The concept of “intervisuality” brings together a lot of ideas explaining how viewers create their own meanings in visual culture. In the example Sturken provides, the film release of Titanic found great popularity and success through an older Chinese generation. Supposedly, this phenomenon was brought about because crying while watching the film allowed the viewers to indirectly shed their sadness concerning the failed socialist practices that they spent their youth creating. While I am not presented with enough evidence to convince me that this explanation is true, it presents another dynamic of this particular film and its relation to its viewers based on culture and their past experiences.
During my junior year of college, I took part in an acting class that had students observe art in the school’s gallery and create a performance piece based upon the artwork one day. I looked at a painting that had red dice in it. Although I know that the painter did not intend for my reaction, I instantly grew sad thinking about how I connect dice to gambling, which I connect to risk, which I, at the time, connected to my uncle’s new job that would force him to take some risks. This path of thinking led me to remember my aunt, who had passed away a few years ago. When I presented my performance piece, I broke down in front of my class and sobbed throughout my on-the-spot monologue.
I have no idea what the artist had in mind when she had created her piece, but I gave it my own meaning by connecting it to my memories of how my aunt took a risk and passed away and how my uncle was going to have to leave behind a banal life for a time in order to fulfill his duty. At the time, I did not know that this part of my life exemplified Barthes’ idea of the power struggle between an author and reader (or, in my case, between artist and viewer) within his 1967 essay, “The Death of the Author.” Likewise, my interpretation of the painting shows that intervisuality was also at work; I associated the red dice with risk because of my cultural setting. Perhaps the artist did not intend for this particular cultural viewing.
Coming from a culture that takes pride in its authorial defiance, I am intrigued by the ways employed by some artists to challenge the ideas of “high” and “low” culture. Once seen as tacky, kitsch can now be seen as possessions of educated art lovers. Dada blatantly pokes fun at conventional museum displays and curators’ ideas of high art. Causing controversy by adding “low-art” pieces or playing with the displays is an art form in and of itself; one can bring even more meaning to this action by taking the time to purposefully place certain pieces near each other, such as Fred Wilson’s display of slave shackles next to fine silver in Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson. Viewers could not ignore the severe contrast between these two objects and the cultural meanings behind them. While some may celebrate the prestige and elegance of a time period that called for fine silver to be used for teatime, they must acknowledge that this time period also contained human exploitation, cruelty and intense poverty that allowed for such fine things when the viewers see this installation.
Other forms of defiance manifests itself within bricolage and appropriation. For example, parodies and alternative versions of American Gothic have reflected social values and stereotypes within the original and new paintings. The newer versions that stretch the original’s meaning (or flip the meaning upside down) allow me to view the first American Gothic in a different, more educated light. I had always considered it to be a boring piece of art that did not hold much meaning to me; however, after viewing a few appropriations of it, I know see a few more of its social and cultural implications of the white, Puritanical couple who look as if hard work has provided them with a plentiful way of life. I admire the artists who saw the flaws and false implications within the piece and decided to show the world these falsehoods through new versions of the painting. These actions help our society to understand its own flaws in the hopes of changing for the better.
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