As discussed in the previous posts, when illustrating articles about strengthening marriages, TIME magazine chose to use wedding imagery. Rather than show its readers a view of marriage as a living, growing organism, the magazine opted for a snapshot of the wedding day, with an emphasis on external forces tying the couple together (possibly against their will).
The image leaves no space for the family because it focuses entirely on the bride and groom – no children in sight, and there would hardly be space for them on the wedding cake anyway.
Is there a reason wedding images show up so often when we try to picture marriage?
Media representations, which try to appeal to a larger audience, have no use for complex or personal images that speak only to a few and the concept of marriage tends to fall into that category. Wedding images are simpler and very effective, and so they often stand in for marriage. We do tend to be far more drawn to wedding images – seeing them as clear, powerful, pure. Thus, wedding imagery often eclipses marriage in our imagery, and in our symbolic language, we begin to equate wedding with marriage.
This image, for example, was uploaded to Photobucket.com by daliafairy26 with the title: marriage. If you search Photobucket for the term “marriage” you will find an awful lot of wedding images (click on the image above to see the search results). Does that mean that every image of marriage will always be a wedding-related one? Of course not. But the ease with which the wife becomes the bride bears some examination.
Filed under: Conclusion, magazines, marriage
