simplicity
complexity is not always the same thing as sophistication. Academics, particularly in the "fuzzy subjects," make a career of blowing so much gas that few people really know what they're talking about, but their colleagues have to pretend they do.
This is why it's possible to compose complete dreck as a joke and get it accepted at conferences.
Too many people seem to equate big words and lots of syllables with intelligent discourse. Maybe they're the simple-minded ones.
As for cartoons and photographs, which version is usually better at getting a point across quickly?