*Another* Time Cover

We were going to follow up our man of the year post with a provocative reading of Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" and its Jeff Faiery-like cover. We were one of the early readers of the Faiery posters when they started popping up around Los Angeles and here in San Francisco, and we looked forward to returning to that kind of text. But, alas, The Practice Blog beat us to it, with a smart decoding of the cover (at left).

Given the weirdness of some recent Time covers, this neo-Faiery choice is both smart and intriguing. Interesting to us is that when lauding the "person" of the year, the editors at Time chose to forgo the representational route, offering instead an image, or, more precisely, an iconic image of the president elect. One wonders if the magazine is celebrating the person or the image.

By placing the Faiery-inspired image on the cover, Time acknowledges that this kind of fringey street image has become the putative visual marker of Obama's campaign. Also, with its roots in the WPA posters of the FDR regime, Time might also be making a semiotic connection between the kind of economic situation FDR faced and the one President-elect Obama will encounter on inauguration.

One thing is certain: the Faiery images embody the hope that many people have invested in Obama--hope that he, FDR-like, will be able to lift them out of the intellectual, economic, and political depression of the last eight years.

---D.R.

Entertainment Weekly on Obama and pop culture

Benjamin Svetkey speculates on what our president-elect might mean for the entertainment industry. My own take is that it won't mean too much immediately, unless you count news programs as entertainment--the interview with Barack and Michele Obama was one of 60 Minutes's largest audience in years. More about that later...

--J.S.

Obama, CA

We're grateful to Jan Davidson of Olema (or is that Obama), California for sending us the photo to the right.

The small town of 55 souls is positioned just about an hour north of San Francisco on the lovely Highway 1, just a Palin's throw from the Pacific Ocean. Though Olema has not officially changed its name to Obama, Kelly Emery's sign might lead passers-by to assume the opposite.

A Marin county code allows political signs on personal property, and Emery (below) installed this one on the site of her Bed and Breakfast. So far, residents seem to be both pleased and amused by the sign, perhaps because they expect to see the senator crossing the street.

One of the things we like about this text is its seamless merging of Obama iconography and the semiotics of normal traffic signs. It sends the message that an idea of an Obama presidency has already become part of the literal and cultural landscape.

The Second American Revolution

We like this short YouTube video, in part because it works as a foil to a longer, more widely circulated piece by the right wing. Also advocating a second revolution, it features an actor portraying Thomas Paine, who argues why one language, one culture, no diversity, and no minority rights evince the kind of common sense approach Paine made famous. Of course, Paine was anti-uniformity, anti-slavery, and anti-capital punishment. Almost no one was more pro-Democracy.

What I like about this piece is its play on bullets vs. ballots. It aligns Obama's ability to galvanize a people with the staggering resolve it must have taken to convince early Americans to revolt against the tyrannical British rule. However, this new revolution arises out of the energy and will of the masses and the participation in Democracy's most cherished (if most recently underminded) right--the vote.

Plus, Obama looks good in the powered wig.

Barack Barns

Over on DailyKos, farmbo posted this dairy on barns painted with Barack Obama logo in Ohio. 

It's an interesting (if perhaps inadvertent) comment on the perception that Democrats generally and Obama specifically have difficulty with rural voters. If a farmer is willing to paint a barn with Obama's logo, that probably indicates a comfort with how his community will receive it. 

While the job is quite professional looking,  advertising on barns is not limited to politics...

Obama Wants You!

When I first saw the image to the right, I was mystified.

It was without context, so I was not sure if it was an anti-Obama piece of propaganda, meant to portray him as a kind of scary American icon, recruiting Obamaniacs into his fold, or if it was a pro-Obama piece that plays off the original Uncle Sam, urging young Americans to be patriots.

Either way, it remains one of the most striking examples of Obama semiotics.

According to its creator, James Montgomery Flagg, the original poster of Uncle Sam was, at one time, the most popular poster in the world. It first appeared on the cover of a magazine called Leslie's Weekly in 1916 and went on to be every red-blooded American boy's avuncular patriotic conscience, urging him to join his brethren and protect the United States of America.

The Obama version plays with and off of these associations in startling ways. On one hand, the Obama Sam also asks Americans to be patriots and join their brethren--but in change. Like the original image, Obama is draped in the semiotic garb of the United States, all top-hatted and blue-cloaked, and he, too, beseeches us to help him protect America from the forces out to destroy it--a weak dollar, bigotry, a failed war, curtailed civil liberties, and Republicans.

Most interesting is the absence of any text with Obama Sam. The image--its ubiquity and its power--is enough. Anyone who knows the iconic original will get this new version. However, what you think about Obama may influence your interpretation of the image. In this case, semiotics is also politics.

Recently, another image has started popping up--the one on the left. I like it, but less. The representation of Obama is rather lame; he looks too much like he's picking teams for basketball, and he wants you to be his small forward. Notice how this sign plays with the text of the original but not so much its subtext. It has no power, no cultural memory, and almost no patriotic associations.

But back to the first Obama image above. What I like most about Obama Sam is its inversions. The old guy becomes the young guy. The scary guy becomes the hopeful guy. The white guy becomes the black guy. It plays on all of the xenophobic, protectionist emotions the original Uncle Sam posters were designed to elicit and turns them on their heads. It turns fear into hope.

What it says is that Uncle Sam may have wanted you for the old America; but Obama Sam wants you for the new one.

--D. R.

Yes We Can

7,575,885.

That's how many hits WeCan08 on YouTube has received for the "Yes We Can" music video. Add to that ever-increasing number another 9 million hits from other YouTube users who have uploaded and hosted the video, and you have over 17 million viewings of a political ad that did not occur during American Idol, the Super Bowl, or 60 Minutes. Such is the effect of Barack Obama, such is the nature of the Internet, and such is the lure of well-timed and well-produced visual culture.


At 4 minutes and 30 seconds, the clip is long for a video, short for a film. It features a host of A, B, and C list celebrities speaking and singing alongside Obama as he delivers his now legendary "concession" speech after the New Hampshire primaries. Developed by the Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am and directed by Jesse Dylan, the video has been nominated for a Webby Award. Not surprisingly, it is a rich semiotic text.

On a purely visual level, the video is simple. There is a split screen--Obama on one side, and usually the celebrity on the other, though the frames interchange, sometimes showing two Obamas, two celebrities, or the words, "Yes We Can." By choosing to do the video in black and white, will.iam and Dylan create a text that echoes protest films of the 60s and 70s. Something about its black-and-whiteness both reminds the viewer of the issues of race in the campaign and obviates them at the same time. It feels from another time; a time when young people and rock musicians worked together to topple the system.

What lifts the video--for better or worse--above that of a merely visual text is the music, which both annoys and inspires. The actors "sing" or chant the words of Obama's speech concurrently with Obama. Their voices thump out alongside the accompaniment of a folksy acoustic guitar. will.i.am steals the show, here, as does Scarlet Johansson. Both are understated in their star capacity, deflecting the spotlight to Obama. Harold Perrineau, Jr., Aisha Tyler, and Maya Rubin are also good. The biggest surprise and the most unexpected treat is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, since he looks both lost and stoned throughout.

At times, some of the celebrities seem as though they will burst into tears, they are so overcome with emotion. John Legend is intolerable in a campy filled-with-the spirit-over-the top performance that begs for attention. Esthero, despite her fantastic albums, is not much better. Indeed, if the video suffers from anything, it is the self-importance of the project reflected in the expressions and earnest performances of the folks involved--as though the actors' contributions are as impactful and important as Obama's.

That said, there is no denying the video is powerful, even arresting at times. The editing, expertly done, creates a sense of happy multi-ethnic democracy. The genuine emotions of those involved make you believe that if Obama is elected president, we might all feel this sense of hope and possibility.

And, one can't discount the speech itself, already a classic. But the real impact is the idea of the video itself--that so many celebrities (not a group known for their political gravitas) would rally so wholeheartedly behind a political candidate for a YouTube project.

One can ask if the video is art, a campaign document, an advertisement, or propaganda, but nowadays, the distinctions among those genres feel arbitrary and are of little use. The chorus of "yes we can" may sum up the aspirations of the Obama campaign and his candidacy, but does it also speak to its target audience? As an Internet text, "Yes We Can" is successful. Ultimately, though, it is worth asking if this video at this moment will catalyze this generation of young people to vote for this candidate.

Welcome to SemiObama

Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else.

--Umberto Eco

One of the most striking phenomena in contemporary American culture is the ascendancy of Barack Obama as a symbol. He stands for so much for so many people--hope, possibility, racial equality, vision, youth, energy, and change. In fact, he is, in many regards, no longer just a person; he is an icon. For a great number of people, especially young people, he stands for America's most positive values, while to some, he embodies America's most unattractive fears and anxieties. Regardless of how one feels about Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic candidate for president of the United States, one cannot ignore his ubiquity. He is everywhere: on t-shirts, on YouTube, across magazine covers, on television, and in nearly every meaningful publication around the world. So saturated is our media with images of Obama, it is now, officially, approaching the level of high camp.

SemiObama is here to do something about that.

With a sense of humor and a sense of history, SemiObama seeks to
offer insightful, innovative, and informative readings of representations of Barack Obama in popular and visual culture. This publication is not concerned with parsing Mr. Obama's politics. Rather, we are interested in unpacking and decoding the visual texts of and about Obama. In other words, SemiObama is dedicated to offering semiotic readings of various Obamian texts as they make thier way into our culture and come to signify ideas, values, and beliefs beyond the candidate himself.

In addition to his observations about semiotics and signs, Umberto Eco also suggests that semiotics is the "discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie," so we will also look closely at visual Obama texts that are used, both by the idealistic and the idiotic, to mislead.

We hope you have as much fun reading SemiObama as we will have have reading (and writing about) the semiotics of Obama.

We can be reached at semiobama@gmail.com. Feel free to contact us with ideas, suggestions, and criticisms.