Magic of Images by Camille

Magic of Images by Camille Paglia

Analysis of the Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age by Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia's essay titled, The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age brings into fore the issue of "dissipation" of cultures in today's technology-driven society. In discussing the seemingly dissipating nature of technology-driven cultures, Paglia focuses particularly on the diminishing skill of people to appreciate and critically think about art. Ultimately, she argues that the emergence and eventual dominance of new schools of thought, poststructuralism and postmodernism, and the advent of new technology through computers and the Internet, led to the eventual decline of art appreciation and the skill to critically think about words and images.

Looking at both poststructuralism and postmodernism, it is indeed agreeable that these schools of thought reflect the nature and dynamics of cultures created in the media age -- or the age of computer and Internet technologies. Poststructuralism subsists to the principle that language is a "structure or code, whose parts derive their meaning from their contrast with one another and not from any connection with an outside world" (www.britannica.com). Postmodernism, meanwhile, is defined as "a set of critical, strategic, and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as…hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity…" (Aylesworth, 2005). Principles of both perspectives remain true to the technology-driven cultures of today. In the media age, the idea of absolute truth is replaced with the idea of pursuing all possible truths. Moreover, society in the media age has created an implosion of "global villages," albeit they are being formed at perhaps an exponentially increasing rate through computer and Internet technologies.

Paglia may have presented valid points about the stark difference between the cultures of 20th and 21st centuries, but it is also critical to note that these differences must not be compared at face value, as each culture has a different level of development in human history. She talked about art appreciation and critical thinking in the mid-20th century, a period wherein human society has defined itself and has gone through ripe intellectual movements, which included structuralism and modernism. The 21st century culture, however, is at its early stage of development, and society has yet to see what would be the future of technology-driven culture. Possibly, the thousands-to-millions of global villages created through Internet technology would converge to create a cultural explosion that would be the biggest mark of the 21st century. It is also possible that the free, expansive knowledge acquired through the Internet would lead to new schools of thought that will redefine and change the way humans pursue knowledge and truth.