Quotes from 'The Ways of Seeing' Chapter 7

Most animation are publicised widely for mass entertainment, so I decided to find out more about the traits of publicity by reading essay no.7 from John Berger's 'The Ways of Seeing'. 

The following are some of the quotes that I consider as relevant to the Culture Industry:

• 'only interests of cultural prestige have obscured it (direct continuity)
• 'Sometimes the visual resemblance (between work of art and publicity) are so close'
• 'All its references to quality are bound to be retrospective and traditional.'
• 'Publicity needs to turn to its own advantage the traditional education of the average spectator-buyer'
• 'vague historical or poetic or moral references'
• 'imprecise and ultimately meaningless is an advantage'
• 'Publicity makes all history mythical, but to do so effectively it needs a visual language with historical dimension.'
• 'only use the future tense'
• 'Publicity is judged, not by the real fulfillment of its promises, but by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyers.'
• (Social function) 'Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society, it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world.'
• (Philosophical system) 'explains everything in its own terms. It interprets the world'
• 'Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.'

Relating them to Animation:

• Book adaptation feature animation by Disney
• Story-based animations use real societal problems, prominent in the present, that everyone can relate to win the empathy of the audiences. Also, the importance of having a resolution is relative to the target audience
• It is important to give a resolution for the conflict at the end, if the animation is targeted for young audience, so as to teach them about moral values. 
• Having resolutions is no as important for independent animation screened exclusively at film or animation festivals. Instead, some of them have indefinite endings as it is meant to be watched by educated people.
• Fictional setting in Animation
• Animation makes the artist's vision comes to life through moving images
• Animation have the capacity of being suggestive
• Servitude helps capitalism to thrive