ABSTRACT
This chapter provides distinction between two different aspects of visual literacy: first, familiarity with the formal conventions of visual media; second, familiarity with the cultural content conveyed through these conventions. The presence of a substantial scholarly tradition, bolstered as it is by some seemingly telling anecdotes, may suggest that the case in favor of the visual-literacy assumption is closed. Most of what has been said concerning pictures also holds for images on film or television. As far as single shots are concerned, the need for visual literacy should be even less with contemporary visual media than with pictures, since the gap between picture and reality is reduced by the presence of movement. The creation of a coherent space/time continuum out of the fragments presented in a movie or TV program is evidently one of the central intellectual tasks that visual media demand of their viewers.
