Terror pelo vazio de imagens, triunfo do "visual" jornalístico

Jean-Luc Godard, "Comment ça va?" (1978)

In an old issue of CAHIERS DU CINEMA, ten years back, he [Godard] asked us to illustrate an interview with him by putting in big white spaces blocked out with lines and captioned "here, the usual photo." It was a way to say that in any case, photos serve to paste over a void, to decorate, to supply what I now call "the visual" - but not to show anything. By leaving the space empty, he showed the possibility of not pasting over. Today I have the feeling that we've lost, that Godard has lost, and that the media - with the TV in the lead - forbid us to think : "Hmm, we're missing an image, let's leave that slot empty, let's wait to fill it." The fear of the void is so strong that it takes us over as well. The void is no longer a dialectical moment between two fulls, it's what you must "make them forget."

Serge Daney, «Before and After the Image», publicado em 1991 na Revue des Etudes Palestiniennes, retirado daqui

(A questão mais premente nos estudos de jornalismo e ciências da comunicação, mas que nem por isso é dissecada como deveria nalgumas faculdades da especialidade.)