More on the Obama shirtsleeves "controversy"

As reported by the Huffington Post.

Washington photos

We'll write a lot more about the inauguration in the next few days, but it's worth noting that the city of Washington is more than ready for its new president to show up. Recently, one of the semi-Obamians had a chance to go to Washington D.C. Not surprisingly, semiotic cues regarding the coming inauguration of Barack Obama were in abundance. 

First there are the ubiquitous t-shirt selling places everywhere. This does not seem odd--save this is for a president (elect). The idea of a president as a cultural figure rather than just a politician is on display here (and everywhere around tourist areas). Note the references to The Matrix and Rocky here--and these are positive ones. That's different from many previous political figures; most cultural references are positive rather than mocking ones.
Below we have a reference to the "Change" part of Obama's message--brought to us in an ad for the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, including more than 850,000 government workers. The ad takes partial credit for the election and invites people to fight for "Change that works." J Ro makes a good point about how Obama's slogan and imagery have now become part of the commercial world. And we see here and in the next photo (and in the countless commemorative and inauguration issues) that corporate interests see in Obama an opportunity.

On the other side of the bus stop is an ad for BET television, which also claims participation in Obama's election.

There is also the "Inauguration Super Store," which displays a variety of t shirts and other knick-knacks, including an Obama figurine. 
Obviously this commercial focus comes from a mix of Obama being a compelling cultural figure, a contrast to the previous administration, and a culture much more adept at adjusting to commercial opportunities.  People want to be a part of this new administration, and one of the ways they can do that is through buying. See Sunday's Curtis (which has provided a compelling narrative about Obama) for more on this phenomenon.
Next store to the Inauguration Superstore was the Zenith Gallery, which had a display of Obama art. Most of the art we have seen so far has been representational and this display is no different, save for the abstract O. Given Obama's presence as a real human being, I think it would be hard to paint Obama any other way. Seeing these paintings reminded me of the portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt painted by my great-grandfather Max Bigman, a WPA artist in the 1930s. The painting is purely representational, even in the midst of widely diverging artistic trends,  as if to say here is a man who cannot be abstracted.


As we will see in 24 hours or so, an Obama presidency will be a reality. The above photos, representative of a much larger semiotic set, suggest that although the story of Obama becoming president is an inspiring narrative, it is also complicated in the way Obama and his images are reflected in political, commercial, and popular culture

--J.S.

Favorite Obama cover?

I'm intrigued by the Utne Reader cover this month. It features a smiling Obama, sporting sunglasses, pointing at the potential reader with the caption "Yes, You Can." For the uninitiated, Utne Reader is a progressive, self-helpish magazine that is often sold in health food stores (as well as bookstores)--it calls itself "are digests of independent ideas and alternative culture. Not right, not left, but forward thinking." Despite its self-description, its demographic is decidedly liberal.

Utne is one of more than a dozen magazines, counting those with special inauguration issues, with Obama on the cover this week. But it's the only one that makes an appeal to cool. The sunglasses and the inclusion of "You," suggests that the magazine is appealing to its progressive audience through the idea that they can be part of what Obama represents and what that represents is cool.

--J.S.

Another video

Ari Melber of The Washington Independent looks at a new Barack Obama video.

LINK: How to Draw a Black Man

We like Dayo Olopade's smart piece on the semiotics of drawing Obama that appeared in The Root not long ago. Along with the gem to the left is a series of sketches and caricatures Olopade collects and reads. According to him, it's particularly tough to draw a black man.

Obama, McCain, and Facebook

One of the changes wrought by Howard Dean in the 2004 campaign was the use of the Internet for political discourse and organization. Without the sophisticated ground game of Barack Obama, however, Dean's people-powered movement only went so far.

Still, the Internet has become more important to the candidates. Obama used the Internet to help outraise Hillary Clinton. And then there are the social networking sites. All the candidates had and have web pages and most everyone had acccounts on Facebook and MySpace, not to mention, Twitter.

Why? It's those darn kids. Many young people now communicate more and more online, have fewer landlines, and are an untapped demographic, still voting at levels well below other age groups, making a tempting target. Other sites have discussed the Internet phenomenon in more depth, so here I want to take a moment to look at the semiotics of Obama's Facebook site and for sake of comparison, John McCain's as well. Looking at these sites shows both the sources of Obama's power and the limits of a medium that requires candidates to conform to the design specifications of the site.

Design. While there are variants between candidates, seemingly the whole point of Facebook's design (at least to this non-user) is to make it simple and easy to use, a template format that can take little tinkering. But in doing so, there is an inevitable sameness, a variant on the old frame design used early in web design. I was also surprised after becoming familiar with social networking through MySpace how uncluttered and clean Facebook was; that despite its popularity with young people, how in its essence, it is a very no nonsense site (though users can certainly nonsense it up!).

For a political candidate, this template is both boon and bane. What does it say that both McCain and Obama have similar pages?




The message behind the design seems to be that in some ways we are all equal, or that we start off the same, a message of basic (technological) humanity, that the candidates are not much different than those who look at the page (of course, we don't have hired staffers to run our pages either). It implies, as does the idea behind the site itself, that friends are just a click away. But it could also signal when looking at two politicians that the two are not so different from one another, which is not a message either candidate is trying to send. Still, even with the restaints that a Facebook page necessarily has, it's not so far from what a candidate would want in a page--a self-chosen photo, some basic information, and links to other information.

Content. Almost everything is the same here, save for the campaign photo that Obama used (which doesn't work as well as McCain's standard issue photo). Note that Obama has more than seven times the supporters as McCain, not surprising for a candidate so oriented toward the young, but much different than polls that have them almost deadlocked.

Content is as restricted as design, and in fact, is not completely controlled by the candidates. Note one of the supporters that McCain has highlighted--the lower right hand corner shows an Obama supporter!


Looking more closely at the Obama content section, where it lists his favorites in a variety of subjects, there are a few surprises--who knew he liked Moby Dick?--but very little that would seemingly disqualify a candidate for office. There are some basic rules for being on Facebook, rules that are even more strict for someone seeking public office. But even though his site might not reveal all that much, it is convenient for users to find out more information, link to videos, and more importantly for the Obama campaign, pass the site on to other Facebook friends and be a willing recipient for what additional information and other material the Obama campaign wants to share.

Why Obama Has the Advantage. It's less to do with the campaign than the medium. Democrats in general have done better with the Internet than Republicans for a variety of reasons, but largely because of recent political demographic trends. There's really not much difference between the two Facebook pages, and that's deliberate on the part of Facebook. It's probably smart for McCain to even have such a page, because it does suggest a politician, even if he gets a few giggles for supposedly being too old for Facebook, at least cognizant of the latest technological trends. Still, as one can see by Obama's huge advantage in supporters (as of earlier this year), that it goes hand in hand with Obama's dominant use of the Internet.

In a while, I'll look at Obama's MySpace and YouTube pages and compare them with other candidates.

Cover-ing Obama: Time Magazine

When Barack Obama appeared on the cover of Time in October of 2006, it was an important moment for a number of reasons.

Until this feature, almost no one thought this senator from Illinois could reasonably contend for the Democratic party's nominee for president--much less actually be president. And yet, there was Joe Klein making a compelling argument that a relatively inexperienced, relatively young African American, with a relatively Muslim sounding name could hold the highest post in the land, be the occupier of the whitest house in the country.

What is most interesting about the cover, though, is the image of Obama. Rather than feature a photo of him and his attractive family or a picture of him giving his now famous speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, the editors of Time chose a close-up--a tight shot of little more than Obama's face, bookended by his trademark ears. Handsome, well-groomed, and ethnically ambiguous, the image oozes an earned, intelligent confidence that is both engaging and mysterious.

For better or worse, the tightly cropped photo of Obama called up Time's embarrassing O. J. Simpson cover, in which Simpson's skin was intentionally darkened by artist Matt Mahurin. One wonders if this flattering (though not altered) photo of Obama was a kind of reverse homage to that cover, a semiotic I'm-Sorry-Don't-Hold-It-Against-Us entreaty. Regardless of intent, though, the effect of this cover was staggering.

John Berger has written effectively about how reproduced iconic images, like that of the Mona Lisa on t-shirts, coffee mugs, ties, the sides of barns, billboards, in Dali paintings, and on postcards, alters how we see, conceive, and feel toward the original image. So ubiquitous is Obama's visage now that it is difficult to remember back to when this image was fresh, when it was exciting, when it may have even been transgressive.

Indeed, contrasting the original Time cover with the "contender" version that appeared in 2007 is illuminating. In the first, the TIME letters are red, here, they are white. Also, in the most recent version, Obama's head occludes the TIME letters, whereas, in the first one, the big, red, TIME font tattoos across Obama's forehead. Notice also how, in the later version, a sort of angelic glow seems to emanate from Obama's body, as if he might be illuminating, radiant, even holy.

Additionally, one can't ignore the camera angle. Positioned just below his waist and shot upward, the perspective makes Obama seem larger than life, even gigantic. The low-upward shot was a favorite for directors in classic Western films. The cowboy, often John Wayne, was frequently filmed from a low angle to reinforce the thematic of the hero as large, capable, and towering. One also wonders if the whiteness of the cover is an attempt to soften Obama's blackness. It's a complicated and extraordinarily delicate subject to talk about--how visual culture represents a person's skin--but the first cover certainly and silently references it where the second seems to obviate it.

One could accuse TIME of cagey visual rhetoric here. Without question, they have manipulated the tools of graphic design, semiotics, and visual iconography to make an argument about Obama's aura, his candidacy, his magnetism, his star status.

The semiotics of both covers reveal how visual culture can alter how we see and how we see images--even those of people who we think we see so often, we are inured to visual rhetoric. But, Obama is a complex text, and almost every group has some interest in shaping how we (and others) read him.