With the last week of Cavalier Daily production underway, I want to avoid repeating any of this year’s themes or subjects — a task which in and of itself has proved arduous. To that end, I’ll share a personal frustration I’ve been dealing with lately — obscure and abstract as it may seem.
Since writing a column earlier this semester about contradictions in common colloquial phrases, I’ve found another aphorism that irks me — though for different reasons. I’ve been feeling indecisive toward the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
I wouldn’t call myself an artist, but I am a writer and a reader. I’m inclined to appreciate the beauty of all kinds of verbal communication, and I like to think that words as descriptors are ever more valuable than their visual counterparts. But on the other side, photographs and images can be so much more pragmatic. They can answer so many questions with just a glimpse of an eye.
But I guess therein lies the entire debate: words and images serve different purposes, so much so they shouldn’t be compared side by side. Words allow for creativity, interpretation and subjectivity. Each viewer sees something different in a word, sentence or book — making it difficult for authors to cater to any particular audience and making the success of reaching a large one increasingly thrilling and appealing.
It’s also about accessibility and availability. Not to discriminate against the illiterate of the world — though, perhaps, that is inherently unavoidable — but the ability to creatively interpret and imagine something solely based on mere recited or written words is a skill not attainable to all, and one worth tuning.
In an image though, each viewer is presented with the same picture. Granted, each individual has different interpretations of art — so maybe this is a moot point for abstract styles. But in most photographs and images, you see exactly what the next person sees. Audience members are less able to interpret a visual — to decide what it means to them — because the meaning is given. The responsibility lays more so with the creator; his approach and aim is more obvious and less open to interpretation.
When someone sees a novel I’m holding and asks me what I’m reading and what it’s about, I don’t know how to answer. In colloquial conversation you recount a mere plot summary usually quite easily, but I’ll only do that as a formality to appease my inquisitor. I’ll show them the cover, which probably impacts them more so than my trite summary of the plot anyway.
But this forgets the point of view, the themes and motifs, the narrative style, the references and allusions which, in my mind, define the novel so much more than superficially saying, “It’s about a girl who goes to India to work with children.” It forgets the burning passion beaming through, the biographical traces left behind, the visual and olfactory images the author has so skillfully created.
One hundred thousand words are worth more than a picture, because those one hundred thousand separate entities create a personal image unique to the receiver. Images, beautiful as they can be, are fleeting and forgettable, simple and square, cheap throwaways of a magnificent world that could have been otherwise given life through words. Maybe words are more difficult, but they are worth the task.
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