Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Papers at Anti Essays

Some time ago our culture realized that our eyes are much quicker at processing images than they do words. This realization has saved many from countless hours of paying attention to words and to then having to
interpret such words. After all, “a picture is worth a thousand words” (Arlen, 1067-1). Some time ago the film industries realized that if they could take a thousand words and turn it into a single picture, perhaps even a motion picture, and distribute it on a massive scale, countless individuals would tune in to view it. And so it began, “The Tyranny of the Visual”, as Michael J. Arlen so delicately put it. It seems people are no longer interested in the long, romantic soliloquies of the Shakespearian era, but rather they want fun, adventure, pretty lights, bright colours, dark villains (preferably with horns), etc. But, most importantly, no one wants to think when they sit down to be entertained; they don’t want to interpret and rate the believability of any one picture, thus, the assumption is made that the work must be accurate with history, literature, or just life in general. And so, it is these assumptions that are responsible for the intellectual depletion of recent culture.
Though visual effects began as an intriguing new medium, it has somehow monopolized into a culture with little or no verbal intellect. It is so easy to be dazzled by flashy images, which either take us to a happier place or remind us that our own lives are not all that bad, that we rarely bother to weigh the quality of the information being conveyed. Take for instance the film, Zoolander, which actually came with a recommendation to set your brain aside for the duration of the film. The film constituted of a harebrained male model (Derek Zoolander) out to save the Malaysian president from an assassination plot by the corrupt model industry. To demonstrate: after carefully securing the computer with all the information that would provide all the evidence necessary...