March Analytic Blog Post

For my March analytic blog post, I chose to look at a picture and do a narrative analysis on it. The picture I chose is from 2011, when then President Obama and his national security team monitored the take down of Osama bin Laden.

In Barbastsis’ article “Narrative Theory”, it is noted that as we begin to look at a picture, our attention moves at two different directions at one. This is described as descriptive and logical structure, which is an important concept I want to look at through this photo. The descriptive structure directs our attention outward, and the literal structure directs our attention inward. Looking at this photo in this way, there are so many things happening. In this way, looking at this picture through descriptive structure, the outward understanding we bring to this picture is the understanding of the national relations, the importance of the people in the room and the war leading up to this moment are imperative parts of the narrative. The literal structure makes us look at the literal happens of the picture, the expressions of everyone in the room, the angle of the shot, the tables, the crowdedness of the room.

The descriptive structural reading of this photo could be that several of the most important United States officials are in a room looking at a screen at something happening. The literal structural reading could be that this is a wide shot, with a focus on something outside of the cameras view, with a heavy concentration of people in the right side. These two reading do very little on their own, as Barbatsis notes in the article, and using them together would give a better understanding. For a more combined reading of both I gathered: This picture is a photo of high ranking US officials looking at an important video or picture out of sight, there are only a few most notable officials sitting around a table while others huddle on the right side watching as well, all are in a state of shock and immediately your focus is drawn to Hillary Clinton because of her hand to her mouth in disbelief. Adding the context of the photo, that this was the US Navy SEAL’s live feed of their assassination of Osama bin Laden, the narrative becomes more clear. Although there are more than just the descriptive and literal structures outlined in Barbatsis’ article, I felt that taking the time to look closely at how this structure works and how well it works would be an interesting way to create a narrative.