Chapter 10 of Marita Strunken’s Practices of Looking dealt primarily with how visual culture is circulated throughout the world. Chapter 10 was really interesting because it weighs the positives and negatives of mainstream visual culture due to the globalization of certain technologies. The thesis of this chapter is that the global distribution of images is mainly done through satellite or web technologies. These technologies have increased the magnitude, readability and distance of global circulation of visual culture.
One thing that I found interesting was how the chapter began by returning to the very beginning of image reproduction. The section began by teaching about wood block painting, and silk screening around 100 BC. In China, woodblock paintings had certain innovations that allowed them to be mass reproduced. This reproduction was only facilitated by the Gutenberg system in later years. I found this interesting because the Gutenberg system was discussed before in class, and how truly innovating it was. Although it seems quite simple (the use of stamps to increase the scale of mass circulation), with the increase of
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The idea of reality TV, sitcoms, fashion, and movies of certain cultures spreading across the entire world is an amazing thing. You don't realize until it becomes formally stated, but this happens virtually everywhere now due to mass globalization a visual culture. Some of my foreign friends often tell me that they learned English partly from watching American sitcom such as Friends, or American Dad. Some cultures have also adopted others mashing them together and bonding them in someway. For example, anime and manga have become so widespread in the United States that they are becoming a genre of their own to stand amongst our traditional film genres. In Asia, certain western fashion have become popular because they stray from the norms seen in their native