Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post attempts to enlighten the unenlightened, and he’s produced quite a whopper. Here's a sampling, but it deserves the full read:
"So why the anonymity? Perhaps because the poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the "urban" makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can't openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and '70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling crime rates.
The Joker's makeup in "Dark Knight" -- the latest film in a long franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world -- emphasized the wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes -- don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence. "
In short, Kennicott concludes that the image is racist because the picture’s creator chose to use Ledger’s Joker instead of Nicholson’s.
There you have it.
Or maybe not. Perhaps the “artist” was struck by a resemblance between the publicity still of Ledger and one of the many Time Magazine covers featuring Obama:
If anything, I've always thought Nicholson’s Joker was evocative of Leona Helmsley:
I suppose that makes me a misogynist.
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9 comments:
Silly BS from Mr. Kennecott.
In the absence of anything intelligent to say, cry racism even in forms that do not exist.
The continued unjustified cries of racism and profiling only serve to lesson the stigma once associated with those accusations.
I don't get the racist charge on this one, either. But I found myself vaguely offended when someone dropped this image on my Facebook page, and didn't know quite how to respond. I think what irks me is far from whatever Kennikott's trying to fly as some sort of offending "urban" design -- it's the lack of artistic cohesiveness or even intentional dissonance, or any meaning behind this poster.
The meaning of the two movements is likely unfamiliar to the artist (or those pushing the poster), but it seems the image attempts to mash together two concepts that don't play well: Obama as Heath Ledger's Joker (Anarchist) and the scare text: Socialist and Socialism, amidst a chaos of ha-hahs.
And then there's the use of President as Joker image: one that Vanity Fair did with Bush just last year: Bush: comic book villain. Warming this one over is sort of a strange "I know you are, but what am I" retort.
So, it seems off point to construct some kind of racist reason for slapping a whiteface on President Obama's image. The image isn't scary to me at all. The vicious messages I've seen it illustrating are another matter altogether.
GoHP -
"The vicious messages I've seen it illustrating are another matter altogether"
Are you talking about the vicious messages accompanying the Bush picture to which you kindly linked us?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Mudge, thanks for your comment. I'm sorry if I offended you by linking to the Bush as joker image -- I was simply doing so to show that this same approach to depicting the President as joker was done before, not long ago, in a very prominent publication. It's another reason why I agree that the article GG points to doesn't hold water and why I don't think this image in itself as a racist statement.
But I'll answer your question: no. The link I included was attached to just the image with a title "no joke" -- there's not an accompanying message or article there at all. So, I'm not referring to that non-existent text as scary. But good for you, you figured that out on your own after all. :)
Their are four joker but only Obama look like a real joker.
GHP - Great points. I would only add that I thought the concepts expressed in the "Bush as Joker" image made more sense. I don't agree with them - but they make sense. Bushs detractors often called him a "clown" or "joke", and the artist was attempting to convey the administration was anything but.
Had the creator of the "Obama as Joker" image omitted the tagline "Socialism", I think it would have made a far more impacting statement to me. However, when taken together, I found myself scratching my head like you and thinking, "I don't get the connection." But had the artist replaced "Socialism" with a take on the line from the actual movie, "Some people just want to watch the country burn", it would have made more sense. Again, I wouldn't necessarily agree with the statement, but I would have gotten the connection.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the witty repartee here among some of the smarter people I know--but I have to chime in. I expressed in my original post of the poster a sense of doubt as to why it would be seen as a racial attack, as it did not seem to convey racist overtones to me.
I did not wish to convey any doubt whatsoever as to the impact or effectiveness of what I saw. I did not have a "what's this supposed to mean" moment. I had an instantaneous appreciation of both the picture and the caption on terms that I doubt the creator would be displeased with.
Heath Ledger's Joker espoused mayhem to overturn the established order. The poster conveys Obama as the new Joker, with Socialism as his chosen weapon. Very effective, very easy connection to make.
Sorry, temporarily indisposed at this exchange to write the longest post (a two-parter no less), I believe, in CW history, at the Robert Thorn conversation. Of course, that was as much to stir up Anon as it was to discuss an issue. I apologize if it brings the CW server to its knees and causes another problem at Twitter.
Ghostress - I too have enjoyed the exchange. And I recall an irresponsible reply of mine to one of your posts several months back whereupon I gained a high respect for you in the way you conducted yourself in the aftermath. I concede the debate here, because I have developed a severe case of carpal tunnel at the Thorn discussion, and because I got a bit cynical here as well. But just for clarification, we may have been talking past one another. The "vicious messages" about which I thought you were talking were the comments conservatives had made subsequent to viewing the Obama as Joker poster. My response then, ineffectively it appears, meant to ask you if you had read the replies of more liberal respondents back when the Bush as Joker came out (they were appended to the article to which you linked us). They were, to my admittedly slanted view, no different, if even more "vicious", than those posted regarding the Obama poster. That's all. And you NEVER offend me.
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