Visual mass media shift character understanding from inwardness to external optical signals

Evidence

Visualization in modern mass media makes for externalization. The idea of inwardness, still maintained in older portrait painting through the expressiveness of the face, gives way to unmistakable optical signals that can be grasped at a glance. Even if a character in a movie or television show is not what he appears to be, his appearance is treated in such a way as to leave no doubt about his true nature. Thus a villain who is not presented as a brute must at least be ‘suave,’ and his repulsive slickness and mild manner unambiguously indicate what we are to think of him. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 323

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives a concrete mechanism for how ‘externalization’ works — optical legibility replaces inwardness — a key move in running the standardization/pseudo-individuation analysis on visual media.
• XREF: Connects to the reading purpose’s engine: this is the pseudo-individuation mechanism applied to character construction — the suave villain as standardized type wearing a costume of difference. — connects to: Media technologies expose unconscious dimensions of perception that the eye and mind miss — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 146