Numfar
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.2 #4 · Limits to Photoshop retouching | |
AJ Nadershahi wrote:
So does the cover of Elle magazine qualify as journalistic or creative?
And when it projects an image of certain physical attributes that impact the mind set of its target audience, is it still okay or should there be a "moral" limit?
Creative. It's roll is to create an ideal, or reflect back on it's readers an idealized version of either themselves or what they'd define as 'perfect' or 'ideal'. (not that the cover person is supposed to be or needs to be perfect in all ways, but rather that they be a representation of what the readers would see as a perfect 'real' person - someone who has some minor flaws, but is open, accessible, gorgeous, friendly, and entirely how the readership wants to see themselves).
I don't believe it's possible, nor desirable, to define social morality. Morality is, imo, very similar to musical taste or religious belief - that is, it's very individual and beyond certain basic laws, we shouldn't seek to apply unversal morality to societal structures. Afterall, I'm not willing to be your moral compass, nor do I want you as mine, however good your (or my) intentions are.
I do think I know what you may be getting at, however, and for that, I don't think the measure is the amount of photoshop that is at issue. Rather it is the fundamental message of a vast swath of popular culture. Are children being encouraged to be too thin by an overwhelming amount of advertising and media content? Quite possibly.
But at the same time, we might suggest that the overwhelming emphasis society places on hyper-muscular heroic types (super hero movies; pro atheletes, for example). Perhaps we should rethink our retouching of musculature (remember the film The 300?; Nike commercials, Olympic coverage and almost ever Sports Illustrated cover?)
Should we ban notions of beauty and strength? What about all the advertising and media content that promotes extreme wealth and measures success in life by job title? Should we crack down on that as well because of the pressures it places on our kids to grow up too fast, to spend too much time worrying about materialistic objects...
And of course, we know that so much of pop culture advocates promiscuity and early-onset sexuality. Should we ban this as well, in the interest of protecting our children's purity?
And videogames - of course they are too violent, and encourage our children to fire BFGs at one another while simultaneously dehumanizing the notion of killing. So ban most all video games.
Instead of this sort of reactionary 'ban it all' approach, I think we'd be better off focusing individual attention on our children, and creating in them strong individual character, and the immensely important life-skill of 'filtering' media content. Our children are remarkably resilient, and those that do succumb to 'pressures'... well, in most all cases, there are much, much deeper issues than which movie they watched, what video game they played, or which photoshopped teen idol they had posted on their wall.
Edited by Numfar on Aug 11, 2008 at 10:19 PM GMT
Edited on Aug 11, 2008 at 05:19 PM
|
