Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
BOX 2.3
An 'icon' serves as a figurative or literal embodiment of something
deemed to be of considerable significance. Icons are apprehended visu-
ally and, historically, were associated with organised religion (e.g. statues
or paintings of Christ on the cross). Today, the religious association has
weakened and we can think of icons as those images or artefacts that are
especially symbolic in
any
area of our lives. Icons are thus a subset of
representations that work metonymically (see
Box 1.2
). A century ago,
scholars like Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) pioneered a way of studying
icons - 'iconography' - that remains relevant today. Focussing on paint-
ings initially, Panofsky and his fellow travellers rejected the idea that the
content of any icon per se was of interest (e.g. subject matter or use of
colour). Instead, they focussed on 'unpacking' the meaning of icons (i.e.
what their content 'said') and suggested that meaning is not intrinsic to
them but arises through their interpretation by viewers (see
Box 3.2
).
These viewers, he further argued, are necessarily situated in time and
space, in culture and society. In turn, this means that icons have to be
studied contextually in order to be properly understood.
Icons can reveal with especial clarity the simultaneity of the two
aspects of representation we often consider separately (epistemic and
legal-political). Great white sharks and great whales provide two excel-
lent, well-known examples of this. It's not too much of an exaggeration
to say that from late 1975 many Westerners came to regard
Carchar-
odon carcharias
as iconographic of 'nature red in tooth and claw' -
for at least the next 20 years. American novelist Peter Benchley's best-
selling book
Jaws
was made into the first modern 'blockbuster' by film
director Steven Spielberg. The movie was a massive box office suc-
cess and spawned a huge merchandising industry and three sequels.
By depicting great whites as 'man eaters' to be feared, it played on a
much older idea that 'nature' is cruel and indifferent to the fate of
humanity: something to be avoided or tamed. Not only was this a
very specific representation of sharks, but it was also very obviously
one constructed by Benchley in the interests of fictional entertainment,
and yet, its fictional form notwithstanding, the powerful influence of
Jaws
on popular culture stemmed from its apparent 'realism'. Benchley
and Spielberg were credited with telling a story seen to be anchored in
the observed behaviour of great white sharks - albeit a tiny minority
of them. This evidential base lent credence to an otherwise obviously
contrived representation of the 'nature' of
Carcharodon carcharias.
In contrast, and at the same time as
Jaws
was released, Greenpeace
activists staged a series of now world-famous 'image events' that made
