Does art appreciation ultimately exist because of reproductions - Essay Example

Commerce and commercial art are around us all the time. They change how we perceive the world. Art and the quantity of images we see influence what we accept as ‘trendy’. The more we see it, the more we want it. Berger writes that “It is true that in publicity one brand of manufacture, one firm competes with another; but it is also true that every publicity image confirms and enhances every other.” The importance of this on the individual’s psyche is exactly what is discussed in debates about the media’s impact on society, for example, that violent videogames turn schoolchildren into school-shooters, or that teenagers in pop videos will cause an influx of thirteen year olds to try to head out the front door and onto the school bus wearing tube tops.

Images change behavior. We do and act like the things we’ve seen, we do what we hope to become and to look like. To break down the analogy, let me explain Berger’s phrase Every public image confirms every other. Every violent image or screen on a video game not only competes with the shock-value of other violent video games. But more significantly, it confirms the idea that these images are acceptable stimuli and that they belong in our daily environment. The child who plays violent videogames becomes anesthetized to seeing violence, becoming enraptured in violent events, body-dropping the store owner, shooting down everyone in their way to a goal, etc.

Parents of young children live in the same world of public images. They pass by stands these videogames of at Radio Shack and Best Buy. The continuation of these games on the shelves of warehouse stores confirms their integrity as entertainment, whether or not violent video games merit that integrity. Even before parents have children to raise and protect from hostile influences, the parents accept the presence of violent images in society as something unavoidable. They have been equally unable to avoid those images.