Can you explain what it would mean for the poster to be racist if the artist’s intention was not racist? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
That wasn’t in reference to this image. In was in reply to your statement about the artist’s intentions in #2 of your list.
And I think it’s entirely possible the artist had a conscious or unconscious choice to use this particular image for its doubled effect. When the message and the image aren’t in sync but people are fawning over it (obviously not here) I start to suspect that there’s a dog whistle being blown.
I just realized that I asked you to explain something that you said was not your argument; sorry about that! I should rephrase: I don’t see much space between your restated argument and what I thought your argument was. If it’s unreasonable to infer that the artist’s intention was racist, is it reasonable to “look at this poster and interpret it as being racist”? If so, why? And what would “racist” mean in that quoted section, if it doesn’t refer to authorial intent?
Can you explain why you think I’m saying the poster is racist when I just specifically denied holding that position? I said it is not unreasonable for someone to interpret the poster as being racist.
I suppose that’s possible, in the “anything’s possible” sense. But given the general inaptitude of the piece, I have real trouble impugning such subtlety and efficiency of symbolism to the artist.
Why are people fawning all over it? I think there are two more likely explanations:
- It’s gotten a lot of media coverage, and a lot of that media coverage is for lame accusations of racism, and a lot of the chuckleheads who make up the “Obama is a Socialist!” brigade love nothing more than being lamely accused of racism, since it validates their sense of not being racist; and
- Though the satire sucks, the art is pretty decent here, and as a conveyance of a sense of general dread about Obama, it works reasonably well, and a lot of these chuckleheads have nothing more than a sense of general dread about Obama.
There’s no reason, I think, to suggest that the author–very good at drawing visual parallels between Obama and The Joker–would do such a poor job at drawing parallels between Obama and minstrel makeup. Someone better than me and worse than the artist at image manipulation could probably spend five minutes with Photoshop and create an image that drew on Obama, the Joker, and minstrel makeup much more effectively (widen the lips, show a couple of teeth, make the eyes bigger, etc.)
Edit: Lamia, again, my apologies, and please see my post immediately above yours.
You just are unable to follow the littlest thing. I am sure the artist did not deliberately try to make Obama look like an old minstrel show character. But that does not mean that he didn’t do it by accident. Over and over I tell you the intent means nothing. What he did accomplish, is that people old enough to remember those times would be jarred by the picture. That is all. Why are you dancing so much to defend a poor position. It is very simple.
I am very familiar with the joker back in cartoon days. That character was not racist. He was a white man that had a disfiguring accident. No harm there. But he wound up with a big wide grin. That is why he was called the joker. A white person with a big wide grin is not demeaning.
But when you transpose the character with a big wide grin to a black person you have to be careful that someone does not remember back when blacks were shown with big wide grins which were insulting . The black grin called a watermelon smile was an insult. Because it was before your time does not make it false. Because you are unfamiliar with it does not make it any less real. You are young and don’t remember back then. Fine, I already figured that out. But where do you get off saying it is not true? Just admit it was before your time and leave it at that. Do not say it is wrong. Because it is not.
You don’t want to make it so that you can’t deny it later. That’s the whole goal. Make a picture that audience A gets and audience B doesn’t. And when audience C brings it up, audiences A and B both argue that it’s not there.
Reminder to those who are only skimming, I don’t think that’s the case in the Obama-Joker picture.
I see you rephrased yourself while I was writing my last post.
It isn’t unreasonable to infer that the artist’s intention was racist if one has already interpreted the image as being racist. It might be unreasonable to insist that no other intent or interpretation was possible, but since the poster has no clear message and the designer is anonymous no one can do more than guess at what the intention behind it was.
Similar to what jsgoddess has already pointed out, it’s also possible to interpret a creative work as meaning something that you do not believe was intended by the creator at all. As an example, the Twilight book series/movie have come up a lot in CS recently, and a good number of other Dopers and I interpret the books as being depictions of a very unhealthy, abusive relationship. But I am well aware that the author and many of her fans thinks she wrote a beautiful romance about a lucky girl who wound up with the perfect guy. Someone could look at this anti-Obama poster and associate the exaggerated big red mouth with minstrel shows and racist caricatures without concluding that this association was necessarily intended by the designer.
Okay, there is a serious disagreement here. I believe that interpreting the image as racist, implies interpreting the intent of the author as racist: the two cannot be separated. (The author may deny racism, but given a sufficiently robust definition of racism, the accusation of racism remains an accusation about a person’s state of mind). You cannot interpret the image as racist without interpreting the artist’s intent as racist.
And I believe that, given the general ineptitude of the artist at conveying meaning, coupled with the obvious parallels to the Joker, it is unreasonable for a fully-informed viewer to interpret the image as being racist. There is simply insufficient evidence to make such an interpretation about the artist (which, again, is equivalent to making an interpretation about the poster itself).
Your point about Twilight is illustrative. Yes, from what I understand, Twilight tells the story of a fucked-up relationship. There are a couple of different interpretations of that:
- The artist is depicting a fucked-up relationship in which sexism does not figure;
- The artist is depicting a fucked-up relationship in which sexism does figure, but is not advocating such relationship and therefore is not (in this respect at least) creating a sexist work; or
- The artist is approvingly depicting a fucked-up relationship in which sexism figures, and therefore it makes sense to call Twilight sexist–which is stating something about the author’s intent, not just about the book.
If you want to argue for point #3, it’ll be insufficient to show that the work has one or two traits in common with traditional sexist works: you’ll need to show that, taken as a whole, that appears to have been the author’s intent.
And to forestall a straw-man that I’m sure you wouldn’t resort to anyway: no, we can never know the author’s intent for certain. Like, we’re all alone in this world, man. Nonetheless, we’re creatures of rich symbolism and power interpretive abilities, and we can make pretty damn good guesses, and we can back up our guesses with evidence.
There’s precious little evidence to suggest that the author had a racist intent. Concluding the work is racist, and therefore inferring racist intent on the author’s part, is putting the cart before the horse, and is using very flimsy evidence to draw a very tenuous conclusion.
- The artist is approvingly depicting a fucked-up relationship that she might not look upon as sexist because she that’s what she has been taught as admirable and painfully romantic and desirable without necessarily thinking it’s achievable.
http://cgi.ebay.com/BLACKFACE-MINSTREL-SHOW-MUSICAL-THEATER-POSTER-NEW-1455_W0QQitemZ270436530581QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090801?IMSfp=TL090801136007r9545
Here is a minstrel show poster. Note the smiles.
As I said with racism, the author’s belief about the sexism of the piece isn’t relevant, if you have a robust definition of sexist. I know you’ve heard people say, “I’m not a racist, but…” Such statements are almost always followed by some sort of noxious racist spew. The author/speaker/artist need not be aware of their own racism/sexism in order for the audience to judge them racist/sexist. Your #4 is my #3, if her beliefs are sexist in nature, and #1 or #2 if they’re not.
gonzomax, indeed, note the smiles: they don’t look like lipstick is involved, the lips themselves extend to the side of the face, the lips are extremely thick, the figures are actually smiling and teeth are showing. In the Obama/Joker poster, there’s obvious (and poorly applied) lipstick, the actual lips look normal-sized, the mouth is extended via wounds that are stitched shut, the figures isn’t smiling, and no teeth are showing. Given that the picture was digitally manipulated, achieving the poor-application-of-lipstick effect was probably more difficult than simply selecting and enlarging the lips would have been.
Compare your linked poster to The Heath Ledger Batman. There are very few similarities between your link and this one. There are a couple of vague similarities between your link and the Obama/Joker poster (enlarged mouths, or at least makeup to enlarge mouths; darkness around the eyes).
There are at least five extreme similarities between the Obama/Joker poster and my link:
-The pancake white makeup (absent in your link)
-The black makeup around the eyes
-The poorly-applied lipstick
-The stitches
-The lack of an actual smile
Someone who knows of the Ledger Joker and of this poster, but thinks the similarities between the poster and old minstrel shows are the relevant symbolic ties, is ignoring obvious facts in favor of a political agenda.
Sure you can. It’s not necessary that the viewer form any opinion at all about the designer’s intent. Even if the viewer does infer that the designer’s intent was racist, so what? What’s so unreasonable about that? It may or may not be correct, but it isn’t unreasonable. The image does have some similarities with racist caricatures of black people, and there are plenty of racist people who have a problem with the president because he’s black.
*If the poster designer is so bad at conveying a message, I don’t see how you can be so certain of their intent. Maybe it was supposed to be racist and the designer just didn’t do a very good job. I could believe almost anything of a person who thinks that the image and caption used in this poster went well together.
*You’re leaving out my personal theory, which is that the series depicts a horrible, abusive relationship in glowing terms but that the author is too stupid to realize that’s what she’s written. I believe she sincerely thinks it’s sweet that for instance the hero breaks into the heroine’s room at night to watch her sleep, and that he started doing this before they’d even begun dating. I have no doubt that Stephenie Meyer would deny that her books are sexist, and that she would honestly mean it. I don’t care. What she has to say about her own work may be of some interest to readers, but she doesn’t get to dictate how people are going to interpret her book. I’m sure she’d deny that her book was boring and badly written too, but that doesn’t change my opinion on the subject.
Try to pay attention to the words this time: I AGREE that the artist’s intent is meaningless. I’ve posted so several times. The additional point I was making was that IF the desire was to marry Obama back to the minstrel days, it would have been very easy for him to include those clear clues I mentioned.
I’m older than you think. (By the way, no snark intended, but I thought you were just out of college.) I remember cartoon depictions like you remember. Even on The Little Rascals and The Bowery Boys. But one must strain desperately to get from there to this poster harkening back to those days. There are too few similarities (already posted) and much to many associations much more closely linked by both time and direct comparison (also already posted).
Whoops. I just got back to my computer and thought I had hit “submit” earlier in the evening. I see that LHOD has supplied another list of reasons why this poster is NOT like those depictions of blacks in minstrel shows. Hopefully that will help you.
Excellent. And note how they are nothing like what is in the Obama poster. Seriously, just put them side by side. You might as well say that every time a black woman wears red lipstick and smiles that she is reminding you of the minstrel shows.
I quoted this excellent explanation in hopes that if gonzomax read it twice it might give him pause.
Then, once again, what does that mean? What does it mean for something to be racist if there’s no racist intent (conscious or unconscious) in the artist’s mind?
I believe such a conclusion is unreasonable because there’s not sufficient evidence to support it. The entire argument for it at this point seems to be
- There are some weak links between the work and old racist caricatures–links much much weaker than the links between the work and the Joker.
- Because the artist sucks as satire, his or her mind is a black box with intentions we may not divine, and therefore any speculation about intent is just as good as any other speculation.
That’s ridiculous.
As for Twilight, again, the artist’s belief about her own sexism is immaterial, with a sufficiently robust definition of sexism. From your description, that sounds to me as though it’s perpetrating some extremely fucked-up gender roles and portraying them positively. I don’t give a stinky crap about whether Meyer considers that sexist, it’s sexist. It shows intent on the author’s part that is sexist: she intends to portray certain gender roles (which, though she doesn’t recognize it, are fucked up) as positive, and that’s sexist.
Now, how can you apply similar reasoning to this picture?
You might have an easier time understanding what I mean if you paid a little more attention to what I’ve actually written. I don’t know how many times I’ve already said that I’m not claiming that the poster is racist, I am saying that it is not unreasonable for someone to interpret the poster as being racist. Reasonable people may interpret a creative work in different ways, and when the work has no clear message then it’s particularly open to different interpretations.
What was in the designer’s mind has no bearing on anyone else’s interpretation of the work. No one can look at that poster and see into the designer’s mind. Whoever came up with this poster had the chance to send a clear message (most political posters are very clear and direct), but either through choice or lack of ability did not do so. This person has also chosen to remain anonymous and thus give up the chance to explain his or her ideas more fully. Any interpretation of this poster can only involve two things: the poster itself, and the thoughts of the viewer.
*Emphasis mine. This is the second time you’ve made this same straw man argument. I ignored it the first time, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use it again. I have never claimed – and I mean both never in this thread and never in my entire life – that all interpretations of a creative work are equal. Some interpretations are better supported by the text than others.
Physician, heal thyself. I’m not claiming you’ve made the argument; rather, you’ve said that such an argument is not unreasonable, and I’ve said that it IS unreasonable, and asked you to explain the rationale behind such an argument. If there’s no supportable rationale behind such an argument, then it’s not a reasonable argument.
Good grief. When you say “no one can look at that poster and see into the designer’s mind,” you ARE making that argument, or at least a weaker version of it. If someone uses the “we’re all islands, man!” argument to justify a shitty interpretation of a piece of art, it remains a shitty interpretation. You have to justify your shitty interpretation beyond just saying, “Well, it’s shitty art, so we can’t know what the person is thinking, so they could be thinking racist thoughts!” or whatever.
Again: if it’s reasonable to interpret the piece as racist, does such an interpretation necessarily entail interpreting the artist as racist? (NOTE: LAMIA IS NOT MAKING SUCH AN INTERPRETATION! good enough?) If it doesn’t entail such insights into the mindset of the artist, what would it mean to make such an interpretation? (NOTE: LAMIA IS NOT MAKING SUCH AN INTERPRETATION!)
I claim it’s not a reasonable interpretation, because there’s no evidence to support such an interpretation.
I’ll apologize both for my own lack of mad comix skillz and the raising of an entirely tertiary point, but…
… the only thing I know about the Joker was Cesar Romero’s portrayal in the TV series and Jack Nicholson’s portrayal in the Batman movie.
Does the Joker have a goal of some kind other than utter anarchy? In the TV series, he was constantly robbing banks or trying to destroy Gotham city; the former, at least, doesn’t seem too per se anarchist in nature.