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Visual Rhetoric - Visual Culture - Pedagogy
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The viewer's complicity
I really enjoyed your post, Dave, and am glad you were able to turn the Alamo Drafthouse's prosciutto-covered melon into such delicious blog-fodder. I do see your point (and Shaftesbury's): the act of viewing implies some complicity. (Even if you don't approve of Snooki, by watching her you still contribute to a televisoin market driven by Snookis.)
I wonder, though, how you'd read the news footage of the Vietnam War along these lines? People tend to explain resistance to the Vietnam War as coming in part from footage of the dead Vietnam soliders. Is this an example of how, say, Rue's sad death invited rebellion on the part of the outlying Panem districts against the Capital? Or does this demonstrate that action only is possible through an identification with the viewed subject? Is Kony 2012 an example of our failed sympathy?