Book of the Week: Ways of Seeing, by John Berger

*This post is part of a new series which highlights the pedagogical value of old and new books. It seeks to highlight different ways that seminal and newly published texts can be used to explore religion in the classroom.

By Tenzan Eaghll

               

In 1972 BBC aired a four-part television series of 30-minute films created by John Berger, Ways of Seeing, which was later adapted into a book of the same name in 1973. The structure of the book is simple, and the central message even a little passé for contemporary theoretical audiences, but it remains a very useful pedagogical tool for introducing students to the basics of ideological criticism.

The chief aim of the book is to expose the hidden ideology of visual images.  Berger takes the reader on a journey through the traditional interpretation of Western cultural aesthetics and details how modern technology and advertizing disturb this representational view of art and culture. Berger points out how representation has all too often been portrayed theologically, making the viewer the absolute purveyor of objective reality, and then seeks to show how the technology of the camera deconstructs this model of representation. By the end of the book, Berger has introduced the reader to the basics of ideological criticism by showing how all images facilitate not a view of objective reality, but a host of ideas, affects, and assumptions of the modern world.

I find this book a useful tool in a 200 or 300 level class on the study of religion because it provides a simple way to introduce critical theory to students. Theoretically, the book is based upon Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, but it is far more accessible than any text ever written by the obscure author of the Arcades Project. This is in part because the book bypasses Benjamin's complicated prose and logic for a simple analysis of modern advertising, but also because the four-part television series provides an easy way for students to digest Benjamin's rich ideas.  

Though the series focuses on art, aesthetics, and advertising, I find it a useful tool for teaching how religion is imagined in popular discourse by theologians, specialists in myth, and critical theorists. Just like the traditional interpretation of Western cultural aesthetics assumed that perspective was a lens to objectively view the world, so theological and mythological depictions of religion present the subject as an object out in the world fit for detailed analysis. Hence, just like Berger invites his reader to see how modern technology upsets the assumed relation between spectator and reality, I invite the students to consider how any discourse on religion (or any "religious image") is constructed by a plurality of technical effects.

Here is the introductory clip from Berger's four-part BBC special that I like to show students after they have read the initial chapter from the book:

                                        

Note how everything Berger says about paintings directly applies to religion. Just as the traditional approach to aesthetic images "centers everything on the eye of the beholder," so the traditional approach of religion presents it as an object to be viewed by a spectator. Similarly, just as critical theory allows us to expose the ideological assumptions that underlie artistic images, a critical analysis of religion allows us to expose the technical affects that are used to compose an absolute perspective on culture.

Since chapter two, three, and four of Berger's Ways of Seeing focus on how women are portrayed in oil paintings and advertisements, this book has been very influential in feminist readings of popular culture. However, I think it is equally useful for the religious studies classroom because it provides a nice introduction to the basics of any study of visual culture. Of course, the book and the BBC series is not perfect, and must be followed with more contemporary readings of ideological criticism to avoid a simplistic "Marxist" view of critical theory, but it works well as an introductory tool in the classroom.