PICTURE PERFECT THE ART AND ARTIFACE OF PUBLIC IMAGE MAKING

Traces the rise of our "image-conscious" society and offers a fascinating discussion of how this society is moved to buy and vote by images. Based on hundreds of interviews with newscasters, political consultants and others, the text illustrates how images influence our thinking and how that effect is exploited by media, marketers, and politicians. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

This disjointed narrative mixes an analysis of photography and the movies with a comparison of television coverage of the 1968 and 1988 presidential campaigns. Freelance writer Adatto interviewed numerous television journalists to show how image-making has supplanted hard issues as a topic for coverage and how media advisers have become a new pundit class. Her discussion of journalistic self-criticism suffers, however, from her concentration on 1988, not 1992. She then ranges afield, finding the roots of "picture-centured journalism" in newspaper photography of the 19th century and tracing current consciousness of images to movies and photographs that saw the television set as part of the "social landscape." The lengthy concluding chapter summarizes portrayals of heroes in a range of American movies; in an epilogue, Adatto suggests that politicians seek to embrace the image of the maverick movie hero. Photos not seen by Publishers Weekly.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Adatto--billed by the publisher as the first journalist to warn of TV's ``ever-shrinking `sound bite' ''--now tackles, semi- successfully, the media's effect on American politics. The author argues that style has superseded substance in modern political campaigning--certainly not a novel idea. Discussing the 1988 presidential campaign, she criticizes reporters for considering as news--and for insufficiently noting the artifice of--staged media images created by ``spin-control artists.'' In extensive interviews, a range of TV journalists including Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel, and Dan Rather battle it out with Adatto, alternately defending their actions, conceding fault, or laying blame. Meanwhile, as the narrative jumps back and forth from 1968 to 1988, it deteriorates into a lament for the good old days: In 1968, we learn, the average sound bite ran 42.3 seconds, as opposed to 9.8 seconds in 1988. Next, Adatto shifts her focus to modern-day photography (e.g., by Warhol, Arbus, and Winnogrand, who became ``bound to the images they try to deflate'') and movies (Die Hard, High Noon, Rambo, etc., in which the ``maverick heros'' are both ``insiders and outsiders''). Adatto ties her commentary together with a nice comment: ``In response to the growing sense of disempowerment, a number of presidential candidates...have intuitively portrayed themselves in the mode of the maverick hero depicted in American movies--an outsider to Washington and the political establishment, as redeemers of...ideals....'' She goes on at length to explain just how these candidates position themselves- -but fails to explore the underlying reasons why they do so. Some intriguing insights but by no means revelatory. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

With the recent election and its media coverage fresh in our minds, Adatto, who writes about popular culture for the New Republic and other publications, offers us a critical framework for reconsidering the power of images in the political process. In her examination of the "rise of a new image consciousness," Adatto finds connections among television news, art photography, and popular movies. She watched videotapes of the three major networks' news coverage of the 1968 and 1988 elections, interviewed media personnel and political participants, and viewed popular movies made from 1968 to 1992. Even though journalists have become sophisticated in reporting on the manipulation of images, their critical commentary has not undercut the power of these images. Adatto traces this power to the use of photographic images and film in popular culture. This provocative book should promote discussion and belongs in academic and large public libraries.
- Judy Solberg, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Park
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.