Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007
12.3 Sequential versus simultaneous juxtaposition
Unit 12 Juxtaposition
Section 3 Attributing meaning
Visual juxtaposition in film, video and TV mostly works by exploiting a sense of surprise or shock in the juxtaposition of successive images. Where media depend upon items occurring in series, they may be said to rely upon temporal or sequential juxtaposition. The images from Eisenstein’s film are good examples of sequential juxtaposition, since their meaning depends on the very order in which the elements are presented; any change in the order either changes the meaning or results in nonsense (imagine the effect of reversing the sequence of the two images from Battleship Potemkin).
However, juxtaposition is also used in other kinds of media that do not unfold in sequence through time, but that are spatial (e.g. photographs, paintings, cartoons). Pictorial art is a case in point. A precise analogue to Eliot’s technique of literary bricolage in The Waste Land, discussed above, may be found in pictorial art of the twentieth century. Collage, for instance, is an abstract form of art in which photographs, pieces of paper, string, etc. are placed in juxtaposition and glued to the pictorial surface. Surrealism, as exemplified in the work of Salvador Dali (1904-89) or Rene Magritte (1898-1967), often depicted quite unrelated items in the same pictorial space, creating an atmosphere of dream or fantasy. Here, for instance, is how Magritte described his famous painting, Time Transfixed (1938) (see Figure 12.5), in which a steam locomotive emerges from an empty fireplace on whose mantlepiece rests a clock with its hands at 12.43:
I thought about painting a picture of a locomotive. Given that possibility, the problem was this: how to paint the picture in such a way that it evoked mystery . . . the mystery that has no meaning . . . The image of the locomotive is immediately familiar, so its mystery passes unnoticed. To bring out its mystery another immediately familiar and hence unmysterious image - that of the dining room fireplace - was combined with the image of the locomotive . . . suggesting the mystery of beings that normally strike us (by mistake, through habit) as familiar . . .
Figure 12.5
Rene Magritte’s Time Transfixed (La duree poignardee) 1938 - Oil on canvas, 147 x 98.7 cm, Art Institute, Chicago (Joseph Winterbottom collection)
In such cases, the juxtaposed elements are simultaneously present for interpretation, we take them in at a glance and the order in which they are read seems not to affect the overall meaning. We can therefore say that such media use simultaneous juxtaposition. As with verbal composition, such techniques - though prevalent - are not restricted to the twentieth century in its modernist phase. The pictures of the Flemish painter, Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516), depicting the delights of heaven and the horrors of hell, are full of startling - sometimes grotesque and fantastic - juxtapositions.
Any visual composition, of course, is bound to include elements placed side by side. In this sense whatever occurs within the same visual frame has been ’juxtaposed’, if only in rather weak terms. However, as we pointed out earlier, the notion of juxtaposition is best reserved for cases where the relation between elements goes beyond the obvious, where it defies easy explanation and where the reader or viewer is called upon to supply an inferential connection. Magazine advertising often uses juxtaposition in the sense we are using it here. The advertisement in Figure 12.6, for example, juxtaposes two basic elements within a unified two-page spread - a wrist watch and an aeroplane propeller.
Figure 12.6 Advertisement for Breitling watches
At first sight there is no obvious reason why such objects should be put together. Indeed, the very absence of an obvious connection poses a puzzle to the reader - an enigma that requires some interpretive effort to solve. The juxtaposition within the same visual field implies some correspondence between the objects - circular motion, perhaps, polished metal, precision engineering or, maybe, accuracy. Were it not for the segments of verbal text distributed among the visual elements, the transfer of meanings from one object to the other would be fluid and indeterminate; thus the words within the pictures serve to anchor the meanings and determine the direction of transfer. The product label and logo, both on the watch and in the bottom right-hand corner of the two-page spread, establish this as an advert - with the watch as the focused commodity for sale (rather than the propeller). The watch is presented as being in some (positive) way like the propeller, with which it shares admirable qualities. The banner legend across the top of the right-hand page fixes what these positive exemplary attributes could be: ’PERFORMANCE. PRESTIGE. A PASSION FOR INNOVATION’. The Breitling watch is presented as being like the propeller in these respects. Other parts of the text reinforce these connections: ’For over a century’ (we are told) ’BREITLING has shared aviation’s finest hours’, with further references to the watches being ’ultra- precise’ and ’ultra-reliable’, and to their meeting the highest standards of ’sturdiness and functionality’ - qualities somehow associated with the burnished metal propeller.
Since juxtaposition here invites the reader to compare the juxtaposed items, we can suggest that visual juxtaposition works in a similar way to metaphor (See Unit 10). The visual and verbal links invite us to transfer selected attributes of the juxtaposed object to the commodity being advertised (just as a metaphor demands that we transfer selected attributes from vehicle to tenor).
Sometimes these kinds of transfer can work in an ironic or semi-humorous fashion. Consider the juxtaposition in Figure 12.7. In the original a finely polished and elaborately carved string instrument - an Indian sitar - has been juxtaposed with a single bottle of beer in such a way that it dwarfs and partially conceals it - though still leaving the product label, ’Beck’s’, legible. How can such superficially different objects be related to each other? In terms of music, art, ornament, tradition? The caption in the original, which reads ’Unmistakable German Craftsmanship’ in the top left-hand corner of the page, offers a solution. Despite the way in which the sitar with its Indian craftsmanship has been foregrounded visually in the advert, the caption draws attention to the simple, half-concealed, bottle of beer. The values of elaborate, traditional craftsmanship embodied in the sitar have been humorously transferred to the bottle of beer - so as to suggest that the beer has been as lovingly and individually crafted as the instrument.
In the examples of juxtaposition examined earlier, it was noticeable that juxtaposition operates by generating meanings that are somehow ’beyond’ or ’between’ the elements that are juxtaposed. In the haiku and imagist poems, the lack of a definite connection between images seems to open them up to a multiplicity of interpretations. However, when elements are juxtaposed in an advertising image, the accompanying text often plays an important role in fixing a preferred reading of the image. In the advertisements examined above, the captions are necessary to narrow down the range of communicative possibilities. This suggests that juxtaposition is both a powerful and an unpredictable device to use, since advertisers often find it necessary to control the possible interpretations it might generate. Does the advert in Figure 12.8 work, for instance, without the original caption (King of Beers) at its head?
Figure 12.7 Advertisement for Beck’s beer
Figure 12.8 Advertisement for Budweiser beer