Americans are, after all, the people of sight.
When the country fought its Civil War, everyone knew men were dying horrifically. But not until 1862 when photographer Matthew Brady shocked the nation with his New York studio exhibit "The Dead of Antietam" did many understand what that really meant. Seeing made it real.
Vietnam became America's first "living-room war," delivering images of violence and suffering--as well as Walter Cronkite's pivotal 1968 "Report From Vietnam" in which he expressed the view that the war was unwinnable. Television images had a powerful impact on the course of that war.
In simpler, everyday ways we rely on sight above all else.
I have a friend who will never raise money for a product unless he has a prototype to show. He says investors can not and will not get truly excited about something until they can actually see it.
Smart marketeers know that many Americans buy wine with their eyes, choosing what they like by the attractiveness of the label. My work with the good folk at Zildjian has convinced me that at least some drummers buy cymbals more with their eyes than with their ears.
It was Marshall McLuhan who said that nonliterate societies were governed by spoken words and sounds, while literate societies experienced words visually and so were governed by sight. It will not come as a surprise that the literacy rate in the United States is 99%.
Americans are a people governed by sight.
It's always been easy to find statistics and stories about domestic abuse in America. 1.3 million American women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year. That's 148 an hour, all year long. It's like there's a Civil War going on out there.
Then along comes a Matthew Brady photojournalism show. Or for us, a Ray Rice video. We've known for months that Ray Rice hit Janay Palmer and left her unconscious. As The New Yorker asked, "What did people think it looked like when a football player knocked out a much smaller woman? Like a fair fight?"
When the country fought its Civil War, everyone knew men were dying horrifically. But not until 1862 when photographer Matthew Brady shocked the nation with his New York studio exhibit "The Dead of Antietam" did many understand what that really meant. Seeing made it real.
Vietnam became America's first "living-room war," delivering images of violence and suffering--as well as Walter Cronkite's pivotal 1968 "Report From Vietnam" in which he expressed the view that the war was unwinnable. Television images had a powerful impact on the course of that war.
In simpler, everyday ways we rely on sight above all else.
I have a friend who will never raise money for a product unless he has a prototype to show. He says investors can not and will not get truly excited about something until they can actually see it.
Smart marketeers know that many Americans buy wine with their eyes, choosing what they like by the attractiveness of the label. My work with the good folk at Zildjian has convinced me that at least some drummers buy cymbals more with their eyes than with their ears.
It was Marshall McLuhan who said that nonliterate societies were governed by spoken words and sounds, while literate societies experienced words visually and so were governed by sight. It will not come as a surprise that the literacy rate in the United States is 99%.
Americans are a people governed by sight.
It's always been easy to find statistics and stories about domestic abuse in America. 1.3 million American women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year. That's 148 an hour, all year long. It's like there's a Civil War going on out there.
Then along comes a Matthew Brady photojournalism show. Or for us, a Ray Rice video. We've known for months that Ray Rice hit Janay Palmer and left her unconscious. As The New Yorker asked, "What did people think it looked like when a football player knocked out a much smaller woman? Like a fair fight?"
But it took a video. We had to see.
If the Ray Rice knock-out video gets one of the most visible, powerful organizations in America to act responsibly, then maybe some good will come from it. If it engages men in a real discussion about a topic they've cared about existentially but never thought about practically, then we will have made progress. As the late Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen said, "When I feel the heat, I see the light." Perhaps Roger Goodell is seeing the light now.
Given our history, it's not a surprise it took a video.
We are, after all, the people of sight. Oh say--now can you see?
If the Ray Rice knock-out video gets one of the most visible, powerful organizations in America to act responsibly, then maybe some good will come from it. If it engages men in a real discussion about a topic they've cared about existentially but never thought about practically, then we will have made progress. As the late Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen said, "When I feel the heat, I see the light." Perhaps Roger Goodell is seeing the light now.
Given our history, it's not a surprise it took a video.
We are, after all, the people of sight. Oh say--now can you see?
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