Snapchat “Sight”: A Feminist Critique of Remediation in Snapchat Lenses

My second Box Logic Remediation project is a video piece called Snapchat “Sight”: A Feminist Critique of Remediation in Snapchat Lenses.

 

Statement of Goals and Choices

1. What, specifically, is this piece trying to accomplish–above and beyond satisfying the basic requirements outlined in the description and objectives? In other words, what work does, or might, this piece do? For whom? In what contexts?

From the beginning of the class, I found the idea of remediation fascinating, particularly because of Bolter and Grusin’s emphasis on feminist scholarship in remediation and the fact that, as Berger pointed out long before the creation of Snapchat, the male gaze is a lens through which all women see themselves and are seen. I saw in Snapchat (a platform I use for fun and communication) a way to show that gaze and the ways it remediates my appearance…and as I explored more (through Box Logic Notes and my experimentation) I saw the ways the gaze encouraged me to remediate myself, posing and playing up the very features it “wants” to see.

My goal for this piece was to combine this visual research evidence and scholarly literature connections to show the gendered gaze I found in Snapchat’s lenses. Snapchat is a relatively new, unstudied medium, and because its primary users are teenagers, I felt it was vital to include some of the psychological and medical research about the potentially harmful effects of social media and photo editing. I envisioned the final piece as something like an online TED Talk – a crafted argument in long form, highly visual, and meant to be consumed (like Snapchat photos) on a screen. It’s scholarly in context (which is actually why I included any text at all), but it would be relatively easy to adapt to a more general audience by tweaking the ways I explain remediation and re-organizing the piece so those scholarly connections are incorporated throughout the image presentation.

 

2. What specific rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices did you make in service of accomplishing the goal(s) articulated above? Catalog, as well, choices that you might not have consciously made, those that were made for you when you opted to work with certain genres, materials, and technologies.

I chose to create a video because I needed a primarily visual form, and because of all the new media technologies we’ve experimented with this semester, video is the medium I’m least comfortable with. It felt more risky, but I knew being able to superimpose visual and audio explanation would pay off and create a more immersive experience. I wanted to include as many of my images as possible as a kind of running visual argument. They images are presented as counterparts to different scholarship and ideas, and with only a few exceptions, I didn’t choose to comment on individual images. I think they, particularly in an amalgam of hundreds, speak for themselves in a way that allows the viewer to see my points and draw their own conclusions (though of course, I’m guiding them to a set of conclusions by the evidence I’ve chosen).

I used four images per slide in most sections. This was to create visual consistency and maximize size (making sure each image was large enough to see) while including as many images as possible (of the almost 800 total images, which I realized early on would take over 13 minutes to show for one second each, one at a time).  I included a combination of cropped photos (to make the facial features more visible in a specific size bracket) and uncropped photos (to show visual cues of Snapchat, like the send arrow and editing bar…and to make certain images, like the highly sexualized ones at the end, stand out more to make a point about age and sexualization).

Because I used PowerPoint, and stuck to a relatively small set of layouts, the finished product looks polished and consistent. It also looks like a PowerPoint Presentation, which I think works fine for a scholarly audience, but to go more general, I’d want to play with. I also wasn’t able to achieve a rapid-fire effect, which I’d have liked to do, but just wasn’t practical for me flipping slides by hand in certain timing.

Rather than speaking from loose notes, I chose to read from a script, which, again, is relatively obvious to the audience. It doesn’t sound as approachable or pleasant as an off-the-cuff conversation, but then again, I don’t have many spontaneous conversations about remediation scholarship. I was able to articulate what I wanted and make the points I needed to make, which for an argument, is essential. I also made the conscious choice to screen-record with a running voice-over, knowing that, while I’d likely make and correct a verbal mistake or two, the end product wouldn’t have that annoying start/stop sound of recorded clips that have been edited together or inserted into individual PowerPoint slides.

 

3. Why did you end up pursuing this plan as opposed to the others you came up with? How did the various choices listed above allow you to accomplish things that other sets or combinations of choices would not have?

This end product is close to my initial vision, with a few changes. After experimenting, I chose to use voice-over, rather than video or webcam. I wanted to eliminate the distraction of my face in the corner of the screen, forcing the viewer to focus exclusively on the images (and text) I’ve arranged.

My initial plan was to incorporate at least one section of video with myself speaking in a Snapchat filter that raised my vocal pitch, pointing out that element as another way many lenses feminize/infantilize the user. I ultimately cut this option and this section of argument for the sake of time – my end product came in at 15 minutes (the max for Screencast-o-Matic), and I really didn’t want it any longer than that for fear it would become more lecture and less likely someone would stick with it. If I were to adapt this piece for an online scholarly journal like Kairos, I’d want to expand the research and integrate it more seamlessly, and I’d definitely add video elements, like me explaining the effects of eye size in a filter that changes eye size. (In that scenario there are several considerations, like daily filter unpredictability, the potential distraction of voice-changing filters, and the fact that there’s no way to seamlessly apply multiple Snapchat lenses to an ongoing video recording (even on a phone)…but I do think it could be worth the extra work.)

And it’s completely impractical, but it would be an awfully fun thing to create a performance art piece that included me, sans makeup, surrounded by highly filtered and sexualized images of myself…a completely visual argument that attempted to capture the spirit of this line of experimentation…

 

4. List all the actors (human and non-human) that played a role in helping you accomplish this task: scholars, tools, technologies, individuals, resources. This is like a rolling credits for your project.

Obviously, my research is heavily based on the work of Bolter and Grusin, as well John Berger, and a host of feminist theorists and researchers (Haraway, boyd, Butler, and others). Other scholars are cited throughout and listed in the Works Cited slides at the end of my video. Technologies involved in my initial research were my phone, my HP laptop and Lenovo desktop, Gardner-Webb Dover Library’s online database, Snapchat, Facetune, Google, WordPress, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Google Photos. To create the video itself, I used PowerPoint and Screencast-o-Matic, then uploaded to YouTube and edited the captions created automatically through their transcription service. (This is something that, prior to our study of accessibility, I’d never have thought to do, and I’m grateful to have had my able privilege challenged so I can start to think about providing a high level of access ahead of time.) I am also grateful for guidance of Dr. Buckner, who introduced us to some amazing scholars and challenged us to play with unfamiliar technologies, and for the ongoing encouragement of my classmates, friends, and family.

 

Literacy Narrative

 

 

Pedagogy

I created and captioned this literacy narrative over the last two weeks (transcript at the end of this post). I enjoyed exploring once again the idea that writing down words in a digital document or by hand in a notebook isn’t the only way to create and consume texts. It’s an idea that we discussed a lot early in our grad school program, and one that’s broadened my view of English Studies in general and composition in particular.

With last week’s emphasis on pedagogy, what I keep thinking about are how I’d teach this sort of assignment. For years, I figured I hadn’t studied education as an undergrad, so teaching writing was off the table. That’s silly, of course, and so are lots of the ways we self-categorize and self-limit. But I’m thinking about it now, especially ways

What’s struck me most, I think, are all the ways we seem to have to break down writing into systematic forms in order to teach and assess them. I read through the WPA Outcomes for first year composition students, and there are so many elements I wouldn’t have thought of including as a teacher! Obviously, I’m able to craft all kinds of texts like these – stories, arguments, research pieces, more creative things – but it’s been SO long since my early composition classes that I don’t think about writing in the same systematic way I once did. And I couldn’t have told you what parataxis and hypotaxis are until reading Constance Hale’s article explaining them last week…

A literacy narrative strikes me as a really accessible and adaptable project. I’d be interested to approach it from a soundwriting perspective, rather than (as I did above) a more heavily visual one:

A parent reading Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, one of my favorite books from childhood.

Sounds of the woods – birds, squirrels crunching through leaves, occasional breeze.

Marker scribbling on paper; a child reading aloud from a self-created book.

Children laughing, directing each other in imaginative games.

Laptop keys clicking.

A teacher explaining internal citations.

Silence.

A parent reading again, a different book this time.

Laughter; singing; hammering, shovel hitting dirt.

When thinking about how to practically teach some of these abstract concepts, I had an idea for a lesson plan to help explain parataxis, hypotaxis, and how to create rhythm through writing. Instruments would be helpful, but not essential. I’d bring in a few short pieces of writing –

• one illustrating parataxis, with shorter, abrupt sentences and a more staccato feel (what Hale describes as juxtaposition that “holds disparate elements in diffident equilibrium”);
• one with longer, more complex sentences that, with hypotaxis, builds concepts on concepts (which Hale says “creat[es] stronger pauses, letting subordinate conjunctions put twists and turns into a sentence, allowing not just juxtaposition but transition“);
• and ideally, a piece that blends the two, with varying sentence structures and lengths that build a musical rhythm.

I’d have groups of students read each piece and tap out the rhythm (or the overall feel of the rhythm) on an instrument or tabletop, and talk about the mood or tone it creates.

This type of exercise would work well with an assignment like a literacy narrative, because students could then go back through drafts and attempt to create rhythm that would add to the meaning and feel of their story.

 

Multiliteracies and Accessibility

Another thing I’ve had in mind these past few weeks are our readings on multiliteracies and accessibility, causing me to check my privilege and my assumptions about what counts as literacy (again). I was especially challenged by Cynthia Selfe’s story about David John Damon, a brilliant, creative student who composed voraciously in ways not privileged by a traditional school environment.

My experience as a grad student at GWU has challenged me over and over to rethink ways to include students like Damon. However, this experience isn’t everyone’s. So many academic programs and social institutions continue, even in this age of digital literacy, to deny opportunities and agency to students who are less experienced with standard English or who, because of cultural limitations or disabilities, access texts differently. What’s been reinforced for me is that if texts or assignments don’t work as is for Damon, for Kirsten who accesses most texts visually (“Do You Hear What I Hear?”), or for the blind professor who needs software programs that work with her screenreading software (Modalities in Motion), then they don’t work…and adjustments need to made.

It’s embarrassing, really, to look back at my own literacy history through these lenses. Growing up, I was so smug about being a good reader and writer…and I never thought until recently about how privileged a literacy background I had. We weren’t wealthy at all, but I was raised and taught by parents who spoke standard English. My mom brought my brothers and I to the public library every week, hauling home a mountain of books to read together. I was homeschooled and not allowed much screen time, so I created boredom-fueled stories, crafts, and games out in the woods. I learned academic writing with a personal tutor (my mom), who had time to challenge me to write better and better versions of sentences and paragraphs. In high school and college, teachers offered praise and encouragement; I wrote for all my classes without ever worrying what I created might be technically unsound or not sophisticated enough. And without disabilities, I never had the issues with accessing, understanding, or creating texts that so many other students have.

I was arrogant. I wasn’t just impatient when classmates read slowly or poorly in class – I rolled my eyes internally and assumed I was smarter than them…or at least way better at English. When I edited friends’ papers I wasn’t mean, but I definitely didn’t approach as a reader or with an assumption that there might be a reason why they expressed an idea as they did (rather than a “more correct” way). My husband is dyslexic; if I’d read his papers before meeting him I’d have assumed a lot of things about him that aren’t remotely true.

But.

I eventually learned. I met deaf students at Gardner-Webb who didn’t have the luxury of spacing out or even looking down to take notes during a lecture, because they’d miss what their ASL interpreter was saying. I met students who used audio software to read their textbooks and thought for the first time about how easy it was for me to skim-read a chapter in the caf, before class. I took notes in upper-level English courses for a classmate whose physical limitations meant she couldn’t write the way I did, and realized how long it would take her to write the same essays I could leave until the last minute.

As I look at teaching in the future, I’m trying to think ahead about accessibility, and how to create assignments that showcase different types of literacy and challenge students like me to understand the value of different modalities and different ways of speaking and writing.

And as Dr. B’s chapter shows, learning to see from new perspectives isn’t a destination I’ll ever reach, but an ongoing journey. And, just as I’ve learned that creation itself is necessary for me, learning and getting better about inclusion and accessibility is something I’m committed to continuing.

Literacy Narrative Transcript

0:00:00.100,0:00:07.060
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t
know how to read. My parents read to me a

0:00:07.060,0:00:13.179
ton when I was little, and my mom loves
to tell stories about when I was a baby

0:00:13.179,0:00:18.429
and a toddler and they were reading to
me, and they would get to a page and, you

0:00:18.429,0:00:22.720
know, nod off a little bit or skip a few
words. And I would always correct them

0:00:22.720,0:00:30.960
and go, “No, no, mommy, what it actually
says is…” I was a really early reader. I

0:00:30.960,0:00:38.170
always have had the ability to get lost
in a book. I still have that ability; it gets

0:00:38.170,0:00:45.250
me into trouble sometimes. But I was a
really imaginative kid and spent a lot

0:00:45.250,0:00:49.270
of time out in the woods creating
fantasy worlds and characters and

0:00:49.270,0:00:54.519
storylines, covering myself in moss,
apparently (not actually sure what that’s

0:00:54.519,0:00:59.859
about).
But creativity was a huge part of who I

0:00:59.859,0:01:06.640
was as a child. And as I got into high
school, I was a pretty awkward, sort of

0:01:06.640,0:01:15.130
nerdy teenager I still read a lot, but I
became a lot more conscious of – I mean I

0:01:15.130,0:01:19.720
guess as everybody does – what I should do
and what I should be reading what I

0:01:19.720,0:01:27.310
should be interested in. I got really
good at academic writing but I lost a

0:01:27.310,0:01:32.409
little bit of that sense of creativity
that had served me so well as a kid,

0:01:32.409,0:01:39.790
and that I had loved. I did well through
high school; I did well in college. I went

0:01:39.790,0:01:45.119
on and worked and there were a lot – there
was a lot of time in there where

0:01:45.119,0:01:50.409
creating – where literacy – wasn’t as huge a
part of my life as it had been when I

0:01:50.409,0:01:55.090
was younger. You know, I still read; I
still enjoyed TV shows with

0:01:55.090,0:02:02.799
good plot arcs and character development.
But I just was doing other things and

0:02:02.799,0:02:09.170
wasn’t focused on creating
and making some of these texts, and

0:02:09.170,0:02:14.070
ironically, it was having children that
kind of brought me back to that

0:02:14.070,0:02:20.760
childhood quality of composing. I have
two boys.

0:02:20.760,0:02:27.440
Their names are Liam and Rhys, and they

0:02:27.620,0:02:33.660
really helped me find that creative bit
of myself again, learning – or teaching

0:02:33.660,0:02:40.230
them, rather – to read and to write;
drawing with them, making things. It

0:02:40.230,0:02:47.340
reminded me how much I enjoy it and I
got back into photography. I’ve done a

0:02:47.340,0:02:54.990
lot more visual art and calligraphy. I’ve
made all kinds of random visual art

0:02:54.990,0:03:03.150
pieces, refinished furniture,
you name it. So they were – they

0:03:03.150,0:03:09.780
have been for me an excellent reminder
of the thing that inspired me in the

0:03:09.780,0:03:16.190
first place toward writing and toward
reading and toward creating. It was just,

0:03:16.190,0:03:24.239
you know, getting out there and not being
afraid of what what was expected, what

0:03:24.239,0:03:29.910
was the thing that I should do. And as
I’ve been a grad student that’s actually

0:03:29.910,0:03:36.590
served me really well. I presented
yesterday at an academic conference and

0:03:36.590,0:03:41.790
having a chance to do my own research
has felt like it’s come full circle, you

0:03:41.790,0:03:48.959
know. And I’m not covered in moss
I guess, but I’m doing something

0:03:48.959,0:03:55.260
that feels unique, and feels personal, and
feels meaningful. And I’m a part of a

0:03:55.260,0:04:02.600
community of scholars that I feel like I
have something to say to.

References

Buckner, Jennifer J. and Kirsten Daley. “Do You Hear What I Hear? A Hearing Teacher and a Deaf Student Negotiate Sound.” Soundwriting Pedagogies, edited by Danforth et. al., Computers and Composition Digital Press, 2018, https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/soundwriting/.

Hale, Constance. “There’s Parataxis, and Then There’s Hypotaxis.” Lingua Franca, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 August 2013, https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/08/07/parataxis-and-hypotaxis/.

Jackson, Taylor. “Creating Like a Child.” YouTube, 31 March 2019, https://youtu.be/kRKFgTETZuE.

Selfe, Cynthia. “Students Who Teach Us: A Case Study of a New Media Text Designer.” Writing New Media, edited by Wysocki et. al., Utah State Press, 2004, pp.43-66.

Yergeau, Melanie et. al. “Multimodality in Motion: Disability and Kairotic Spaces.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 18 (1), 2013, http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/18.1/coverweb/yergeau-et-al/index.html.

Remediation in Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette

I had a fantastic plan for this week’s post. I heard Hannah Gadsby, one of my favorite comedians and the artist behind the groundbreaking show Nanette, had created a two-part TV series about the intersection of art and feminism. Art history is a major theme in Nanette; Gadsby’s take on it has caused many people to reconsider their opinions of Picasso. She takes on the topic of nudes in art in Nakedy Nudes, created by the Australian Broadcast Company. I was out of town all weekend and excited to watch the two half-hour episodes (“Origin of the Ideal” and “The Male Gaze”) when I got home tonight, then look at and write about the similarities and differences with John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

Only one problem.

Nakedy Nudes is only available in Australia. I tried to buy it on iTunes….but you have to have Australian iTunes. I even looked in way sketchier places. Nope. (*I felt a great deal of annoyance at this discovery, followed by a great deal of American shame at feeling so entitled to this Australian show.)

It was disappointing, though, particularly because I feel certain Gadsby’s update has strong ties to Berger’s four part series and I was looking forward to seeing whether it’s actually a Berger update or just in a very similar vein. Since I didn’t have luck there, though, I’d like to look into Gadsby’s revisioning of art history and the genre of standup comedy in Nanette.

Nanette is an hour-long special on Netflix that is part standup comedy, part TED Talk (on the intersections feminism, queer identity, art history, comedy, and life in the #metoo era), and part church for those who identify deeply with Gadsby’s story. I’m not going to do it justice in a paragraph, obviousy. Among other things, Gadsby deconstructs:

• self-deprecating humor
  • “I built a career out of self-deprecating humor…And I don’t want to do that anymore. Because, do you understand…what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility. It’s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak. And I simply will not do that anymore. Not to myself or anybody who identifies with me: (Gadsby)
• the male gaze in art
  • “High art? I’m going to call it, guys: Bullshit… The history of western art is just the history of men painting women like they’re flesh vases for their dick flowers” (Gadsby).
• Van Gogh as the shining example of the tortured artist:
  • “[A man] came up to me after the show to give me his opinion. He said, “You shouldn’t take medication because you’re an artist. It’s important that you feel.” He said, “If Vincent van Gogh had have taken medication, we wouldn’t have the sunflowers.”…I said, “Good opinion, mate. Except that he did medicate. A lot. He self-medicated a lot. He drank a lot. He even nibbled on his own paints. Problem. And also, you know what else? He didn’t just paint sunflowers, he did quite a few portraits of psychiatrists. Not even random ones. Psychiatrists who were treating him. And medicating him. And there’s one particular portrait of one particular psychiatrist, and he’s holding… a foxglove. And that foxglove forms part of a medication that Van Gogh took for epilepsy. And…The derivative of the foxglove, if you overdose it a bit, you know what happens? You can experience the color yellow a little too intensely. So perhaps we have the sunflowers precisely because Van Gogh medicated” (Gadsby).
  • And artists are not these incredible, you know, mythical creatures that exist outside of the world. No, artists have always been very much part of the world, and very… very firmly attached to power” (Gadsby).
• Picasso’s place in the canon:
  • “I don’t like Picasso. I fucking hate him… And I know I should be more generous about him too because he suffered a mental illness…Picasso suffered the mental illness of misogyny…Is misogyny a mental illness? Yeah. Yeah, it is! Especially if you’re a heterosexual man. Because if you hate what you desire, do you know what that is? Fucking tense!” (Gadsby)
  • “He said, “Each time… I leave a woman, I should burn her. Destroy the woman, you destroy the past she represents.” Cool guy. The greatest artist of the twentieth century. Let’s make art great again, guys. Picasso fucked an underage girl. And that’s it for me. Not interested. “But cubism… We need it.” Marie-Thérèse Walter. She was 17 when they met. Underage. Legally underage. Picasso was 42, married, at the height of his career. Does it matter? Yeah. Yeah, it actually does. It does matter. But as Picasso said, no, it was perfect. I was in my prime, she was in her prime. I probably read that when I was 17. Do you know how grim that was? Oh, I’m in my prime! Oh, there is no view at my peak” (Gadsby).
  • “You’ve got to learn to separate the man from the art. Yeah, all right… Let’s give it a go. How about you take Picasso’s name off his little paintings and see how much his doodles are worth at auction? Fucking nothing! Nobody owns a circular Lego nude, they own a Picasso!” (Gadsby).
• Comedy tropes:
  • “Comedy is more used to throwaway jokes about priests being pedophiles and Trump grabbing the pussy. I don’t have time for that shit…Do you know who used to be an easy punch line? Monica Lewinsky. Maybe, if comedians had done their job properly, and made fun of the man who abused his power, then perhaps we might have had a middle-aged woman with an appropriate amount of experience in the White House, instead of, as we do, a man who openly admitted to sexually assaulting vulnerable young women because he could” (Gadsby).
• Our societal view of reputation:
  • “Do you know what should be the target of our jokes at the moment? Our obsession with reputation. We’re obsessed. We think reputation is more important than anything else, including humanity. And do you know who takes the mantle of this myopic adulation of reputation? Celebrities. And comedians are not immune. They’re all cut from the same cloth. Donald Trump, Pablo Picasso, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski. These men are not exceptions, they are the rule. And they are not individuals, they are our stories. And the moral of our story is, “We don’t give a shit. We don’t give a fuck about women or children. We only care about a man’s reputation.” What about his humanity? These men control our stories! And yet they have a diminishing connection to their own humanity, and we don’t seem to mind so long as they get to hold onto their precious reputation.

By conservative estimate, I have watched Nanette at least ten times. I watched it the day it appeared on Netflix and literally could not stop watching it. For weeks. And the side result of that is quotes from her show pop into my mind all the time, including during readings this semester. I’m actually kind of shocked it hasn’t come up yet in VT discussions. Two connections stood out to me particularly:

“Lorraine Gamman (1989, 12) has suggested that the female gaze can be distinguished from the male gaze by its multiplicity – so much so that it may not be appropriate to speak of the female gaze at all, but rather a series for looks from various perspectives” (Bolter and Grusin 84).

“Picasso said, “No! Run free! You can have all perspectives. That’s what we need. From above, from below, inside out, the sides. All the perspectives at once!” Thank you, Picasso. What a guy. What a hero. Thank you. But tell me, any of those perspectives a woman’s? No. Well, I’m not fucking interested. You just put a kaleidoscope filter on your cock. You’re still painting flesh vases for your dick flowers…
I want my story heard. Because, ironically, I believe Picasso was right. I believe we could paint a better world if we learned how to see it from all perspectives, as many perspectives as we possibly could. Because diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing. Picasso’s mistake was his arrogance. He assumed he could represent all of the perspectives. And our mistake was to invalidate the perspective of a 17-year-old girl, because we believed her potential was never going to equal his” (Gadsby).

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“The contemporary, technologically constructed body recalls and rivals earlier cultural versions of the body as a medium. The body as enhanced or distorted by medical and cosmetic technologies remediates the ostensibly less mediated bodies of earlier periods in Western culture” (Bolter and Grusin 238)

“Art history taught me there’s only ever been two types of women. A virgin or a whore… And I don’t fit very neatly into either of those categories…if you go into a gallery with ye olde paintings there, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that women have existed for a very long time. Longer than clothes…
Art history taught me, you know, historically, women didn’t have time for the thinking of the thoughts. They were too busy napping, naked, alone, in the forest. Even biologically… I don’t feel like I’m the same species. For a start, I’ve got a functioning skeletal system. If you go into the galleries, you see, if a woman’s not sporting a corset and/or a hymen, she just loses all structure…Another thing I do that’s not very ladylike is every day I seem to be able to finish the getting of the dressed. Every day! Not a problem. All the buttons, all the way up. I’m quite a vague and forgetful person, but… Seem to do it quite easily. Especially if I’m leaving the house to get my portrait painted” (Gadsby).

 

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So…what does all this have to do with the concept of remediation? In her work, I see Gadsby attempting to “refashion” comedy itself, as Bolter and Grusin say, “[in order] to answer the challenges of new media” (15). She changes the goal of her show from the standard “setup and…punch line” tension release to something totally new – “connection” (Gadsby).

During the set, Gadsby first tells, then remediates, two jokes she’s told in comedy shows for years. In the first joke, she gives her mother’s reaction to her coming out: “Oh Hannah. Why did you have to tell me that? That’s not something I need to know. I mean, what if I told you I was a murderer?”

Later, she returns to the story, saying “I feel like, in a comedy show, there’s no room for the best part of the story which is the ending. You know, in order to finish on a laugh, you know, you have to end with punch lines. Like, take my coming-out story, for example. The best part of that story is the fact that Mum and I have a wonderful relationship now…And what I had done, with that comedy show about coming out, was I froze an incredibly formative experience at its trauma point and I sealed it off into jokes. And that story became a routine, and through repetition, that joke version fused with my actual memory of what happened. But unfortunately that joke version was not nearly sophisticated enough to help me undo the damage done to me in reality” (Gadsby).

The second example is first presented as a self-deprecating story, in which Gadsby is mistaken for a man on a train platform by a man who, upon realizing she was a girl, stopped shoving her and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t hit women.” She quickly wraps up the story with a funny line: “Now I understand I have a responsibility to help lead people out of ignorance at every opportunity I can, but I left him there, people. Safety first” (Gadsby).

She returns to the story later in the show, though: “Do you remember that story about that young man who almost beat me up? It was a very funny story…I made a lot of people laugh about his ignorance, and the reason I could do that is because I’m very good at…controlling the tension. And I know how to balance that to get the laugh at the right place. But in order to balance the tension in the room with that story, I couldn’t tell that story as it actually happened. Because I couldn’t tell the part of the story where that man realized his mistake. And he came back. And he said, “Oh, no, I get it. You’re a lady faggot. I’m allowed to beat the shit out of you,” and he did” (Gadsby).

Now that I think about it, the real change to the story was in the first rewriting, right? She joke-i-fied two traumatic stories in order to deal with them and make people laugh. That, in itself, was a remediation, and it was done through a lens of cultural acceptability and lighthearted humor. In telling both stories as they actually happened, though, she peels off that lens and attempts to create more of the transparent immediacy that was lost in the previous versions.  Bolter and Grusin claim that “a transparent interface would be one that erases itself, so that the user is no longer aware of confronting a medium, but instead stands in an immediate relationship to the contents of that medium” (23-24). In this case, the contents are Gadsby herself – her story and her humanity. Removing all the filters she might have applied to herself and her work leaves a show that feels raw and intensely vulnerable. And it’s this raw, immediate vulnerabilty that facilitates the connection I and so many others have felt as we’ve watched.

Works Cited

Bolter, J.D., and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999.

Gadsby, Hannah. Nanette, 2018. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80233611?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Ca34811aad73dc1a94b8bbaec6566349ce03767a9%3Af31de4cdfa70881452dfe3e96737a5cf479e2c5c%2C%2C

Box Logic Notes 3

Down the FaceTune Rabbit Hole

The study linking negative effects of frequent selfie editing mentioned the ap FaceTune, which I wasn’t familiar with, so I watched a few tutorials, including this one for the app’s second iteration:

Check it out if you’d like to invest 30 minutes of your life in watching the person you see above decry several of FaceTune’s new features as “too fake” and read the word “vignette” as “vinegarette.”

FaceTune 2 is currently only available on iPhone, so I downloaded the (free) first version for Android to play around with. There are a lot fewer editing options, and it reminded me of an early Photoshop. The interface is intuitive and easy to master. You can smooth skin, whiten teeth, sharpen or blur features, adjust face shape, and add color tones (which I learned should be done VERY cautiously).

before

after

What got interesting was when I tried using FaceTune on filtered Snaps. The Snapchat lenses had already heavily altered the lighting, as well as my skin, eyes, makeup, and face shape, and I was able to make even more drastic changes by hand with FaceTune.

no filter

Snapchat filter

 

 

Results and Thoughts:

1. I completely understand how people’s self-esteem could plummet after using these platforms, especially FaceTune. The ability to zoom in, focus on, and fix the things I didn’t like about my face made me hyper-aware of them, and made it nearly impossible for me to take an unfiltered selfie I liked. Even things I’d never have thought about (like jaw shape, forehead wrinkles, and patchy eyebrow hairs) started to bother me.
2. A lot of questions about the nature of reality both in photos in general and on social media in particular. It was disturbingly easy to make myself look a WHOLE lot better. (Of course, what is better?)
3. I’ve gotten a lot better at posing over the weeks, and knowing what angles my face looks “best” from…at least in the world of filtered, online beauty. This has made me think about
4. After last week’s VT discussion, I’m thinking about the role of agency, and the ways in which taking control of one’s own body/appearance can be liberating and healthy. It can also conform entirely to misogynistic standards or go to an extreme. Plastic surgery can someone who’s born with a facial deformity feel more beautiful. It can also result in addiction, people who look like aliens, and botched surgeries…
5. I’m having to remind myself that what I love in pictures of myself is unbridled joy and connection with family and friends, not perfection based on some unattainable standard. And when this project is done, I’ll delete Facetune.

 

Remediation, chapter 5 – Digital Photography

• “The digital photographer, who captures images digitally, adds computer graphic elements to conventional photographic images, or combines two or more photographs digitally, still wants us to regard the result as part of the tradition of photography” (105).
• “If they could achieve perfect photorealism, then they could create “photographs” without natural light. An image could be synthesized to meet the viewer’s desire for
  immediacy without the need for the objects in the image to have existed or to have been together at any time, which was exactly the condition that Roland Barthes considered the definition of photography in Camera Lucida” (106).
• Digital technology may succeed–where combination printing and other analog techniques have not succeeded in the past–in shaking our culture’s faith in the transparency of the photograph. However, altered images become a problem only for those who regard photography as operating under the logic of transparency” (110).
• “digital techniques suggest a new way of understanding all photography” (110).
• ” A photograph may be either an expression of the desire for immediacy or a representation of that desire. The photograph that presents itself to be viewed without irony presses the desire for immediacy, while a photograph that calls attention to itself as a photograph becomes a representation of that desire” (110).

Reciprocal Remediation

Another thing I’m thinking about/questioning is the role of reciprocal remediation. As I went through this experiment, I realized I tend pose differently based on the filter. Unless I was making a conscious effort to switch up my facial expression (which I often did since, let’s face it, taking 30-40 selfies a day can get monotonous…and make you look like a self-involved crazy girl in the basement of Craig Hall), I maintained certain facial expressions for certain types of filters. Here’s what I mean:

When the filter is severe or mature, I maintain a certain look:

 

…when the filter is cutesy, I generally lean into that:

 

…simple, artsy filters call for a pensive expression that’s not trying too hard:

 

…sometimes, I am delighted in spite of myself:

 

…and for the ugly filters, I can let my hair down. I noticed early on that the sillier the filter, the more I delight in looking weird. I’m also less self-critical and more apt to smile (because I’m already obviously not taking myself seriously and it’s already filtered through a lens of irony:

 

 

Ways of Seeing

Jumping off the idea of reciprocal remediation, I can see (visually, even) the ways in which Snapchat corroborates Berger’s claim that women are sights.

I remediate my identity as I flip through these filters, daily; my expression changes as I see myself being seen in different roles:

I am a tragic ingenue:

 

I am a discourse scholar, aware and critical of these lenses:

 

I am just the most adorable little girl:

 

I am woman, sexy without having to try:

 

I am the funny girl:

 

I am a deep thinker:

 

I am an old lady and look gross in this non-smoothing lens so I’ll be silly to distract you:

 

It all makes me feel a little like Sandra Cisneros in “Eleven.”

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972.

Bolter, J.D., and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999.

“FaceTune 2 – REVIEW AND DEMO photo editing ap.” YouTube. Uploaded by Tashie Tinks, 25 April 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=629&v=QQXknTifT8c.

Solon, Olivia. “FaceTune is Conquering Instagram – But Does it Take Airbrushing too Far?” The Guardian, 9 March 2018,  https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/09/facetune-photoshopping-app-instagram-body-image-debate.

 

 

Box Logic Notes 2 – Remediation and Social Media Research

My first Box Logic piece addressed Snapchat filters, lenses that remediate the user’s face (or surroundings) in realtime. I’d like to continue down the Snapchat rabbit hole.

Snapchat’s main purpose for most users is communication and fun with friends. Its ethos, in general, seems to be somewhat in contrast with the world of filters, as many users thwart the expectation to look beautiful, making efforts to be intentionally self-deprecating…

(Stryker)

 

…clever and detached…

(Stryker)

(Stopera)

 

…or even purposely unattractive

(Bailey)

 

This last purpose is such a common trend I found a scholarly article about it. (More in the literature review below…)

And while there are Snapchat filters that recast the user as a less conventionally attractive person (or inanimate object)…

 

…the majority enhance the user’s appearance in traditionally feminine ways.

Snapchat filter

 

I’m also interested in Snapchat as a storytelling platform. Obviously, there’s an actual story section (in which people post sequential snaps and videos that appear for 24 hours):

#gardner-webb (Bailey)

(Bailey)

 

I see you, Gardner-Webb!

It’s also fully possible to create stories in single snaps.

(Stopera)

(Stopera)

 

So while lenses/filters are in interesting feature, they’re not a huge part of the platform, for a lot of users…and the ways users employ them as remediators is vastly different than the silly or ironic/”nailed it”/”FML” way others do.

(Stryker)

(Bailey)

---

Literature “review”

My last box logic post was more of an experiment than a research compendium. What follows here, though, are unpolished notes on the scholarly research I’ve found on the implications of the remediated self (via photo editing and social media):

Bolter and Grusin – Remediation

• “Computer-generated projective images are mathematically perfect, at least within the limits of computational error and the resolution of the pixelated screen….Of course, digital graphic perspective can be distorted too…” (26).
• human agency: involvement of programmers, languages, etc (27)
• “The photograph erases the human subject through the mechanics and chemistry of lens, shutter, and film. digital graphics erases the subject algorithmically through the mathematics of perspective and shading embodied in a program” (28)… *and lenses erase the subject by imposing a culturally constructed gaze
• “digital hypermedia seek the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness, a satiety of experience, which can be taken as reality” (53)
• “the aesthetic of the glance…makes the viewer aware of the process rather than just the product – both the process of creation and the process of viewing” (54).
• “Media are continually commenting on, reproducing, and replacing each other, and this process is integral to media” (55)
• “the goal of remediation is to refashion or rehabilitate other media. Furthermore, because all mediations are both real and mediations of the real, remediation can also be understood as a process of reforming reality as well” (56)
• “The cyberenthusiasts argue that in remediating older media the new media are accomplishing social change. The gesture of reform is ingrained in American culture, and this is perhaps why American culture takes so easily to strategies of rememdiation” (61).
• “Its advocates see such a strategy ‘as a way to improve on the ‘flawed’ design in ordinary reality’…(distrubuted or ubi1quitous computing) (qtd Kellog, Carroll, and Richards 1991, 418) (61)
• “[Durer’s] woodcut suggests the possibility that technologies of transparent immediacy based on linear perspective, such as perspective painting, photography, and film, or computer graphics and virtual reality, may all be enacting the so-called male gaze, excluding women from full participations as subjects and maintaining them as objects” (79)
• Quoting Mulvey: “Going far beyond highlighting a woman’s to-be-looked-at-ness, cinema builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself…Cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire” (1989, 25) (80) — “desire for immediacy, which then becomes a male desire to possess, or perhaps to destroy, the female” (80)
• “a gendered form of looking” (81)
• “Lorraine Gamman has suggested that the female gaze can be distinguished from the male gaze by its multiplicity – so much so that it may be not appropriate to speak of the female gaze at all, but rather of a series of looks from various perspectives” **taking back agency?
• “As these media [camera perspective, photo, vr] become simultaneously technical analogs and social expressions of our identity, we become simultaneously both the subject and object of contemporary media” (231). 
• “The networked self is constantly making and breaking connections, declaring allegiances and interests and then renouncing them–participating in a video conference while sorting through email or word processing at the same time” (232).
• “Both definitions assume that the authentic self can be achieved through the appropriate digital media…the networked self is made up both of that self that is doing the networking and the various selves that are presented on the network” (233).
• “As James’ self is manifested through clothes, home, and familial and social relations, the networked self is manifested through the affiliations it makes among digital media” (233).
• “The self that participates in a video conference is embodied as a video and audio image within the available digital video technologies; the self that surfs the Web is embodied in its IP address, its web browser, and its plug-ins…” (234).
• “The philosopher Stanley Cavell (1979) has noted how the desire for self-expression came out of the desire for the real: ‘What [traditional] painting wanted, in wanting a connection with reality, was a sense of presentness–not exactly a conviction of the world’s presence to us, but of our presence to it” (234).
• “The goal is still immediacy through contact…” (235)
• like Berger’s idea that women see themselves as sights, Cavell’s idea is that “we have been pursuing not only the presence  of the world to the self, but also the presence of the self to itself” (243)
• “In the same way in hypermedia, she is defined as a succession of relationships with various applications or media. She oscillates between media–moves from window to window, from application to application–and her identity is constituted by those oscillations. In the first case, the subject is assured of her existence by the ability to occupy points of view, while in the second she is assured by her multiplication and remediation in the various media or media forms that surround her” (236)
• Haraway – cyborg – “the body remediated by various contemporary technologies of expression” (237)
• like Balsamo’s computer graphics → cosmetic reconstruction to achieve “cultural ideal of ‘natural beauty’”- there is still a male gaze
• Orlan’s performance art with cosmetic surgery to achieve classical…
• “Cavell (1979) has argued that for the last two hundred years, we have been pursuing not only the presence of the world to the self, but also the presence of the self to itself (22)” (243).
• “Virtual reality…like other transparent technologies, while seeking to enact the male gaze, it also leads to a fascination with the many viewing and viewed positions made possible by the mediated self (cf. Stone 1991)…Because she is aware that her body is not adequately represented in the virtual environment, she begins to explore the limits of the embodiment that the environment does afford–to manipulate her point of view in order to test what ‘feels’ right and what does not” (253). *Snapchat filters are a kind of vr
• “And we must remember that feminist theory recognizes the body as both a medium and an element in the interplay of contemporary media. The interaction of technology and the body today comes not exclusively or even principally through prostheses or breast implants but rather through the ways in which visual and verbal media present the body and participate in the definition of the self” (254).

boyd – “Making Sense of Teen Life: Strategies for Capturing Ethnographic Data in a Networked Era”

• danah boyd’s research on teen culture and social media – intersections of sexuality, self-expression, fitting into a community, and looking a certain way online for personal gain (getting picked up by a modeling agency, being accepted by popular group, getting attention from boys).
• body as an “asset,” path to fame, “chance to ‘get out'” (12)
• dangers of teens feeling the need to “look ‘hot”

boyd and Ellison – “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”

• Detailed history of social media sites (pub. 2007). Discusses cultural implications;
• SMS are platforms for performing gender identities

Butler – Gender Trouble

• heterosexual matrix – “generates ideal relationships between sex, gender, and desire, held in place and reinforced by norms of ‘bodily gestures, practices, declarations, actions, and movements’ (Lloyd 2007: 48)
• I own this book and need to bring it on my upcoming trip to glance through again…

Cook and Hasmath – “The Discursive Construction and Performance of Gendered Identity on Social Media”

• Build on Judith Butler’s definition of socially constructed gender, applying it to online spaces…specifically focusing on breaking gender stereotypes and reappropriating terms through the Slut Walk movement

Douglas – “It’s Supposed to Look Like Shit: The Internet Ugly Aesthetic”

• Douglas examines examples of comics drawn poorly (on purpose), intentionally ugly selfies
• “Snapchat photos are firmly in the ‘reality’ half of the ‘Nailed It’ dichotomy.
  They’re popular because their ugliness is relatable and replicable” (329) **Notably, this article was pre-filters and lenses…
• “‘Nailed It’ achieves a major goal of Internet Ugly: to normalize imperfection,
  counteracting the effect of magazines, TV shows, and corporate websites
  that use technical tools to build an unattainable simulacrum of the world” (327)

Faj – “Is Snapchat Making Us Forget What We Look Like?

• Vice article, contains personal testimony, medical professionals’ opinions on snapchat dysmorphia
• Video story of a plastic surgeon who posts before/after/during videos of cosmetic surgery- calls it “psychiatry with a knife”; only about 5% don’t agree to appear on snapchat, procedures are destigmatized, “I have no doubt that social media has increased the amount of plastic surgery and the demand for plastic surgery, specifically among younger patients”; compares use of Snapchat (and resistance from other doctors) now to having a website as a surgeon ten years ago
• “Self-objectification—thinking about and monitoring the body’s appearance from an external observer’s perspective—is the largest contributor to both the onset of eating disorders and its maintenance. This is what we discovered in our research,” (Dr. Giuseppe Riva, professor of communication psychology at the Catholic University of Milan).

Krishna  – “People Think These Snapchat Filters are Making Their Faces Look Whiter” (*not a scholarly article…obviously*)

• Buzzfeed staffers undertook an experiment with Snapchat lenses in response to criticism that many of the lenses lighten users’ skin tones. Quite a few of the filters did lighten skin tones as they smoothed complexion (though it’s worth noting that these filters typically also lighten the background as well, not targeting skin).
• They express concern that people of color are marginalized by lightening filters which intentionally or unintentionally reinforce the cultural stereotype that whiter skin is more attractive.

Lee – “Beauty Between Empires: Global Feminism, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem”

• Delves into the concerning West-centric undertones in recent criticism of Korean plastic surgery prevalence. Discourse-oriented article; good feminist background.W
• discusses Womenlink, Korea’s largest feminist organization, and its recent work which seeks to decenter surgeons, media, etc as primary actors and focus on Korean women’s ownership and agency over their own bodies
• Not necessarily useful as it’s not social media related, but so fascinating

Lonergen et. al. – “Me, My Selfie, and I: The Relationship Between Editing and Posting Selfies and Body Dissatisfaction in Men and Women”

• Qualitative study measuring body dissatisfaction and effectiveness in moderating behaviors in women and men who regularly use photo-editing software and post to photo-based social media.
• All users reported greater body dissatisfaction and lessened effectiveness of coping strategies that work in other populations. (For example, participants were likely to state that self-compassion was ineffective in combatting “body dissatisfaction for social media use”
• Concluded that “the act of manipulating, selecting, and attending to others’ responses to such images may increase body dissatisfaction,” thereby negatively affecting mental and emotional health.

McLean et. al. – Photoshopping the Selfie: Self Photo Editing and Photo Investment are Associated with Body Dissatisfaction in Adolescent Girls”

• “Results showed that girls who regularly shared self‐images on social media, relative to those who did not, reported significantly higher overvaluation of shape and weight, body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and internalization of the thin ideal” (1132)
• Found that eating disorders and associated risk factors were more prevalent among high school girls who regularly shared selfies on social media.

Stone – “The K-Pop Plastic Surgery Obsession” (*Atlantic article)

• New standards of beauty increasing popular in South Korea, where 1 in 5 women reports having undergone plastic surgery. Beauty pageants often retain a consulting plastic surgeon for contestants.
• “Older standards of beauty were big body, wide hips, and good to make baby,’ says Bae Seonghee, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Gumi, South Korea. ‘Eyes there were slanty and sleepy.’ Seonghee giggles and hides behind her long bangs. She’s elbowed by her classmate Kang NaYeon on her left, and she shrugs and looks up again. ‘Pretty is a small head, big eyes, and high nose and forehead,’

Vashi et. al. – “Selfies–Living in the Era of Filtered Photographs”

• Neelima Vashi and colleagues, in an study published in the JAMA’s Facial and Plastic Surgery Journal, expressed concern about the growing number of patients requesting facial plastic surgery to look like themselves, filtered through a Snapchat lens
• 55 percent of surgeons reported patients bringing in selfies (as opposed to a picture of a celebrity or general concept), up from 42 percent in 2015
• “Previously, patients would bring images of celebrities to their consultations to emulate their attractive features,”…“A new phenomenon, dubbed ‘Snapchat dysmorphia,’ has patients seeking out cosmetic surgery to look like filtered versions of themselves instead, with fuller lips, bigger eyes, or a thinner nose.”
• filtered selfies represent “an unattainable look and are blurring the line of reality and fantasy for these patients”

Vendemia and DeAndrea – “The Effects of Viewing Thin, Sexualized Selfies on Instagram: Investigating the Role of Image Source and Awareness of Photo Editing Process”

• Another qualitative study: Women who regularly view thin, sexualized selfies on social media sites like Instagram are more likely to suffer negative consequences from viewing thin, sexualized photos on social media
• “Not only are selfies objectifying in general (i.e., focus on one’s body as an aesthetic object), but they also may depict thin and sexualized beauty ideals commonplace in traditional mass media” (118)
• when women know photos are edited, they’re less likely to suffer negative self-esteem effects. women perceived both their peers and celebrities negatively based on obviously edited selfies, though obviously, their peers are more likely to feel the condemnatory effects.
• “when the image sources were presented as their peers instead of models, they ascribed less charitable explanations for their behavior (e.g., to show off, to make others jealous, to brag) and evaluated the women more harshly (e.g., less intelligent, less honest). We also found that viewers’ awareness of photo editing attenuated the negative effects that ensue from exposure to the thin ideal, specifically internalization of the thin ideal” (124)
• Great article for additional resources on selfie context/statistics among young women

Vivienne and Burgess – “The Remediation of the Personal Photograph and the Politics of Self-Representation in Digital Storytelling”

• Personal photography used as a mode of self-expression and a way for people to tell stories. Photo manipulation
• “Via user-created content networks and social network sites, the everyday lives of individuals are being remediated into new contexts of social visibility and connection” (281-282)

Zanghellini – “Underage Sex and Romance in Japanese Homoerotic Manga and Anime”

• Issues with censorship and ethical considerations of widespread depictions of “starry-eyed girls” and young boys engaged in sexual activities in Japanese anime and manga
• I wanted to research this because of the strong resemblance to anime/k-pop characters in a lot of snapchat filters
• Additionally, existence and popularity of anime porn is a consideration….

Works Cited

Bailey, Luke. “The 17 Best Snapchat Stories That Have Ever Happened.” Buzzfeed. 29 April 2015. https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/snapchat-lol.

boyd, dahah m. “Making Sense of Teen Life: Strategies for Capturing Ethnographic Data in a Networked Era.” http://www.danah.org/papers/2012/Methodology-DigitalResearch.pdf.

boyd, danah m. and Nicole Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 13, no. 1, 2007, pp. 210-230. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. 23-24

Cook, Julia and Reza Hasmath. “The Discursive Construction and Performance of Gendered Identity on Social Media.” Current Sociology, vol. 62, no. 7, 2014, pp. 975-993. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0011392114550008?utm_source=summon&utm_medium=discovery-provider.

Douglas, Nick. “It’s Supposed to Look Like Shit: The Internet Ugly Aesthetic.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 314-339, 2014. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1470412914544516.

Faj, Ruth. “Is Snapchat Making Us Forget What We Look Like?” Vice, 20 Nov. 2017. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8x5jm5/is-snapchat-making-us-forget-what-we-look-like-body-image.

Izawa, Eri. “Gender and Gender Relations in Manga and Anime.” ____ (personal blog) https://www.mit.edu/~rei/manga-gender.html.

Kassebaum, Catie. “The Ultimate Guide to Ugly Snapchats.” Odyssey, 20 June 2016. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/ultimate-guide-ugly-snapchats.

Krishna, Rachael. “People Think These Snapchat Filters are Making Their Faces Look Whiter.” Buzzfeed, 16 May 2016. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/krishrach/people-think-snapchats-beauty-filters-are-making-them-look-whiter.

Lee, Sharon Heijin. “Beauty Between Empires: Global Feminism, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 1-31, 2016. http://fw3hu6qw4g.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Beauty+Between+Empires%3A+Global+Feminism%2C+Plastic+Surgery%2C+and+the+Trouble+with+Self-Esteem&rft.jtitle=Frontiers%3A+A+Journal+of+Women+Studies&rft.au=Lee%2C+Sharon+Heijin&rft.date=2016&rft.pub=University+of+Nebraska+Press&rft.issn=0160-9009&rft.eissn=1536-0334&rft.volume=37&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=1&rft.epage=31&rft.externalDocID=618381_S1536033416100014&paramdict=en-US

Lonergen et. al. “Me, My Selfie, and I: The Relationship Between Editing and Posting Selfies and Body Dissatisfaction in Men and Women.” Body Image, vol. 28, March 2019, pp. 39-43. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144518301414.

McLean et. al. “Photoshopping the Selfie: Self Photo Editing and Photo Investment are Associated with Body Dissatisfaction in Adolescent Girls.” International Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 48, no. 8, pp. 1132-1140. http://fw3hu6qw4g.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Photoshopping+the+selfie%3A+Self+photo+editing+and+photo+investment+are+associated+with+body+dissatisfaction+in+adolescent+girls&rft.jtitle=International+Journal+of+Eating+Disorders&rft.au=Si%C3%A2n+A+McLean&rft.au=Susan+J+Paxton&rft.au=Eleanor+H+Wertheim&rft.au=Jennifer+Masters&rft.date=2015-12-01&rft.pub=Wiley+Subscription+Services%2C+Inc&rft.issn=0276-3478&rft.eissn=1098-108X&rft.volume=48&rft.issue=8&rft.spage=1132&rft.externalDocID=3877279721&paramdict=en-US.

Stone, Zara. “The K-Pop Plastic Surgery Obsession.” The Atlantic, 24 May 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-k-pop-plastic-surgery-obsession/276215/.

Stopera, Dave. “35 Snapchats from 2018 that are Too Funny for their Own Good.” Buzzfeed, 14 Dec. 2018. https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/snapchats-2018.

Stryker, Sam. “29 Snapchats That Are Too Clever For Their Own Good.” Buzzfeed. 25 June 2014. https://www.buzzfeed.com/samstryker/bend-and-snapchat-lol-puns.

Vashi et. al. “Selfies–Living in the Era of Filtered Photographs.” JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 443-444, 2018. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamafacialplasticsurgery/article-abstract/2688763.

Vendemia, Megan and David DeAndrea. “The Effects of Viewing Thin, Sexualized Selfies on Instagram: Investigating the Role of Image Source and Awareness of Photo Editing Process.” Body Image, vol. 27, December 2017, pp. 118-127. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144518300755.

Vivienne, Sonja and Jean Burgess. “The Remediation of the Personal Photograph and the Politics of Self-Representation in Digital Storytelling.” Journal of Material Culture, vol. 18, no. 3, 2013, pp. 279-298. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1359183513492080.

Zanghellini, Aleardo. “Underage Sex and Romance in Japanese Homoerotic Manga and Anime.” Social and Legal Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 2009. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0964663909103623.

Wireframing Chaos and Calm

We were assigned an exercise in wireframing this week – learning to outline the basic structure of a chosen social media platform visually via Gliffy. Not surprisingly, my first hurdle to wireframing was figuring out how to access my Instagram on an actual computer (which involved figuring out how to access my linked Facebook account on an actual computer…which involved accessing an ancient email address and password). It’s funny how quickly things become obsolete.

I chose Instagram because I’ve always liked the way it’s presented, visually. I appreciated Gliffy’s drag-and-drop interface, which was both intuitive and easy to use.

Here, I’ve zoomed my screen out so I could see and represent a large space (which would require scrolling at a larger magnification) to give a better idea of Instagram’s feed-style layout.

wireframe of Instagram

I had fun recreating Instagram’s layout in frames. I realized afterward I didn’t get perfectly square proportions for the photos in the feed…and the square format is one of the unique elements of most Instagram photography. Even so, I really enjoy the clean look of the finished product.

In fact, when reproduced in frames, it’s fascinating how even a disastrous website…

my husband’s childhood church website, which I was disappointed to learn no longer sports yellow Comic Sans on a purple background

…looks alright in wireframe format (not great, but alright).

wireframe of MFBC website

 

But back to Instagram. On my phone and on a computer, Instagram’s feed is vertical. On a computer, this means a lot of zooming out and scrolling, and a lot of negative space at the sides of the main content. However, it also means that whether you access the platform on a mobile device or a computer, your experience is similar.

screenshot of my Instagram feed on a desktop computer…hi @mindykaling!

On a computer screen Facebook fills much more of the horizontal space, adding a series of (relatively useless) shortcut links and large border ads that remain onscreen as you scroll.

screenshot of my Facebook feed on a desktop computer

 

I’d also never thought about this difference in ad placement. Instagram contains ads as well, but they’re placed in the feed with the stories, so you can scroll on past. Additionally, because all the photos and videos appear in a standard size frame, it’s easy to view one at a time and scroll in a regular pattern, especially when viewed on a phone.

Instagram mobile feed screenshot

Instagram mobile feed screenshot

 

On mobile devices, Facebook’s feed layout mimics Instagram’s, but still manages to feel more crowded. The glut of icons and stories at the top of the screen, the fact that content appears in vastly different sizes, and even the ubiquitous blue toolbar all feel chaotic in comparison with Instagram’s simple white frames.

Facebook mobile feed screenshot

Facebook mobile feed screenshot

 

I appreciated this exercise because I’d never thought much about why I prefer to use Instagram and check Facebook more reluctantly. I think it’s the lack of visual calm…and the inevitable extension of that lack of calm into the content and tone of Facebook posts.

 

 

 

Snapchat Cyborgs: the Remediated Selfie

While researching topics for the Box Logic project this week, I read several chapters of Bolster and Grusin’s Remediation on the Remediated Self, which question the ways in which media both defines and alters our identities, roles, and self-conceptions. Bolster and Grusin point out that “As…media become simultaneously technical analogs and social expressions of our identity, we become simultaneously both the subject and object of contemporary media” (231). This means, essentially, that when we are using various new media platforms, we are also being acted upon by that media. When watching a movie or YouTube video (or even just viewing a photograph), we identify with both the person on camera and the camera itself, particularly as the camera’s perspective moves us and our perspective around.

In Remediation, Bolster and Grusin review feminist literature about the networking of the self and various new media, including Donna Harraway’s concept of the cyborg (the idea that we as human beings somehow merge with technology to create a new, remediated form) and Anne Balsamo’s work citing cosmetic surgery as an example of a culturally-guided fragmentation of the female body. She argues that “new visualization technologies transform the body into a visual medium. In the process, the body is fractured and fragmented so that isolated parts can be examined visually…At the same time, the material body comes to embody the characteristics of technological images” (qtd in Bolster and Grusin 237-238).

What all this has brought to mind for me is Snapchat. I’m what Iliza Schlesinger calls an “elder millennial”…

…so I’m not exactly Snapchat’s target audience. But I did adopt it as a form of communication a few years ago to keep in touch with my brother and younger cousins. I’ve enjoyed its features while simultaneously being skeptical of the consequences of visual communications that “disappear” (but really don’t).

One of Snapchat’s features is a set of filters, optional visual lenses that can be applied live to a photograph or video. Like Haraway’s cyborg and Balsamo’s reconstructed surgical ideal, the user’s body or face is remediated in real-time by a technological code made visual. Underlying the code, though, is a cultural gaze that, at least at first glance, both conforms to and creates unrealistic standards of feminine beauty.

 

Testing a Hypothesis:

I was curious to what extent this is true, so I decided to explore that concept with an unofficial experiment. On four different days, I took one photo of myself using each available filter option, hoping to come up with some generalizations about filters and their effects.  Here are the complete results:

 

Snapchat filter

no filter

 

One thing that’s immediately obvious is that, with the exception of the silly filters (was anyone actually wondering what they’d look like as a hot dog?), most alter facial features in similar ways, giving the user at least one of the following enhancements:

1. Smoother skin (though you won’t catch me complaining about this one)

 

2. Bigger, more vibrant eyes (which, intentionally or not, lend a youthful air to the photo)

 

3. Rosy or contoured cheeks

 

4. Makeup (including darker, more intense eyelashes/eyeshadow or lipstick)

 

5. Traditionally feminine accessories (jewelry, modified hair, etc)

Snapchat filter

 

6. Cutesy animal ears/noses (*Though maybe not a traditional hallmark of femininity, the animal features bring to mind anime/manga characters and are nearly always combined with other feminine alterations to produce a sexy, often juvenile effect.)

 

But…why?

Presumably, Snapchat chooses its filters based on popularity, which would lead one to believe that people LOVE seeing themselves with animal features. Additionally, it does make sense that, as many of Snapchat’s most loyal users are teenage girls, the filters would be chosen with their desires in mind. However, even given these facts, it was more than a little disturbing to see so many photos that cast my 34-year-old face…

me, unfiltered (but on a good hair day obvs)

…as a girl so much younger that any allure feels wrong.

me with wide eyes, a black button nose, and glittery mouse ears

Obviously, the filters don’t go as far as cosmetic surgery, as in the case of Orlan’s live, “double remediation” performance art pieces that refashion parts of her face based on mashups of famous paintings, (Bolster and Grusin 239). However, the filters certainly seem designed to refashion the user into a certain ideal. Snapchat rotates filters daily, and each user doesn’t get the same set. Even so, the proportions of filter types are always more or less the same, and it’s easy to draw some conclusions from statistics on the number of filters that enhanced traditionally feminine features.

A few quick notes before we get to my four days of data:
*To qualify as feminine, a filter had to conform to one of the above categories, modifying skin, eyes, hair, makeup, or facial features.

*Several of the filters I classified as non-feminine did actually include hallmarks of feminine beauty standards (i.e. the beard and ski cap filters, which smoothed skin and brightened eyes while adding more masculine features). But I tried to be as fair as possible in classification.

*Some filters offer more than one option (the chance to remediate the filter’s effects by changing it somehow, like different ears or lighting conditions). I counted each of these remediations as a different filter in my data.

*Many of the filters alter the appearance in more than one way. Some even manage to be kind of sexy while being silly/outrageous.

Snapchat filter

*Finally, the days were randomly selected…based entirely on whether or not I remembered to take selfies that day.  🙂

Conclusions:

Feb. 7:  18 total filter options; 14 feminine / 4 not = 78% feminine
Feb. 12: 20 total filter options; 16 feminine / 4 not = 80% feminine
Feb. 14: 15 total filter options; 13 feminine / 2 not = 87% feminine
Feb. 15:  17 total filter options: 12 feminine, 5 not = 71% feminine

Over the four days, an average of 79% of the filters enhanced feminine features.

Extremely interesting, if not at all surprising. It’s something I’d like to continue looking at over the next few weeks.

 

A few final things of note:

*Many filters, when used with video, modulate the user’s voice to a higher frequency, creating a cutesy, animal, or childlike sound. Occasional filters do lower the vocal register (making me sound disturbingly like my brother Logan). Though I didn’t officially study this, there were at least four filters each day that raised the register of the voice; none during these days lowered it.

*Face Swap is a popular, recurrent filter that didn’t come up during the week of my research. The filter melds the features of two live users’ faces, or one user and a photo…or even an object or animal (the weirdest I’ve seen was a capybara). People seem to love the result of literally merging their face with something else (becoming, as it were, a different type of cyborg). In case you’re wondering, my most interesting Face Swap ever was with my brother and showed me exactly how I’d look with 3 days worth of stubble. Yikes. At least on the surface, Face Swap doesn’t have a lot to do with the feminist consequences of Snapchat, but it is something I’d like to put more thought into in future weeks.

*Snapchat includes an option to create a personal avatar, called a Bitmoji. Users can personalize facial features, hairstyles, body characteristics, and a larger set of clothing options than I own in real life. There are definitely things worth considering in the intersection of human identity and self-expression in Bitmoji.

my illustrious Bitmoji

*For me, Snapchat is primarily an interface that enables visual and text communication with people I know in real life. However, a lot of users enable the map feature, sharing their location with friends; connect with strangers; and consume celebrity “news.” Quite a few more intersecting concerns.

 

All in all, I’m looking forward to continuing this thread of research.

 

Works Cited

Bolster, J.D., and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999.

Behind the Curtain

This week in New Media found us exploring the ways medium affects message and playing with html coding. Being a fan of drag and drop, WYSIWYG platforms, I did not expect to like coding, but I found it more intuitive than I anticipated…and dare I say, I even had a good time.

It does give me a greater understanding and appreciation of what it takes to create a website, even though it’s a lot more fun to think of my favorite websites running like this:

https://vimeo.com/158925006

I wound up starting in the wrong codecademy section somehow and coded a website about Brown Bears:

…And an imaginary fashion blog that presupposed quite a bit of personal investment in overalls:

…But eventually I found the bouncing name exercise:

What all this has me thinking about this week is the idea of remediation, the concept that’s grabbed me the most so far in our readings. I’d never thought about the fact that all online content is created using these background structures (for lack of a better term). The code remediates the words I type, giving them their appearance, quality, and context. So there’s no such as thing as plain words on a page…even that’s been intentionally crafted by a series of choices.

Remediation, in all of its forms, is something I’m looking forward to exploring in the next few weeks…

Thoughts on Interconnectivity in a Personal Network

The Challenge

This week, Dr. B challenged my classmates and I to log and map a full day of technological interaction. I chose to keep an email draft (to myself) open at all times so I could voice-text whatever I’d just done when I used my phone or computer. The photo below isn’t the entire log (and doesn’t contain all the information I eventually added to it), but it’s a decent representative sample.

Screenshot of media log for Tuesday, January 28th.

I used that data to create a picture of my personal network. Because I like mixing new and “old” media, I drew the map by hand, adding in illustrations, app logos, sketches of family and friends, and thoughts. I particularly appreciated the weirdness of drawing the Instagram logo or a YouTube video of an SNL sketch in a leather-bound notebook.

A few quick notes:

• I drew each app icon only once, even though the apps very often overlap in purpose.
• I added words and quotes that went along with my thinking and filled in some of the blank spaces, creating more of a rhizome than a star shape. (I even included some real rhizomes, bottom left corner.) Some of the words are negative.
• The far bottom left depicts some of the locations in which I interact with technology (spoiler: everywhere). I’m interested in the effect the lack of necessary downtime has on our brains and overall emotional health. (Do we need media breaks? Probably…)

 

My Network Map

Network map of my media connections by purpose

Notes on Purpose

When thinking about how to present my network map, I first thought about purpose, jumping off with two basic questions:

What do I use each app or platform for?

What forms of technology do I use for each purpose in my life?

I first considered mapping by app. I listed all the forms of media I use in a given day and made notes on what their purposes are. This answer is easy sometimes — I use Netflix for entertainment (particularly while doing boring house chores), to learn things (like organizing my drawers, baking a traditional genoise sponge, why the Fyre Festival failed), and to occupy my children while I’m trying to cook (#momwin). But other apps, like Instagram, Chrome, or even Messages (for basic texting) are a lot more multifaceted.

I ultimately flipped it around, organizing my map more or less by purpose:

Practical life stuff/logistical communication (bottom left)

This included things like buying vegetable seeds online, looking up gluten-free restaurants in Hendersonville and following Google Maps directions to the one I chose, texting my husband grocery lists, looking up the weather and time, and doing work for my GA position.

Research/Learning/Scholarly Connection (bottom middle) 

It’s been a fascinating thing to be able to complete a Master’s program online. Additionally, all my capstone research is media-based, as are my relationships with the people in our cohort and the scholars whose work I’ve gotten to know.

Entertainment (bottom left)

Obvious, but there’s a lot of crossover with other categories. I can use Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat to connect with people or ideas or express myself creatively…but more often I use it as a form of entertainment.

Curiosity (top left)

This was the most interesting thing in my log. Turns out, I google things constantly, and not just because my sons are 8 and 6 and ask a million questions a day. I love the fact that I don’t have to wonder things when I don’t know them. Things I googled that day included: 2015 video of giant squid Japan (which is amazing btw); Michelle Obama (bio on Wikipedia); onion root structure; elderberry trees; gluten-free genoise sponge; difference between Italian and Swiss meringue buttercream; lyrics to Be Thou My Vision; what is caster sugar; dog tooth root abscess symptoms; flu symptoms in children; and my personal favorite query: “how did tudors get live birds in pies without cooking them.”

Related bit of amazingness from one of my favorite comedians that is well worth 2:46 of your day (if only because by the end you’ll know where Tom Petty is from):

Personal Connection (top right, those closest to me)

I love the ability to stay deeply connected with family and close friends in spite of distance. I thought a lot during the day about what platforms I use for different types of communication and different people. In general, with my closest friends and family, the more I see the person in real life, the more likely I am to just text them or maybe send a silly meme on Facebook Messenger. Phone calls, Skype, Marco Polo, Snapchat – those are what I use to close the distance gap with people I love who I won’t see for quite awhile…and the ability to hear and see them makes that difference.

Impersonal connection (top right, moving farther away from me)

This is how I’ve come to think about most social media interactions on Instagram, Snapchat stories, or Facebook. We’re enabled to keep up with people, seeing what’s going on in their lives (or at least, what they share publicly) without ever connecting personally. In some ways, I think it’s great. (A high school acquaintance’s daughter won a writing award I’d never have known about – cool!) In some ways, I think it allows us to be lazier about actual communication. (My cousin’s kids sang in church…but since I saw it on Facebook I probably won’t call her about it.)

Creativity (sprinkled through bottom left and right)

For me, seeing things inspires me to make things, whether it’s writing, art, baking house decor, whatever. I’m exactly the weirdo Pinterest was made for. But I have learned to make and do a lot of new things because of it, so I count that a win.

Facilitating (conduit for other things, all over)

I’ve started thinking about an app like Google Chrome as a facilitator. I use it to enable learning, research, entertainment, all kinds of real-life things, creativity, communication, etc. There’s probably a good deal of theory about this concept.

 

A Conclusion (for now) and a Question

I assumed when this project was assigned I’d come out of it with a better understanding of the ways I overuse media. Because I do sometimes ignore my family and zone out with my phone, scrolling. What I feel I’ve learned, though, is to think deeply about purposeful media use, and all the affordances various media offer in my everyday life.

The question that kept occurring to me throughout the day was this:

To what extent did knowing I was logging my media use affect my interactions?

I can think of several possible effects from this particular day:

• I kept returning to a media-based log to add things (even when I wasn’t using my phone at the time). This likely reminded me of other things I wanted to do and encouraged more media interaction.
• I knew I was analyzing for connectivity, which reminded me to text my brother…which reminded me to text my other two brothers and my brother’s girlfriend. 🙂
• I wasn’t at work that day (I was home with a sick kid), so I didn’t do work-related things and instead, consumed a lot more Great British Bake-Off than I otherwise would (especially on a day when I was keeping track of my media use).
• I already think scrolling social media feeds is a bad habit, and I did it significantly less than I might otherwise because I didn’t want to have to log it. Ha!

So, probably a blind test would be more accurate…but then, I wouldn’t have had the entire day to think about media connection.

Box Logic: The Picture of Dorian Leibovitz

This week’s reading from Geoffrey Sirc, “Box-Logic,” struck me specifically. In it, Sirc advocates a view of writer/artist as “designer” or “collector,” playfully and intentionally combining disparate elements to create new things with new levels of meaning (Sirc 115, 117). The box metaphor, based on the work of artist Joseph Cornell, assumes that “somewhere…there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together they’ll make a work of art” (Simic qtd in Sirc 125). All week, I’ve been noticing how many of the things I love are juxtapositions of creative elements that don’t seem to go together — how many media objects hinge on that one, weird similarity–what Freud called “element X in common” (Sirc 115).

With the box in mind, I decided to try creating some combinations of my own. I used as my jumping-off point the activities Sirc suggests at the end of his essay. In my playful Google Image search, I found a series of photos from renowned portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, an artist I’ve admired since I studied photography as an undergrad. I chose to combine them quotes from Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. (*Note: I initially found these quotes on a website that compiled them. I intended to cite the original page numbers from the novel itself, but my library request didn’t come in on time…so I’ll get that fixed next week! My sincere apologies to Oscar Wilde.)

The idea of portraits and a novel about a portrait does seem a fairly obvious combination, and likewise, some of the juxtapositions I created had obvious meanings. But my favorite thing about creating these mashups is the fact that when I kept the same quote and changed the photo, the meaning and emphasis could change dramatically. For each quote below I’ve included two images. View each quote/photo one at a time and notice how the overall meaning is remediated by adjusting the photo background, word emphasis, and text arrangement:

 

Portrait of actress Meryl Streep by Annie Leibovitz. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/annie-leibovitz-photo-gallery/19/. 

 

Portrait of actor Neil Patrick Harris by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/04/neil-patrick-harris-snakes-photo.

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Portrait of actress Isabelle Allen by Annie Leibovitz, from motion picture Les Miserables. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/les-mis-meet-isabelle-allen-400453.

 

Portrait of gymnast Dominique Moceanu by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.stevenscottgallery.com/artists_leibovitz.html.

 

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Portrait of musician Keith Richards by Annie Leibovitz, 2008. https://fstoppers.com/strobe-light/annie-leibovitz-photographs-keith-richards-7643

 

Portrait of Hillary Clinton by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/34832597087426597/.

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Portrait of tennis player Serena Williams by Annie Leibovitz. https://whatstrending.com/wtfem/20856-amy-schumer-nude-photo-pirelli-calendar/.

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Portrait of singer John Lennon and artist Yoko Ono by Annie Leibovitz. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/annie-leibovitz-photo-gallery/19/.

 

Portrait of actor Heath Ledger and director Christopher Nolan by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2009/03/actors-directors-portfolio200903#9

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Portrait of writer Susan Sontag by Annie Leibovitz. http://www.anitatraynor.com/annie-leibovitz-keeping-focus/.

 

Portrait of singers Meg and Jack White by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.jacksonfineart.com/artworks/31241/.

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Portrait of actress Whoopi Goldberg by Annie Leibovitz. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/annie-leibovitz-photo-gallery/19/.

 

Portrait of comedian Amy Schumer by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/14/world/amanpour-leibovitz-schumer/index.html.

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Portrait of Iggy Pop by Annie Leibovitz. https://theartstack.com/artist/annie-leibovitz/portrait-of-iggy-pop.

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/10/annie_excerpt200810.

 

 

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Portrait of Demi Moore by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/10/annie_excerpt200810.

 

Cropped portion of Caitlyn Jenner portrait by Annie Leibovitz. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/418553359111923192/.

 

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Works Cited

“Annie Leibovitz.” Steven Scott Gallery. https://www.stevenscottgallery.com/artists_leibovitz.html.

“Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens.” PBS. 3 January 2007, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/annie-leibovitz-photo-gallery/19/.

Hall, Patrick. “Annie Leibovitz photographs Keith Richards.” F-Stoppers. 21 June 2010,https://fstoppers.com/strobe-light/annie-leibovitz-photographs-keith-richards-7643.

“Kardashian Clan Sizzle in Annie Leibovitz Shoot.” Hello Magazine. 7 September 2011, https://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/201109076079/kardashian-sisters-annie-leibovitz/.

Leibovitz, Annie. “Annie Gets Her Shot.” Vanity Fair. October 2018, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/10/annie_excerpt200810.

Leibovitz, Annie. “The Definitive Depp.” Vanity Fair. July 2009, https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2009/07/johnny-depp-slideshow200907.

Miranda, Lin-Manuel. “VF Portrait: Neil Patrick Harris.” Vanity Fair. May 2014, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/04/neil-patrick-harris-snakes-photo.

“Our Favorite Annie Leibovitz Portraits.” Canvas. Saatchi Art, 3 October 2017, https://canvas.saatchiart.com/art/art-history-101/our-favorite-annie-leibovitz-portraits.

“Photos: The 2009 Hollywood Portraits.” Vanity Fair. March 2009, https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2009/03/actors-directors-portfolio200903.

“Portrait of Iggy Pop.” TheArtStack. https://theartstack.com/artist/annie-leibovitz/portrait-of-iggy-pop.

“Quotes: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.” goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1858012-the-picture-of-dorian-gray.

Schillaci, Sophie. “Meet the 10-year-old Face of ‘Les Miserables.'” Hollywood Reporter. 11 December 2012, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/les-mis-meet-isabelle-allen-400453.

Sirc, Geoffrey. “Box-Logic.” Writing New Media. Logan, Utah State University Press, 2004, pp. 111-146.