Prioritizing Visual Aspects

    When I was in New Orleans with my family the past week, I was surprised by the number of street performers I encountered, each one of them with different talents. One performance that I saw outside when I was in a restaurant particularly drew my attention, which was a man just standing with his dog laying on the ground. The dog was just laying on the ground, facing upward and was holding a bunch of dollar bills in his hand. Within in a couple minutes, there was a big crowd around the man and the dog. There was a different performance going on right by the man and the dog, which was a group of people playing jazz. The number of people watching this performance was considerably smaller than the number of people around the man and the dog. The man and the dog was probably there for  20 minutes and then left, whereas the musicians were still playing and they have already been playing for a long time too.
    I thought it was very ironic seeing this sight because the two performances obviously had different levels of effort and skills required but the one with significantly less effort was making much more money than the other one simply because it involved a cute animal that everyone liked. People decided to give their money to the man and the dog instead to the musicians simply because everyone love cute animals.
    I think this shows the basic thinking of the people in America which is that they get interested in the visual aspects of things more than anything else. The dog was more visually appealing than the musicians playing jazz. I think this thinking can be seen in various other situations. It can be connected to what we have been learning in class, the inequality of African Americans. The unequal treatment of African Americans because of the darkness of their skin could have been an extension of Americans' tendency to judge on the visual aspects.
    Do you think American people prioritize visual aspects more than other aspects?