Manipulation through the aid of Images

Elena pean

We have the demonstration everyday on our dystopian Tele-screen where we see multiple
and various images, small or large in dimensions, with an incredible palette of colors and
containing several shocking items more or less trained on our eyes; a demonstration that shows
how much people want to see images than to pick up a book and read. This change happened
when books first became illustrated. The novel proper was no more on its own, but it contained
the images that illustrated the protagonists adventures. From then until now, there have been
only a few steps away for the image to dominate the book.
In paintings, people would understand the story from a single view or from multiple
points of view. Talking about books, people would have to spend days to read it and another row
of days to dig its metaphorical symbols (if any) out. That must be why, and with a little help from
the illustration industries, people began to treasure the images, being captivating, easy to
decipher and training the imagination of men and women. This cult of the image has spread
rapidly throughout Europe, from Great Britain (having the first illustrated adventure books) until
Germany, France, and most notably in America, where even the painted history of the Native
American promoted in a similar way the use of images rather than texts.
We remain in America because here there have been many ways and various kinds of
promoting the images, and we have the pamphlet journals industry, the comic book industry
(here we can remember the Pop in visual arts, like in the case of Roy Lichtenstein, Richard
Hamilton), American movie industry (this one can be remembered as the most powerful
promoter of images), commercials/advertisements industry (here Andy Warhol can be noted for
his Campbell Soup Cans), and also the image manipulation industry; all these elements are what
dominates us nowadays.
Politics, very interesting and training for specialized people, but for this essay this
specialty is mentioned here for the journals that circulated from the 19 th and 20th century, but also
nowadays where the predominant political figures are satirized and criticize in a caricatured style
through over exaggeration. These images get published in thousands of issues monthly or
annually all over the American continent, and in this way the image gets promoted firstly and the
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text secondly. It seems that the text proper only has explicative properties rather than narrative
for the event in question; it has the property only to train the reader into focusing on the
criticized political figure. The text is just another way to criticize, to exaggerate the defects one
has. Dont skip the journals of today, be it pamphlets, tabloids or everyday issues. Have you ever
noticed an entire page being dedicated for an adolescent girl, or an accident, or to an event that is
going to take place at the House of Palace? Or to a perfume? Or, more recently, in many women
magazines there are two pages dedicated for a commercial spot that takes even the other pages? I
will discuss this element when well get to the commercial/advertisement industry.
The comic book industry has exploded between 1980s-1990s when not only the
American ones became great hits, but also the Japanese animes that were imported and translated
at that time. The animes had a very good effect on the creative artists of cartoons on both sides. I
can tell that the East (Japan) and the West (America) have united in soul and purpose and created
the most long lived and loved cartoons ever in the world; examples are: Batman, Superman,
Spiderman etc. (from Americas part) and Transformers, Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto
etc. (from Japans part). Together rolling with the cartoons were the comic books. Here is a little
secret that only a great fan will share with you: in America you first have the serial/the movie
and only afterwards the comic book; in Japan, the manga (the equivalent comic books) comes
first and only then the serial/the movie. Certainly, the novels of today have been replaced by
comic books; but for the manga and comic books, the text survives together with the image,
because the two elements cannot be separated. More precisely, the two dont have any meaning
one without the other; the image shows the action while the text offers the dialogues and the
narrative.
Together with the children industry in came that for adults; and these are the movies.
These American movies have played a tremendous role in promoting the image and not the book.
Movies and cartoons differ only by the element of age; there are a few exceptions in the case
of Betty Boop and Tom & Jerry, where the first appeared in 1930s and the latter in 1940s. It
seems that in the 1950s people preferred the television, which was transmitting narratives in
images, have launched the American movies (be it Western, historical, contemporary, or action,
adventure, fantasy) to an explosive start. It seems that even the invention of the first filming
camera had influenced the world in taking the path to image. Moreover, because of these
inventions, new jobs have sprung; the following are just a few examples: directors, actors, staff,
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reporters, cameramen and news presenters. Moreover again, because of the invention of the
filming camera many other shows have happened, including those with various themes just like
the historical or mystery solving documentaries, Aunt Jenimas cooking show, even the lifetransmission of a sport event, the Oscar galleries, tabloid news, and many, many examples can fit
here. Lets image the world without these images. Well, even the verb image has the substance
of image in it.
We came to the commercial industry where we see and conclude that in the majority of
cases our time flows with commercials, which in their turn are persuasive. The advertisements
are not only on television, or how I like to call them, on the Tele-screen (because I dont know if
you have ever noticed it but our world starts to look like Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451),
but they can be seen on the streets and wherever you look. The commercials are, in most frequent
of cases, posted on buildings, or they are framed between green or grey ironed-huge-things
positioned on every land in Romania where friendly people are advised to Leave your
commercial here.
Other mentions are the magazines spots or in the bus itself where you can see them right
in front of you. You briefly read it or look at it and come back to reality. Even in some bus there
are small screens, similar to the Tele-screens, mounted on one or two of the orange bars that you
hold on during travel, where they are rolling about automobiles, universities, photography
courses, restaurants, and many, many things; a defects it is their unmentioned availability. Maybe
the advertisement was posted three months ago and it is not available anymore, but the
commercial keeps on going.
Behind these industries there are conducted many experiments and scientifical research
through which the producers want to know and to be a step ahead of what the clients desire about
a specific product. These conducted researches have a malefic nature, though, of marketing kind,
through which some elements, some tricks or techniques are modeled out in order to captivate a
persons eyes, to attract him or she on the level of the vision and of mind, and (its a very bad
word but a truthful one nonetheless) to hypnotize the person to buy that certain product from
that respective organization.
There are only a few of these marketing techniques known in this world and we all are
familiarized with them; only that we dont notice them at first. A prime techniques identified is
the color of the product. It has been demonstrated that the red color stimulates the appetite
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(Coca-Cola, McDonalds, other chocolate bars), while the blue color leads us to relaxation, to a
calm and refreshing state (Pepsi, other mineral or non-mineral water). In this way people can be
manipulated only by the color of the product and not through the satisfaction quality of that
product. A second technique is the logo, the brand of the organization. Most of the people from
today guide themselves through the brand inscribed on the product or the form of the logo in a
commercial. The Coca-Cola organization has won its success in offering people a refreshing
drink through the best-known shape of the bottle, the red brand with white signature-style words,
and various commercials showing different people savoring a Coca-Cola with family or friends.
From this we have a third technique through which the smiley faces or happy ones have
the power to attract people instantly; the latter will think that these people from the commercials
are always happy; and what other task in life than to be happy? A fourth and final marketing
technique which developed in our times, but too frequent, is repetition. Every time there is a
commercial on the television or radio etc. it keeps repeating an entire day that the human brain
will learn it and could even replicate it faster than the children could do with their homework at
school. Repetition is a mechanism of hypnosis, a manipulating mechanism in imprinting some
products in the human brain limiting their experiment with other rival products. Its good that
we are conscious enough and have yet the power to choose from other range of prod.. Dont
you think this instance looks similarly to a scene from Fight Club? Where the Narrator (his name
remains unknown throughout the novel, so we will let this role be spelled with capital N) had to
buy a sofa but he was wondering which one? But those many sofas on the market are all the
same, even if it is from IKEA or Dedeman, or Baumax, every one last of them are the same, only
the color differs. The Narrator picks a yellow-cornflake like one, but even that color must be
hanging in someone elses apartment.
Manipulation through the use of images appears in another industry, a more prosperous
one than the ones discussed above, and that is the photographic industry. There have been
discovered and developed many and various computer programs that have the power to change
everything within that image, as are: the colors, the contrast, the selected elements moved and
positioned somewhere else within the image; and even more: reshaping and amalgamating it
with other visual Medias. All of these have lead to falsification, have lead to manipulation in
judicial criminal cases, all of these have lead to people proving the existence of aliens (I dont
say they dont exist, but the way some people ardently wants to prove their existence only prove
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that their insistence is annoying); even scientists who wants to show the public new planets use
to manipulate images captured in space only to modify their color (this is made possible by the
NASA artist, a person and a responsible job in colorizing the new discovered heavenly bodies);
and, why not? Teenagers today and the pamphleteers manipulate images, making them more
caricatural, sharing them on different social platforms or transforming them in memes or
demotivationals.
All of these industries enumerated and discussed above have to do with images and with
the power of manipulating them for their own gain every time without people noticing it. Similar
to an organization that puts down its tasks to secure its success, the people working in the
television or in the commercial and the photographic industry delimits its clientele (as we have
seen in the marketing techniques section) who they wait just two important elements from their
subjects: the clients should be loyal and trusty in the products they receive, and the clients should
watch (on television, for example) them non-stop. From this point on the television has become
corrupted (manipulative seduction), the images have become extremely shocking; for children,
they have become incredibly upsetting and frightening; here we can trace down another
marketing technique where there has been demonstrated that if an image is shocking, it can be
easily remembered And the book regains its long lost territory.
In the last decades, even in the times of the Two Great World Wars, the books didnt stop
being written, not even in times of the great image explosion. Some people prefer the calmness
around a book than the rapid fast-trotting rhythm of the television (tele-image); some prefer his
or her own imagination than anothers imagination (the illustrators, for example). That is why
books have become and are seen by many as a relaxing refuge from a hard day at work. Even if
the computer or the laptop have replaced television, or the smartphone have replaced them all
together, the books place is somewhere in a special hidden room. Even if there are people that
exercise their manipulative force even in the book industry, there is a great difference between
the two elements: a book, even if it had attracted you somehow (through its color, shape, title,
etc.) it can make you love and calm yourself through its content; while an image, even if it is in
no way manipulative, it can make you sad or happy and thats it. It is said that an image produces
a thousand words, but only if youre a critic enough to find even its most hidden symbols.