Short Essay 2

            When trying to decide what article and pictures I wanted to write about, it occurred to me that one of the largest media events of the year had just occurred and there were bound to be countless photos and articles about the Academy Awards.  Every year I see magazine articles titled best and worst dresses of the Oscars and headlines about who won what awards so I thought it only fitting that I write about what has just happened. 

            I did not in fact watch the Academy awards last night because to be honest The Walking Dead was on television and I was much more interested in that.  It was odd however not watching because for as long as I can remember I have always watched the Academy awards with my mom and sister on Oscar Sunday.  Instead, this year, I read about who won what awards the morning after.  I went to CBS news and one of the first articles was about the previous night so I decided to read it.  I saw that within the article there were a few slideshows that could be watched that had pictures about the previous night.  One was titled, Oscars 2013: show highlights.  I decided that before I read the article I was going to look through the slide show at the pictures to see what information I could gather.  I knew many of the actors and actresses that were up for various awards and after viewing the slide show I could with confidence tell you who won what awards.  I noticed Christoph Waltz had an Oscar in a picture and I assumed he won best supporting actor for his role in Django Unchained.  I also saw Ben Affleck holding an Oscar but there where many people on stage so I assumed Argo won best picture because I knew that Mr. Affleck was not nominated for best director.  I could make educated guesses about who won what just based off of the pictures that were shown to me, after all the slide show did say highlights.  After finishing the slide show I proceeded to read the article and picked up on tidbits of information like who won some of the lesser awards that I frankly wasn’t interested in.

            It goes without saying that the pictures told me a story of the night but as I previously stated, I assumed that the actors and actresses had won these awards. Although I was later proven to be correct by reading the article, it was all assumption until I actually read it.  There was also a picture; I believe number 47 on the first slide show that showed Jennifer Lawrence laying the stage steps.  I did not know if she was hurt of had fallen or was just crying or something.  Later on I discovered that she had tripped over her dress and was completely fine.  Another thing that could not be told from the pictures was opinions of people.  Did the people think that these people deserved to win for their performances or not, and most importantly, who did a good job presenting?  It was only after reading that I was filled in on the gaps that the pictures left out.  The pictures can tell a story but like the article we read by Morris, the picture really does not mean much without the viewer knowing background about the image itself.  In the case of the Oscar photos, my background was that I knew which actors and actresses were up for awards and I could make an educated guess as to who won what based on the pictures. 

            I think that the famous saying a picture is worth a thousand words because without prior knowledge the picture could tell a thousand different stories, a perfect example is the picture of Jennifer Lawrence.  Pictures can be very helpful when trying to get a point across but the picture is only as good as the context of which it is being shown. The viewer also needs to know what is happening in the image and even who the image is off to get a proper understanding of what the image is trying to convey.