Visual Culture and Freedom of Speech

This week in class we discussed how the culture we live in can be classified as a visual culture. One of the many examples that comes to mind was the infamous New Yorker magazine cover where Barack Obama and his wife Michelle appear fist bumping each other dressed as people from Iraq. This image was made into a cartoon after a picture of them was taken at the democrat convention after Michelle said her introductory speech. What is interesting about this is how sometimes visual culture can lend itself to obstruct the freedom of speech all humans have as American citizens. I do not mean to side with the person who drew this cover and his/her beliefs but this person got denied his/her right to freedom of speech because of the visual culture we live in. The social implications of this cover brought a lot of controversy and scandal for the newspaper as well as for the creator of this cartoon and i believe that no matter what the beliefs of this person have to be respected because of freedom of speech. We can see how being such a visual culture can affect the different rights we have as human beings.
Another example is the picture from 9/11 which shows a man falling into his death from one of the top floors of the World Trade Center. I remember reading about this picture in my writing class freshman year and how there was a search for the identity of this man. Something that was mentioned in the reading I did freshmen year was the fact that there was a person that was suspected to be the man falling but his daughters denied that his father would do such a thing. This belief comes from the fact that they belong to a Christian family and suicide is considered something selfish and that would ultimately take you to hell. Once again our freedom of speech is limited thanks to what a picture symbolizes in our visual culture.
Although our culture has grown to be very perceptive of images and creates social parallels to them, we should remember that these also reflect the artistry and creativity of the photographer beyond this image.