Assignment 4
Exposé: Unmasking the Image
length: 4-5 pages
due dates: 7.31 (draft), 8.2 (final)
* * * * *
The exposé operates on the idea that images (literal or figurative) often obscure what’s really going on behind the scenes—that indeed this is often one of the main cultural functions of image, to keep the consumers of an image from looking too closely at the realities underlying that image. The exposé is part cultural analysis (seeing through the façade of an image) and part investigative reporting (looking into a topic you believe there to be more to than meets the eye). It combines these impulses in a way that exposes some as-yet-unaccounted-for aspects of some phenomenon—think McDonald’s and Fast Food Nation, pesticides and Silent Spring, factory wage slavery and The Jungle, fluid/virtual identity and Catfish, and so on.
You should be focusing in on some phenomenon, topic, or issue that you think might benefit from being placed under the exposé lens—something with unexpected depths underneath our surface impressions of it. As I’ve said in class, this can take the form of something widely known, of which people tend to have an image you think is faulty, incomplete, or wrong; it can also take the form of something that goes largely unnoticed and un-imaged, a la the two photo-essays on domestic violence. Either way, the goal is to uncover, to expose, to bring to light some aspects of something that we tend not to know about or take into account.
This might take the form of something like a comparison and contrast: on one side, the image people tend to have of this particular thing (“McDonald’s is delicious!”); on the other, the underlying reality (“McDonald’s is absolutely terrifying!”). In this comparison, you’ll want not only to point out the similarities and differences between the two images, but also and most crucially, to unpack how and why there’s a gap between the two in the first place. Why don’t we know about or take into account the neglected half of this comparison? Who’s keeping us from it, why, and to what ends? Do we already really know the underlying truth and we’re just inclined to ignore it for some reason (true in many ways of the McDonald’s example)? In that case, what would your exposé have to do to make a dent? What are the real-world consequences of the gap between the image we tend to have of this thing and the actual reality of it (i.e. not just pointing out inaccuracies, but thinking about why those inaccuracies matter)? It’s not enough to merely point out that our image of something is fake or inaccurate, as though fakeness were automatically a condemnable offense; to make a sophisticated argument in this mode, you need to put pressure on how, why, and with what consequences the image of your subject is misleading, deceitful, inaccurate, incomplete, or obfuscatory.
The exposé is not only informational but also often explicitly persuasive, even muckraking. When you expose the underlying reality of something you think has been misrepresented, misunderstood, or obfuscated, you aren’t merely impartially informing the world of things they might not know—you’re trying to get something done, trying to make something happen. When Eric Schlosser writes Fast Food Nation, he’s not just aiming to inform the public, impartially and impassively, about the details of the fast food industry. He has a rhetorical purpose in exposing certain facts and realities. Likewise, your exposé should not just add previously unknown information to our understanding of your subject; it should reshape the way we think about that subject, to the extent that we can’t even imagine thinking about it the way we did before you exposed these previously unseen truths. (I exaggerate for effect, but that’s what we’re going for in the most ideal case.)
* * * * *
Note: even though most of our exposé examples have been negative (“look how bad this thing you love is!”), it’s also very much possible to write an exposé in the other direction: to take something or someone widely loathed and expose what’s good and redeemable and worthwhile about it/them. An exposé on how Carrot Top is actually a startlingly decent, hard-working, humble, funny man, for instance, would be an interesting read.
* * * * *
Due: Friday night, 8.2.13 by midnight, via email.