The subject of visual culture deals with acquiring the theoretical skills and critical framework for understanding what one sees. In this sense, visual culture makes a definite reference to understanding and discussing those aspects of culture and society that involve any type of visual media. The visual culture of each time and context is different, because the act of seeing is always embedded in a specific ideology, locality, place and time. This book aims to situate aspects of visual culture into a South African context. For instance: What worldviews are created by contemporary South African visual culture? What does our visual culture tell us about our imagination, reality, fears and expectations?
Chapter 1. “Don’t give me what I ask for, give me what I need”: advertising dilemmas in contemporary South Africa
Chapter 2. “All the mall’s a stage”: the shopping mall as visual culture
Chapter 3. “Never stop being a woman”: fashioning the female soldier in South Africa
Chapter 4. Constructing femininity in Huisgenoot
Chapter 5. Charting change, contesting masculinities: whiteness in postapartheid popular visual culture
Chapter 6. Misbehaving tools: the politics of human-technology interactions
Chapter 7. Riding a different wave: digital media and subcultural expression
Chapter 8. From Japan to Jamaica: reframing youth identities in contemporary South Africa
Chapter 9. From the other side: the representation of lesbian and gay people in popular visual media – a personal view
Chapter 10. Between objectivity and subjectivity: understanding photography
Chapter 11. Cinema as visual culture: making sense via semiotics
Chapter 12. (Re)defining television genres: classic narrative and edutainment in Yizo Yizo 2
