Response to "The Sticky Embrace..."

            In her article “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty”, Anne Francis Wysocki attempts to show readers the effectiveness of visual objects in readings and how they can portray objects certain ways (in this case beauty) depending on how they are used. She uses many different visual techniques to help explain this.

            This article is similar to Bernhardt’s article “Seeing the Text”. Both writers use a lot of images to help prove their point. In both articles they discuss the idea of beauty and how different people see beauty differently. The differences between the two articles are mainly the ages of the images used and everything that comes with this time difference (social ideas of beauty, social portrayal of women, etc.).

            Overall I enjoyed this article. The immense amount of visual techniques used were interesting, although at times it felt a little overwhelming. It was definitely a different kind of article and really got me thinking about how one could use visual techniques to alter the light an idea is put into. I think Wysocki did a great job using all those visuals though.

Before You Read

            The ad I found gives me contrary feelings due to the picture itself. While I like the message (don’t talk on the phone and drive), the particular image is kind of disturbing, and mildly graphic:

http://goo.gl/A6ick

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

2.)

            Wysocki sets up the text visually for me as a reader using very bold tactics. First thing I saw was the ad on page 79. Then I turned the page to see bold text, lines across the page, and another full picture. I think Wysocki sets up the text using a very in-your-face method, not really low-visual text. It seems as if Wysocki is going too far visually, but at the same time it still helps me as a reader understand what is going on and helps me understand her ideas.

3.)

            The Peek ad does work for me as a consumer. I do not necessarily want to buy the book because of it, but I do want to know more about it. I think this is mainly because, as a male, the basically naked woman is an obvious attracter of attention. And that image was the first thing I saw when I opened the book to this article.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

2.)

            Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I do think some things are inherently beautiful but at the same time I do not think that “the beautiful is that which pleases universally”. I think that when it comes to finding beauty in other humans that it is all subjective. Yes, social forces do play a role, but how big of a role, if any, depends on the person and how susceptible they are to being influenced by outside sources. When it comes to things that I would say are inherently beautiful, I think that these things are all based on nature, such as Niagara Falls and national parks. I think these things are inherently beautiful because of the ‘awe-factor’ that they have.

Meta Moment

            This statement applies to Wysocki’s article because the reader does not expect all these visual objects being used in a typical article (pictures, highlighting, other graphics, etc.) therefore she pushes the conventions and expectations, but it also works to help her ideas. The charts/graphics used help convey her message in a logical manner and I think that this is what makes the visuals effective.