A Competition: Words vs. Images

McCloud creates a scale to understand pictures as texts: the more detailed and specific the picture is, the more realistic it is. The less details the picture has, the more iconic it becomes. Photographs, in this understanding, are very realistic, while cartoons are iconic and abstract understandings(46). McClouds scale moves from photographs to words, where words are the most abstract of all texts(49). McCloud argues that detailed pictures are received information, they are able to be looked upon and understood without formal education in order to understand them. While words are perceived information, they are a code for the meaning they attempt to represent, that requires a de-coding or education about the language code in order to perceive the information being shared (49). For a long time, images were seen as only supplemental to words and shaped by the words. However, McCloud shows us how words and pictures each have their own characteristics that they embody. The writer and the photo artist are usually separated entities who come together to produce specific texts, but McCloud faces a need to bring these two entities together for the sake of a better text (49). Mitchell also recognizes this separation of picture and words, and actually shows cases where they are pinned against each other: "the president's press secretary even confessed that it was difficult to counteract image an image with words"(367). If words and images are so separated, and even at times competing with one another, how can they be brought together to work together and engage the audience as one? We see this ability to a degree on television, as Mitchell explains through "From CNN to JFK". On television news, photographs, in the most realistic form (apart from the event itself) are shown but still manipulated by words and chosen organization of the photographs in order to "distort the truth",  even with realistic images to compete with the distortion.

Brecht uses similar techniques in his War Primer, a complete book with images supplemented by words in order to frame the perception of the image. This is a great example, because Brecht uses photographs, much like a news station or paper would use, but supplements them with words in order to change the reception of the image to a new perception. A person who could not read the words may not receive the photograph in the same way as the person who can read the words perceives it.

This is a snipbit from a page of War Primer, where Brecht takes photographs from war times and creates captions for them. Brecht uses photographs and adds words based on what he wants them to mean and represent, rather than simple notating the material based on the actual history of the image. Without the image, the words would carry no meaning or usefulness. Without the words, the image has it's own connotations that the viewer may or may not realize. With both the imagery and the words, the idea Brecht is getting across is more clear to the reader than one without the other. He uses the most realistic of texts (photographs) and the most abstract of texts (words) together to build this new idea. This also shows us how the words and images put together can manipulate the entire perception. This also allows us to try to see the word through Brecht's eyes, by reading his personal understanding of the photographs and the meaning behind them which comes from Sousanis' Fifth Dimension, the imagination.