I remember listening to Stuart Hall a few years back. He was lecturing on the notion of “representation.” Hall has always understood the ways in which power operates. Those, who have power in a society, influence and control representation. It is indeed a given that we live in an image saturated age. So how does a critical thinking person confront power and the images it represents. In that lecture, Hall offered a method to do just that. He called it “interrogation of the image.”
This is not unlike detective work. How often do we see a police drama without an interrogation scene? Almost never. Police dramas must contain at least a scene where the good guys are asking tough questions of a suspect. Spike Lee’s Inside Man starts with an interrogation and makes interrogation the most integral part of the film. One can argue that the entire film is one long interrogation of American history, past, present, and future. With his interrogating film, Lee deconstructs the image of the respected businessman, politician, and others.
Do Americans, who seem to be image savvy, interrogate the images that try to shape their thoughts and run their lives? How often do we ask hard questions about an image? What’s its story? Does it want to sell us an idea? Does it seduce us into something? An image represents a “meaning,” and that is constructed by the image-maker. How often do we stop and think who the image-makers are? Do everyday images of people in advertisements, movies, sports, and corporate environments offer an implicit notion that they are merely representing what already exists? Or do the powers that be construct these representations?
Well, the only way we are going to come close to any sort of an answer is through interrogation of these images. Next time you see a beer commercial, interrogate it. Ask the process by asking, “has beer, historically speaking, always been associated with large female breasts?”