Martin & Rose (2007: 326):
As the boy directly faces the viewer, his defiance/celebration engages us directly, but at the same time his oblique gaze averts a potentially confronting challenge to the viewer. The message is not that I’m defying you, but is rather an invitation to join us in the victory over injustice.
Blogger Comments:
[1] This is misleading, because the boy does not directly face the viewer. His face is oriented to the left and down, relative to the viewer, his eyes further to the left, and his body tilts down and faces to the right of the viewer.
[2] To be clear, the authors' claim that the boy is expressing defiance is inconsistent both with the occasion, the inauguration of Mandela as President, and with other photographs of children purported to depict defiance, such as:
[3] To be clear, as previously observed, this is 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996), but misrepresented by Martin & Rose as 'engagement' in the appraisal sense.
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