Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [99]
Here are our partial lists of exact repetitions and strands and binary oppositions in the New Yorker cover:
Some Details That Repeat Exactly
Large, wide open, round eyes (3 pairs)
Long, blonde, face-framing hair (3)
Small, straight eyebrows (3 pairs)
Wide-open (smiling?) mouths with expanses of white teeth (3)
(but individual teeth not indicated)
banners (4) but each with different lettering
round breasts (3)
states that end in a (3)
Some Strands (groups of the same or similar kinds of details)
Lots of loose and flowing blonde hair/large, fully open, round eyes/large, open, rather round (curved) mouths:
Connecting logic = open, round
Skin uniformly shaded on three of the figures/minimal color and shading contrasts/mouths full of teeth but just a mass of white without individual teeth showing:
Connecting logic = homogenous, undifferentiated, indistinct
Binary Oppositions
Blonde hair/black hair
Open mouths/closed mouth
Straight eyebrows/slanted (arched) eyebrows
Round breasts/pointed breast
Covered midriff/uncovered midriff
Notice that we have tried hard to stick with “the facts” here—concrete details in the picture. If we were to try, for example, to name the expression on the three blonde women’s faces and the one on the black-haired woman (expressionless versus knowing? vapid versus shrewd? trusting versus suspicious? and so on), we would move from data gathering—direct observation of detail—into interpretation. The longer you delay interpretation in favor of noticing patterns of like and unlike detail, the more thoughtful and better grounded your eventual interpretation will be.
Anomalies
Miss New York
Pushing Observations to Conclusions: Selecting an Interpretive Context
As we argued throughout this chapter, the move from observations to conclusions depends on context. You would, for example, come up with different ideas about the significance of particular patterns of detail in the New Yorker cover if you were analyzing them in the context of the history of the New Yorker cover art than you might if your interpretive context was other art done by Ian Falconer, the cover’s artist. Both of these possibilities suggest themselves, the first by the fact that the title of the magazine, the New Yorker, stands above the women’s heads, and the second by the fact that the artist’s last name, Falconer, runs across two of the women.
What other interpretive contexts might one plausibly and fairly choose, based on what the cover offers us? Consider the cover’s date—October 9, 2000. Some quick research into what was going on in the country in the early fall of 2000 might provide some clues about how to read the cover in a historical context. November 2000 was the month of a presidential election. At the time the cover was published, the long round of presidential primaries, with presidential hopefuls courting various key states for their votes, had ended, but the last month of campaigning by the presidential nominees—Al Gore and George W. Bush—was in full swing.
You might wish to consider whether and how the cover speaks to the country’s political climate during the Gore/Bush competition for the presidency. The banners and the bathing suits and the fact that the women stand in a line staring out at some implied audience of viewers, perhaps judges, reminds us that the picture’s narrative context is a beauty pageant, a competition in which women representing each of the states compete to be chosen the most beautiful of them all. Choosing to consider the cover in the context of the presidential campaign would be reasonable; you would not have to think you were imposing a context on the picture in an arbitrary and ungrounded way. Additionally, the table of contents identifies the title