic approach, not only words and
images but objects themselves can function as signifiers in the production of
meaning, which is truly at the foundation of shared meaning. By raising
awareness of reading the signs and signifiers of culture, adolescents explore
meaningsmeanings which ultimately help them discover the integrated
image of self about which Erikson writes.
The need to engage 21st century American high school students in a
semiotic exploration of visual culture seems more pressing than ever with the

technological threads that weave in and through each part of a teens

existence and subsequent sense of identity. As the face of technology is
changing so too the face of adolescence is changing. In Journalism 2.0,
Francis Pisanis words clarify this: change comes quickly among the younger
generation of users, and a lot more slowly for us (older generations). . .
(youth are) using the Web in ways we can hardly imagine, and if we want to
remain significant for them, we need to understand how. Yet news
organizations have been all too slow to notice movement in places that are
away from what has been their center (Briggs par. 3). Even though Pisanis
concerned are rooted in journalism, the same can apply to educators.
Teachers are often too slow to move with incipient trends that instead must
embrace.
Henry Jenkins theories of media and cultural convergence perhaps
best highlight the shift in the sort of digital renaissance that is taking place.
In his Convergence? I Diverge, Jenkins explains, We are living in an age
when changes in communications, storytelling and information technologies
are reshaping almost every aspect of contemporary life -- including how we
create, consume, learn, and interact with each other(1). This reshaping of
contemporary life is truly relevant to students of today as they are
entrenched in youth cultures in cyberspace through social networks like
Myspace, Facebook or Nings where they can virtually see one anothers
lives through posted photos, album covers of favorite bands, favorite
YouTube, movie, or television clips, or newest fashion trends. They send
photos and video messages via cell phone. They podcast their assignments
for class. They shop online. They reproduce images that splice together to

form their own movie they wish to portray to others. They represent
themselves as avatars with alternative features and personalities. This
reproducibility of images coupled with convergence of the media through
which they are shared call for the necessity of 21 st century teens to be
educated that they are not only producing these images but at the same time
are most certainly the market for the producers of the images and thus
spawn most of what they consume in a cyclical wayagain, education is key
in raising awareness of the cycle and its implications.
Inextricably linked to convergence trends is the concept of internet
media, an area essential to the adolescent experience. In Addressing Media,
W.T.J Mitchell explores just how much personal identity is tied to the internet.
On page 203 he states that the environment of the internet is where images
live and where the personas and avatars roam. While students create
digital versions or avatars of themselves, they are able to change their
clothing, their waist size, their facial features and their personalities to fit a
conception of themselves (210). In terms of convergence, they can liken
themselves to their favorite stars, wear their favorite Coco Channel bag, and
tap into other forms of media outside of their daily reality. Just as Jenkins
discusses the importance of the intersection of different forms of media and
the subsequent space of possibility, so Mitchell discusses the landscape
outside of the conception of normal perception of identity. By understanding
awareness of the images in the circuit of culture in forming identity mixed
with what they do not see it creates a fuller picture of their struggle to see
what Erikson describes as an integrated conception of self.

In terms of the paradox of awareness/unawareness, another reason to

heighten consciousness of teenagers is that they do not necessarily see a
variety of signs/signifiers amidst the thousands of images but rather may
focus on only those necessary or comfortable. In The Object Stares Back,
James Elkins brings about the notion of being fixated on so many images
because we as humans often overlook others. He writes there are things we
dont see, even when we are looking straight at them, and other things we
stare at obsessively, so that we are blind to everything else (12). It is the job
of educators to build a level of awareness of what isnt there by pointing to
new ways of looking. Adolescents are predisposed to an inherent fixedness
merely on the self and their own needs, and to help bring them some this
Elkins validates the idea of studying visual culture when he writes thinking
about things that are hard to see also shows us how we ordinarily see (Elkins
12). Herein lays yet another justification for addressing visual culture with
teens. To create a generation of learners who are sentient enough to evaluate
and reevaluate their ordinary ways of seeing is essential in not only their
experience of understanding self, but also their understanding of world.
After understanding the changing trends and issues in forming an
identity in the cinematic moments of a teen, the questions of how and where
to address visual culture lays unexplored. W.T.J. Mitchell conjures just this in
his idea of interdiscipline in his book What do Pictures Want? when he writes
visual studies is not merely an indiscipline or dangerous supplement to the
traditional vision-oriented disciplines, but an interdiscipline that draws on
their resources and those of other disciplines to construct a new and
distinctive object of research. He continues explaining that visual studies

may send us back to the traditional disciplines of the humanities and social
sciences with fresh eyes, new questions, and open minds (356). While
Mitchell is a proponent of visual studies in early undergraduate university
levels with visions of potential for research, this should start much sooner,
while teenagers are forming their identity. Beyond a divergent exploration in
the academic realm, including visual studies in an interdisciplinary manner at
the high school level taps into all students, not only those college-bound. In
encouraging a consciousness in the realm of visuality, the consciousness will
transfer into other realms beyond identity and into critical-thinking adults as
they experience what Mitchell explains as moments of turbulence at the
inner and outer borders of established disciplines (358).
By working the visual studies into curriculum mapping in a crossdisciplinary manner, there would then exist more spaces for this chaos he
wishes to create. The potential is vast and exciting. In his earlier article
Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture, Mitchell explains, for example,
Literary history has always been necessarily more than a history of works of
literary art. It has always had to address the whole field of language and
verbal expression as a place in which the entire sensorium, most notable the
visual, is engaged. . . There is no way, in short, to keep visuality and visual
images out of the study of language and literature (3). It is undeniable that
the humanities are fit perfectly for this for sure, but while visuality is explored
in formal ways in art and humanities classes, a study of visual studies should
instead be taught across disciplines. Imagine science courses exploring the
growing visual intersection of art and science or math studying the geometric
art of the Moorish culture in Spanish history or an economics class using

visual cultural studies to deepen their understanding of the systems at the

foundation of the economy. Teaching through the lens of visual studies
outside of these fixed classes is just the response for the myopia of most
secondary curriculum and at the same time students will gain a with-it-ness
essential to an integrated self to deal specifically with not only the
technology and images surrounding them but also the underlying structures
involved in the visual circuit of culture.
Sturken and Cartwright in Practices of Looking explore the underlying
structures, specifically that of power. They write the desires that spectators
have in looking and being looked at are caught up in relationships of power.
Traditionally, this meant that the spectator was always perceived to have
more power than the object of the gaze (87). It is precisely structures like
this that drive the film of life. Students must know how these function, but
even more importantly, it is the educators job to give them the discourse as
Foucault terms as broad social domains that define particular forms of
knowledge and change from any given time period and social contents to one
another (Sturken and Cartwright 88). Providing a discourse with which to
discuss visual culture like Halls ideas of images/signifiers., it thus gives teens
the power to create their identity by allowing them to understand not to
perpetuate the power relationship, but rather balance the power. This
delicate balance in turn helps teens understand that every moment they
experience, they interpret what Hall refers to as the wider realm of social
ideologythe general beliefs, conceptual frameworks and value systems of
society (39). Furthermore because those systems are constantly morphing, it
is imperative to embrace what Hall explains:

Codes are more like social conventions than like fixed laws or
unbreakable rules. As meanings shift and slide so inevitably the
codes of a culture imperceptibly change(. . .) The advantage of
language is that our thoughts about the world need not remain
exclusive to us, and silent. We can translate them into language,
make them speak through the use of signs which stand for them
(62).
In giving students a language, across disciplines and with a sense of
continuity, students ability to decode culture and morph with it will increase.
Walter Benjamin had foresight in the apperception of modern viewers
of film and in the case of modern culture, the silver screen of life. Through
interacting with and understanding signs/signifiers around them in a semiotic
way, students can engage in the circuit of culture. However, they must first
be taught how to heighten their awareness. The high school classroom
presents an appropriate and meaningful place to begin perception as it fits
logically in developmentally. In a changing world it is imperative to
understand the need for teaching visual studies in a cross-curricular way.
Benjamin discusses the film viewer when he writes the spectators egos are
built up through their illusory sense of owning the body on the film screen
(par. 8). Just so, an adolescents sense of self and identity will be built up as
they begin to own the images that comprise the body of their frames of
experience.

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Work Cited
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Era of Mechanical Reproduction.
1936. University of
California Los Angeles School of Theatre, Film and Television. February
2005. Web. 20
March 2008.
Briggs, Mark. Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrivea Digital Literacy
Guide for the
Information Age. Web 2.0. Ed. Jan Schaffer. February 2007. Web.
March 2008.
Duncan, Norman and Kopano Ratele. Social Psychology: Identities and
Relationships. New York:
Juta Company Limited, 2003. 231-245. Print.
Elkin, James. Introduction. The Object Stares Back: on the Nature of Seeing.
New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1996. 1-13. Print.
Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices. London: Sage
Publications, 1997. 1-24. Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence? I Diverge. Technology Review. Jun 2001. Web.
Mar 2008.
Mitchell, W.T.J. Addressing Media, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and
Loves of Images.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 201-212. Print.

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Mitchell, W. T. J. Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture, Art Bulletin, 78/4.

December 1995.
Web. March 2008.
Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge,
Practices of
Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
85-90. Print.