In today’s world, we are absolutely inundated with images.
In the context of the wide-branching web of technology, which connects one corner of the world with another, images offer a way to partake in experiences which we cannot personally have.
Yet images, in their direct simplicity and universality, turn individual experiences into callous, far-removed representations. Perhaps most relatable is the way they have defined our perception of Africa as an expanse of hungry, stick-thin children with pot-bellies, an image that the media has developed to be the identity of all Africans.
That is not to say that these images and pictures are telling blatant lies. On the contrary, it is their intention to be a snapshot of reality—to act as an objective witness of a particular person or thing in a particular place at a particular time. But as objective as they are believed to be, they are not. Images do not capture the whole picture, nor do they tell the whole story. Elements of an environment are cropped away and left out by the limited aperture of the camera, and these environments come to be defined by only what is retained in the final image.
As an intermediate between textual representation and reality, images do not offer the imaginative space which pure writing offers, nor do they allow us to experience the immediacy and rawness of emotion which reality offers. Images lack a space for personal, creative engagement.
Our obsession with the visual has led to a crippling dependency on images. We often treat pictures not only as mere depictions of reality, but as squatters within the space of reality. We rely on them as our central means of experiencing that which is real, allowing them to shape our experience and understanding of reality, unwittingly forgetting to remember that they are only representations of reality. For those of us (especially in developed countries) deeply entangled in the deceptive web of media, images have come to be reality itself.
The problem with this shift is that the incredible saturation of images in our world is causing us to lose our flexibility: the muscles of our imagination merely atrophy as long as we continue to define our real experiences through images. This loss of flexibility, resulting from our reliance on the visual as our primary means of experiencing reality, is pertinent to the creation of distinct identities—categories of identity shaped by and resulting from our dependency on images and appearances.
As a Chinese American, I am speaking in particular to the Asian identity within the realms of film and theater: two industries in the arts most directly based on image (as opposed to music or painting, for instance).
Statistics have shown that even as Hollywood has begun diversifying by casting increasing numbers of Hispanics or blacks, Asians have seen no such change. The image of an Asian person, and the stereotypic baggage that it carries with it, has limited their ability to be cast into ethnically non-Asian roles. An Asian actor consistently gets cast only in Asian roles.
This inability to diversify and flex ethnic divisions is no recent phenomenon. In the 1965 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello, British actor Lawrence Olivier wore blackface in order to visually portray the part of the Moor of Venice. Furthermore, fast-forward to the 2012 film Cloud Atlas, where Jim Sturgess played the role of Asian male Hae-Joo Chang. Our heavy reliance on the visual as the principal means of defining identity and experience has allowed us little room to stretch boundaries. We are confined by our desire to create images which are reality.
As we are constantly surrounded by images, our identification with the visual as the definition of identity comes as no surprise. Yet, even though we are increasingly connected with the corners of the world, technology has ironically also served to enhance divisions, as individuals come to be defined under an umbrella, not able to be liberated through imagination, but only represented by a singular image.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.