"On reading a video text" by Robert Schloes

Robert Scholes describes how video can achieve its power and influence the spectator’s perception of it. He is absolutely right by saying it is all “a complex dynamic of power and pleasure”. Sound, light, slow or faster motions can change dramatically our feelings about what we see. I agree with him that art in general is our way to escape the reality. For example, in the commercial “L’eau par Kenzo” our minds are totally captured by music we hear and disappearing in a fantasy world created by black and white colors, camera movements and style of acting that we see. All this makes us almost smell the perfume itself at the end. Scholes analyzes a commercial telling about a black man who accomplished his dream and became a well-known Basketball player. However, he does not talk much about visual effects of that video and concentrates mostly on its cultural context and tries to estimate its cultural value for America. He argues that the commercial perfectly corresponds to common American beliefs, so well that…it even becomes a danger. That is why I found the conclusion of the article rather unexpected and contradictory to what was said at the beginning and in the body. Schloes manifests the necessity of being critical and being aware of that danger to “surrender” to a skillfully built text of a video. This is true but I would also not forget about appreciation of a commercial video as a piece of art, if it has been made at such level, of course! I believe this idea is strongly present in the article even if its conclusion seems to tell the opposite.

Works Cited

1) "L’eau par Kenzo." Youtube. 04 September 2007 .
2) Scholes, Robert. "On Reading a Video Text." Literacies. 2nd ed. Ed. Terence Brunk et al. New York: Norton, 2000. 619-623.