This week, I ask my students to create a Visual Analysis for their Film History Research Papers.  Many of the writing techniques they use in visual analysis will carry over to all levels and areas of their  writing.  I mean, here they will be asked to look closer at their subjects.  What will they see that their readers will not?  From their extensive research on our campus databases,  students will have developed special insight to look deeper into their images.  They can choose from Movie Posters, Magazine Covers, Newspaper Fotos, Blog Posts. 

Here are some possible questions/suggestions to guide them:

• What is the background for your image?  Where did it come from?  What is it about?
• What is the message it is sending?  What will most people think when they see it?
• Focus on the details.  Size of things.  Location of objects.    Colors.  Shapes.  Facial Expressions.  Body movements.
• What is the first thing that caught your attention?  Why?
• What is something you didn't see at first but saw later?

This summer, I'm teaching pure online asynchronous classes.  I have little opportunity to conduct an effective, interactive visual analysis workshop, but I try to do the next best thing: I provide plenty of samples and models on Canvas.   I start with Lindsay Lohan and I end up with Edward Hopper.  Lindsey Lohan, once a promising actress on the rise, is now a joke.  She’s thrown her career away through chronic substance abuse, legal troubles, and poor performances.  She’s given one chance after another to rehabilitate herself, but many suspect her to be afflicted with Bipolar Personality Disorder. I'm not writing a research paper on Lindsay here, but I share this movie poster of Mean Girls with the class. The first thing I notice is Lindsay looking over her shoulder.  This might be important to the theme of the movie.  Why is she separated from the others?  She looks so much different than the other three. I can sense a conflict just from the clothes they wear.   There is a worried look on her face.  I encourage my students to examine facial expressions. Does she feel safe in this environment?  Everyone in the class agrees with me.  When Lindsay first appeared on the scene, she had the talent and the attitude to become a major star.  What Happened?

Below I provide  an image I chose for a Marilyn Monroe research paper.  I looked for something with specific visual elements that would lead to my analysis. Of course the dress!  I have articles in my research folder that describe the dress and Marilyn's "Happy Birthday" perfomance at the president's party.  This gave me a great start. But also, I know of the story behind the story.  I was able to look into this image and find important meaning. I notice Marilyn's jaw is locked. Her hands are clenched. This may be a tense moment.  I tried to follow my own directions (above) as closely as I could.  I chose the writing prompts  that worked best for me. When I was done responding to the prompts, I copied everything together:

They told her not to come, but she came anyway.  That's Bobby Kennedy on the left.  That's President Kennedy on the right.  And you know who that is in the middle – That's Marilyn Monroe.  She had flown to New York to sing "Happy Birthday" to the president on his 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden.  Of course, the first thing anyone is going to see in this picture is the dress.   It's skin tight.   It was so tight that it had to be practically sown on to her body for her performance.  This is a black and white photo, but the color of the guaze material is the same color as her flesh.  So, it looks almost transparent, like you could see right through it.  What you are not going to see is Marilyn's underwear.  She's not wearing any.  There was no room for any garments underneath that dress.  The dress is famous for all the jewelry that comes with it.  More than 2,500 crystals are sewn into it.  Her platinum blonde hair is arranged into a stylish bouffant.  It rises up and flows downward on one side to cover part of her face.   But nobody is looking at her hair.  I notice both the Kennedys have their heads tilted forward and their eyes pointed downward.  You can guess what they are looking at.  In this picture, their behavior surprises me.   They may be flirting with Marilyn right out in the open in front of everybody at the party.   They knew of the rumors going around.  People were whispering of their affairs with Marilyn.  And the rumors were true.  They were both sleeping with her.  Reports say they warned her not to come because at this point, both of them must have feeling nervous for the truth to come out.  Reports say they warned her not to come. But that’s Marilyn Monroe.  She’s not a small nation president, princess or queen who might be intimidated by the Kennedys. She’s calling the shots.  Nothing is over until she says so. 

In class, we start our visual analysis discussion with a look at Edward Hopper paintings.  In the beginning there seems to be very little understanding.  At least, that's the way it was for me. It gets very quiet in the room.   But when we go over the painting inch by inch – colors, angles, shading, people – we end up with new perspective.  That's the point.  We look for things that we didn't see the first time around.  In Hopper's iconic Nighthawks painting we discussed the clothes  his characters were wearing.  What did their style choices say about them.  Below, I try to do the same with Faye Dunaway's portrayal of Gun Moll Bonnie Parker.

In 1968, Faye Dunaway appeared on the covers of Time, Cosmopolitan, and Paris-Match.  She became an overnight sensation for her appearance in the movie Bonnie and Clyde. (See her light up a Life magazine cover to the left.)  Her stylish portrayal of 1930s "gangstah" Bonnie Parker created a world-wide fashion craze. In the spring following the release of Bonnie and Clyde, women clamoured for berets and knit cotton pullovers. They all wanted to look like Bonnie.  The men wanted to look like Clyde.  In this cover photo, Faye styles a wool beret flat on top of her head about three-quarters of the way up the forehead and an inch or so behind the ears. Her golden hair softly falls just below her chin.  This cut is called a "Bob."  It first became popularized in the 1920s and 1930s.  Back then, women like Bonnie cut their hair to show off their free spirit.  A woman's chopping off her hair was a sign of independence.  The color of this beret might be described as a soft-blue gray.  It coordinates well with her cream blouse, blue jacket, and matching pencil skirt.   Faye's make-up touches appear minimal.  I mean she doesn't need it.  In this photo, her attitude dominates the camera.  The film Bonnie and Clyde is known to be modeled on New Wave French Cinema of the 1960s. French women are known for their  "less-is-more" approach to beauty.  I'm not sure if the real-life Bonnie knew anything about French style, but she knew everything about outlaw fashion.  Whenever she had the chance, she liked to pose – feisty, gun-slinging, and cigar smoking – for the cameras.  (See photos below.)

Faye's pose is angular, erect and confidant.   She hikes up her skirt to show her legs.  Her open jacket allows for a peek at her breasts. Her shoes are high-heel peep-toe pumps.  That must be an caraciture of Clyde in the upper-right-hand corner.  He's dressed in a pinstripe double-breasted suit. His shoulders are rounded, his pants are narrow, and his shoes are pointy.  Of course he has a gun in his hand.  He's a stone-cold killer.  But here in this image, Bonnie is the star of the show – and equally as dangerous.