"On Reading a Video Text" Summary

Rose Anastasio
Mary Hammerbeck
English 100 M
1/20/10
The passage I chose to be the most interesting passage from Robert Scholes’ Essay, “On Reading a Video Text” is this:
“Visual fascination — and I have mentioned only a few of its obvious forms — is just one of the matrices of power and pleasure that are organized by video texts. Others include narrativity and what I should like to call, at least tentatively, cultural reinforcement. By narrativity, of course, I mean the pleasures and powers associated with the reception of stories presented in video texts. By cultural reinforcement, I mean the process through which video texts confirm viewers in their ideological positions and reassure them as to their membership in a collective cultural body.”
Pretty much what this passage is explaining is that when a video text or an advertisement connects with the audience in some way that is the best way to sell to the consumer. The consumer needs to have that visual stimulation and a sense of belonging when being pitched an idea for a product. What Scholes means by “Cultural Reinforcement” is that seeing a white, middle class family with 2 children, is in some peoples eyes, the norm in society. For others, normal is not a word that they use in their vocabulary. I am one of these people so seeing commercials that make the consumer comfortable with familiar sights of so call “normal” things kind of makes me feel individual which is a good thing. :)