Intro & Chapter 6 thoughts

As with most textbooks, the introduction serves to lay the basis for the rest of the textbook and sets about defining key terms. I do have to say I really enjoy the fact that the introduction explains the evolution of what "culture" means, starting from meaning anything high-class to a more holistic, all-encompassing meaning to refer to a "whole way of life."
The definition of "visual culture," however, is where the text loses me. I feel, as I often do with textbooks, that the writers were trying to come up with a definition that was purely unique... and in doing so, made it essentially so that the majority of readers won't remember the definition, much less be able to apply it to any context other than what is specifically laid out in the book.

As for chapter 6, I personally didn't find much of it to be new information, since most of the chapter covered criticisms of mass media, almost all of which has been talked to death before.
However, I did enjoy the other perspectives, which were kind of new to me, and which I tended to agree with more.
It is kind of interesting to see the two very different opinions regarding mass media, and how some scholars and critics believe that mass media is contributing to individualization and isolation, whereas others believe that it is contributing to the exact opposite, to a closer community. I also do like that not all scholars believe that the audience is all just sheep-minded consumers who blindly swallow what media tells them; in my experience, especially recently, media consumers have grown increasingly critical (and in some cases, dissatisfied) of the media that they consume. There was a point made about Nazi propaganda, but personally I believe that that was successful due to the specific (and often, deceptive) nature in which the propaganda was filmed, and the lack of access to an unfiltered view of events. I believe that, had they tried to use the same tactics today, it wouldn't have worked out as well due to social media and the recent rise in personal cameras.

One theorist that I especially disagreed with was Habermas, with his theory of the public sphere. As mentioned in the book, his model of the "public sphere"--wherein a small group of people gets together and discusses/decides the fate of the general public--was largely flawed due to who he focuses on. I have several problems with his theory: one, that though he says that "private interests... were inadmissable," it is nearly impossible for people to set aside their private interests; and two, that, as mentioned in the text, Habermas based his model around the bourgeois educated white men.