"It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words"
About this Quote
Marston is making a heresy sound like a public service announcement: sorry, book people, the image wins. Coming from a psychologist, the line isn’t a casual hot take about attention spans; it’s a claim about how minds actually take in meaning. Pictures don’t merely illustrate a story, they shortcut the bottlenecks of language - literacy, patience, translation, social class - and hit the brain’s pattern-recognition machinery at full speed. That apologetic nod to "literary enthusiasts" is doing rhetorical work: he flatters the educated reader while quietly dethroning them.
The context matters. Marston lived in an era when mass media was rearranging public life: film, advertising, comics, political posters. A psychologist watching those forms rise would notice how quickly images create emotion, identification, and belief - often before the conscious mind has time to argue. In that light, "more effectively" is almost clinical: effectiveness as measurable impact, not aesthetic superiority.
There’s also a provocative subtext about power. If pictures tell stories better, whoever controls pictures controls the shared reality. Words invite debate; images feel like evidence. They can smuggle ideology under the cover of immediacy, making persuasion look like perception.
Marston’s phrasing lands because it frames a cultural shift as an inconvenient truth. He isn’t mourning literature so much as diagnosing a new storytelling economy: one where narrative authority moves from the page to the visual field, and the audience expands precisely because the gatekeeping skills of reading and interpretation matter less than the visceral instant of seeing.
The context matters. Marston lived in an era when mass media was rearranging public life: film, advertising, comics, political posters. A psychologist watching those forms rise would notice how quickly images create emotion, identification, and belief - often before the conscious mind has time to argue. In that light, "more effectively" is almost clinical: effectiveness as measurable impact, not aesthetic superiority.
There’s also a provocative subtext about power. If pictures tell stories better, whoever controls pictures controls the shared reality. Words invite debate; images feel like evidence. They can smuggle ideology under the cover of immediacy, making persuasion look like perception.
Marston’s phrasing lands because it frames a cultural shift as an inconvenient truth. He isn’t mourning literature so much as diagnosing a new storytelling economy: one where narrative authority moves from the page to the visual field, and the audience expands precisely because the gatekeeping skills of reading and interpretation matter less than the visceral instant of seeing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by William
Add to List
