The Fantastic Four Image by W.J.T Mitchell

Mitchell doesn't talk about image in the strict sense of it being a photographic image, he looks at image from the broader standpoint of the sensory; images of the mind that artists want to transmit to the people who consume content.

He starts with an alarmist argument, presenting religious bans on the creation of images and by extension the worshipping of false idols in the second commandment, which affected a wide range of cultures. He follows by bringing in different chaotic historical events and figures where imagery was used to exert power and oppress. He writes of the idea that news is all bad news which serves as a dark backdrop for the crushing positivity of commercials. Ironically, he kind of uses the same method to introduce his point about human relationship with media.

Mitchell argues we have a primal relationship with images and, in contrast with Kittler and Weibel, spins a positive perspective on human relationship with media which excludes dehumanization through digitization, and emphasizes the idea that humans had a pre existing link to media forms before new media, and a pre existing stigma against images and new forms of media which stretches back to biblical times. He talks of the closeness of images to human nature; "all images are mental things".

Mitchell brings up that people criticise digital images for not being "real". If there aren't images of something dramatic to show by the media then they fill time with image of celebrities and gossip/drama. Importance of context in the setting in which images are presented, advertisting is seen as negative and we don't trust it but if introduced to a gallery setting it changes the perception.

People had a faithfulness of reality, if there was an image of something it was considered immediately of being real.

He argues that the contemporary view of the legitimacy of images is often related to their aesthetic status, which has a redeeming effect on the degraded currency of images.

Mitchell also adds a grain of salt to the concept of the monopoly of writing in saying that the true monopoly is of visual media which includes writing.