On Reading a Video Text

Lucas W.
On Reading a Video Text
Robert Scholes begins his article “On Reading a Video Text” by quickly jumping into what “video text”, as the “reader” of said text, gives us. It gives us a certain kind of power, says Scholes, the kind of power that makes us feel in control of what we see. You see, unlike Scholes’ article with its masterful use of language and ability to deploy socially historical contexts in such a casual way (i.e. when referencing the novel for bourgeois society, otherwise known as the Bolshevik revolution), when reading a video text we simply visualize what is between the lines based on cultural references and/or values. And maybe he uses the higher language to drive home his point about visual text, the point in which he makes all too clear to me when he makes the idea of reading a video text easier for us to accomplish with such accuracy and power over what we see, easier than say….reading his article, which requires a little more dissection, mastery, and meta-knowledge of the English language than just a primary discourse in our culture.
Scholes continues his article describing the power that the video text has over the narrative form, stating that narrativity is “the pleasures and powers associated with the reception of stories presented in video texts” (?). He also goes into the power of cultural reinforcement and how simply by interpreting a video text through simple cultural cues and references our own cultural identity is reinforced as being part of a greater whole. Scholes the proceeds to use some of those historic references to show how the video text is changing the course of textual literacy and pulling so far away from normalcy, such as “What the epic poem did for ancient cultures, the romance for feudalism, and the novel for bourgeois society”.
Scholes then describes this process of narrativity, of cultural reinforcement by going through the layers of a budweiser commercial that we as Americans can all connect, relate to, and easily read between the lines I order to finish the fairy tale that is being “American”. Simply by drawing on what we have attained in our cultural upbringing it is easy for us to believe what the commercial represents, even if on an unconscious level for most of what we absorb. Scholes ends his article describing how these complexities can stand so easily in simple symbols, whether or not the beer is sold (if you believe in America, then the idea worked for Budweiser) the symbols we put together for our visual texts makes them easier to digest, despite the complexities involved.