Prompt 20

“We therefore consume images fleetingly and randomly. It takes very special pictures to grasp and hold our attention. We need to be seduced by images that outdo reality through excessiveness—as in advertising and movies” (Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography Edited by Michael Kohler).  
-I agree with this statement. In today's society, it's extremely hard to keep people's attention. It's hard to focus for longer than about 2 minutes on one thing, studies have shown. In my Intercultural Communications class, my teacher was saying that she tries to incorporate lots of different ways for people to learn because of student's attention spans (things like watching videos on youtube that go along with class, readings, pictures, lecture slides, etc.)  So things that aren't extraordinary are hard to pay attention to, let alone actually remembering and feeling.


“But the term ‘Infotainment’ also implies this: with the gradual fictionalization of even the news, the old categorical oppositions of ‘documenting’ and ‘staging’, appearance and reality gradually dissolve. They are being replaced by a variety of hybrid forms for which it will be impossible, in fact pointless, to attempt to distinguish between fact and fiction. Even the accusation that ‘Infotainment’ is guilty of continuous ‘lying’ is therefore unjustified, for it is neither ‘true’ nor ‘false’. Like advertising, movies and all other genres that adhere to the laws of fiction, it works at a level beyond these oppositions—the level of ‘hyper-reality’, where reality is ‘simulated’.” (Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography Edited by Michael Kohler).
-I think that as long as people are aware that something isn't real, "infotainment" is a good thing. It can help turn something boring or unappealing into something exciting and new. I do however believe that there are too many photographs that people believe are real when they really aren't. So many times people look at photographs and think of them to be fact, or some sort of evidence of something. But if a photograph isn't real, it's just evidence of someone being good at editing. Editing and faking things is fine for entertainment or advertising, but I think only if they make it known that it's not reality.