Queer Eye for the Man-Cave Guy

Donald Hall, in his description of “Queer –the verb” writes “the broad social fear is always that the abnormal and degraded will not stay in their assigned place, that ‘secure’ social systems and identities will become unmoored…” (14).  Hall uses the pronoun “their” which seems to imply that he is referring to people who will not remain within the confines of their social roles.  But as readers discover with a reading of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall Paper,” notions of work can be queered as well.  Thus, it is not simply people who must stick to their social parameters; objects and ideas can be queer as well and must be kept in their own spaces.  As a result, we have the creation of the man-cave, Dad’s shed or garage or basement space that acts as a drainage basin for all his stuff.

I’m not prepared to say with certainty the reasons for the existence of the man-cave.  I posit that it originates out of a need for a space which harbors the things wives/girlfriends/partners do not deem appropriate when house guests are visiting.  Although women often require their own space, I was shocked to discover the fan fare surrounding man-caves.  There is a website (http://www.mancavesite.org/) in which men share their man-caves with others (presumably, men).  But what makes man-caves so queer is how diverse they are.  The definition of the man-cave, to employ Sedgwick’s words, traverses socio-economic  boundaries.  Brief exploration of the site shows that man-caves can be places to manifest one’s wealth; in one man-cave we find a billiards table, fine leather couches and a bar stocked with ample, high-end booze.  The man-cave can be neat and organized and simply a projection of our desires.  (Of course, if our partner allowed the man-cave to be in a different, more visible and open space, that would destroy the power relationship.  A wife cannot admit and openly display that she lets her husband purchase”frivolous” things like a big-screen TV if she herself does not have a similar space, though she may have a burgeoning purse or shoe collection, these objects do not constitute a “space” per se and therefore are not equivalent to a man-cave.)

Other man-caves are repositories for plain-old stuff: hats, stuffed –err, taxidermied –animals (which they obviously shot when they were out hunting; never would a stuffed duck be a gag gift they have kept for too long or memory from a frat party), televisions (one is rarely enough), sports paraphernalia, and (maybe even) pictures of other women (although I suppose gay men can have man-caves in which case, the pictures would be of men) etc. They are cluttered, disorganized, full things that hold memories but questionable value.  In either case, the man-cave is queer in that it transcends categorization (there is not “typical” man-cave) and crosses socio-economic borders (they can be for anyone, even middle-class serial killers from Miami).  Dexter has had several caves throughout the series, all of which threaten his un-doing by exposing his identity, if they are discovered.  The Bay Harbor discovery almost brings Dexter’s killing days to an end, though his bachelor pad apartment (pre-marriage) shares the role of the man-cave equally with the ocean as he conceals his blood samples (taken from every victim) inside his air conditioner. After Dexter marries Rita, he compromises and gets a shed which Rita acknowledges in a fashion that makes man-caves all the more normal.

There are no concretes with the man-cave.  What is in it and what is says about our identity always vary.  What man-caves have in common is their ability to threaten our security, particularly the security of marriage.

The Balancing Acts of Mary Poppins and Mulan

In her chapter on sexuation, Karen Coats explains that  “a person has a masculine or a feminine structure according to how he or she is situated with respect to the Name of the Father” (99). Lacanian theory suggests that we are sexed by society not through biological determinants, but rather through a third term, the Name of the Father. This third term, according to Lacan, separates the Symbolic and the Imaginary worlds of a child in their psychological development, which “effectively bars the mother’s desire, inaugurating a chain of substitutions that come to signify and replace the mother’s desire” (20). Essentially, the Name of the Father, which is Law, separates the child from the imagined, but non-existent relationship with the mother, which lies within the Imaginary, and propels them into the Symbolic order, or society.

This perceived separation creates a hole of desire within the child that they wish to fill. According to Lacan, both sexes experience this separation, however men, because the Symbolic is a masculine structure (100), men cannot escape from the loss and subsequent hole created by the separation of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. A woman, on the other hand, can see this lack and “can fill the hole if she wants to, that is, she can act as if the problem of incompleteness can be solved. But-and this is the important distinction – she doesn’t have to” (100). Because of this, women are more capable of balancing between the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

To demonstrate this balancing act, Coats uses the example of Mary Poppins, the loveable, extraordinary, word-jumbling nanny of the Banks children. Poppins acts as foil for George Banks, the father of the children she nannies, challenging his role within the Symbolic, as a man who adheres and subscribes to the Law of the Father. As she rejects masculine structure, she must also, to an extent, reject the feminine role within that masculine structure. Mr. Bank’s wife and his children, act as his symptom, as do past nannies of the Banks children, but Poppins, because she is aware of the fact that the Symbolic “performs what it purports to describe,” she can choose to obey or not to obey the Law of the Father (107). By both challenging and using the Symbolic to her advantage, she is able to change the lives of the Banks family.

Disney has the propensity to support the image of women like Mary Poppins, who transcend gender roles, but also tends to support the Symbolic order. Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, for instance, must change herself for Prince Eric and ascribe to the role of lover, wife and symptom. However, Disney’s interpretation of the legend of Mulan, a story of a woman, set in the 6^th century, who joins the all-male Chinese army, supports the Lacanian theory that “the feminine position…has closer affinities with the Real than with the Symbolic” (101). Although the Mulan does support and strengthen the Law of the Father in some cases, it rejects it in others. In the beginning of the film, Mulan’s father is called to war and, although he is old and disabled, he dutifully accepts his masculine responsibility.

However, Mulan speaks up and disagrees with this law, disgracing her father in the eyes of society, but rejecting that society all the same. In secret, Mulan steals her father’s armor and his summon to war, cuts off her hair and dresses like a man, and joins the army. In doing so, she walks the line between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, not only emotionally, but physically. Much like Poppins, Mulan also uses the Symbolic to her advantage. Knowing that she would not be accepted as a woman, she dresses and attempts to act like a man, convincing her comrades that she is equal to them. She is successful at this, however, because she uses, unbeknownst to them, her knowledge of the feminine structure within the male structure. Eventually, she is able to save her father, her fellow soldiers and even China by rejecting her role as the symptom and creating a new role for herself within, but separate from the Symbolic.

 

Becoming a Real Boy

“A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)”, the 2001 film directed by Steven Spielberg, follows the life of a boy, but certainly no “nor-male” boy. The boy, named David, is a mecha, a super advanced robot that is actually capable of not only emulating, but experiencing emotions and acting on original thoughts. Created by Cybertronics of New Jersey, David is an even more advanced type of mecha, who is able to actually feel love for whomever owns him. He is constructed to look, act, speak and love as a child does, enacting the same imprinting mechanisms that a human child does with its parents, particularly its mother. David especially imprints on Monica, his “mother,” who grows attached to him as well, until her actual son, who was sick, is able to return home and take up his role as a human son.

The story goes on for much longer than this, but first, I would like to address children as a whole. Children are some of the most familiar individuals in the world. Despite cultural differences, they follow developmental characteristics that are universal. Instinctively, the average adult will be protective and caring towards any child they come across, which is essentially ingrained within our psyches. In the most primal sense, we want the next generation, our offspring, to survive.

However, how is one supposed to react to David? He is essentially a child in all of the ways that are familiar to us, and yet he is not. Because he is not made up of the organic matter that we are made of, he cannot be human, no matter how convincing he is. He is not entirely flawless in his child-like state, either. He cannot eat, he does not blink, and he cannot dream when he is “sleeping.” He is the epitome of Freud’s theory of the uncanny, in a sense. He is everything that is familiar and homely, yet he is, concealed from perception, very much unfamiliar and unhomely. Of course, in realizing this, David’s nature is disconcerting and even frightening. He is even more frightening because he plays with our emotions, our care-giving desires. He sparks within us the desire to treat him as something he’s not, manipulating our hearts, even as we know in our minds that he is not what is familiar.

Lacanian theory can also be applied to “A.I.”, although the stages that Lacan applies to child development are skewed due to the fact that David is no ordinary child. After David’s “brother,” Martin, returns home, the two experience a sort of sibling rivalry in which Martin, who has fully been assimilated into the Symbolic, exemplifies. He is a son who has conformed to the Law of the Father. Because of this, he does not understand the queerness of David and is cruel to him, attempting to sabotage him in order to regain his position as the true son. In doing so, David’s defensive “programming” is triggered, and puts the life of Martin at risk. After this event, Henry, Monica’s husband, wishes to destroy David, but she sets off to save him.

In a pivotal scene (0:00-4:30), which I have embedded below, Monica drives David to the woods to leave him there, in order to save him from “death,” but also to separate herself from the unconditional, clinging love that David exhibits. As they drive to the woods, they pass the sign and entrance for Cybetronics of New Jersey, which represents the Father, the Symbolic realm. The creator of David is a graspable, socially real thing, and Monica stops the car, almost as if she wishes to return him, but she instead thinks better of it, realizing that he will be destroyed. She forces her reason, which lies within the Symbolic, out. Instead, she employs her fantasy that David is real, and deserving of life, reverting her mind into the realm of the Imaginary.

As Monica tries to leave David in the woods, he begs and pleads with her not to leave him there, but she, despite the tears she is also shedding, and the pain it causes her, is determined to eject David from her social reality, almost as if she is forcing him into the third term, forcing him to form a new Symbolic order outside of herself, his “mother.” When she and David first developed a bond, she read to him the story of Pinocchio, which convinced him that it was possible for him, despite the fact that he is a mecha, to become a “real boy.” As he begs, he says, “No, mommy, please no. If Pinocchio became a real boy, and I became a real boy, can I come home?” She then responds to him with, “Stories are not real!” However, as Karen Coats would say, stories inform children, shape children into what society expects of them. In this sense, David is frighteningly more real than expected. He is actually capable of taking a piece of society, even though fantastical, and applying it to himself, attempting to fulfill the example that language provides for him.

David, however, is left by Monica, and for the remainder of the film, his one true desire is to return home to her. He is aware of the hole that is missing and wants only to fill that hole with the perceived, yet literally non-existent mother of the Imaginary realm. In his quest, he both adheres to the Symbolic realm, but also diverts from it. He is far more capable of living between the Imaginary and Symbolic because he is not “nor-male.” Eventually, through a ridiculously long succession of events, he is able to have a final, peaceful, blissful day with Monica (who is not actually Monica, but a mecha who holds the memories and physical and emotional characteristics of her), in which he acts out with her all of his desires. In all his life, he does not enter into the realm of the Real, as his desires are not unconscious. He does not even have an unconscious. After all, he cannot dream. However, at the end of the film, he quite literally does. He becomes a “real boy” after Monica finally tells him that she has always loved him. His deepest desire is met and he is no longer stuck in the Imaginary, but instead of moving back into the Symbolic from which he was born, he “for the first time in his life…went to that place where dreams are born.” In entering the Real, he becomes real.

Crookshanks, an Uncanny Cat?

Throughout any reading of the Harry Potter series, it is evident that what we as “Muggles,” have come to associate with the familiarity of animals is not as J.K. Rowling would have us believe. The portrayal of animals is especially prevalent in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which we encounter the familiar faces of Ron’s rat Scabbers and Harry’s owl Hedwig, but we also have a brief stop-over in a wizard pet store; we meet animals ranging from a rabbit that changes itself into a top hat and back again, rats that skip with their tails, and most importantly, a bowlegged, grumpy-looking, ginger-colored cat named Crookshanks. One might call any of the peculiar creatures in Harry Potter uncanny, but upon a reading of Freud’s uncanny, any element of such fictitious stories cannot be considered uncanny: “…[F]airy stories…confirm the first part of our proposition—that in the realm of fiction many things are not uncanny which would be so if they happened in real life” (839). Therefore, skipping rats cannot be considered uncanny because they are meant to be fictitious. Even though Scabbers seems to be an ordinary rat, especially through the first two books and throughout most of this third novel, we are not allowed to see him as uncanny when we suddenly discover that he is in actuality a human, Peter Pettigrew who is an Animagus. However, let us get back to the character of Crookshanks. Here we have an ordinary cat, as J.K. Rowling portrays him. He has no special, hidden powers, besides the fact that he has an uncanny relationship with Sirius Black. His relationship with Sirius when he is Padfoot, the big, black dog, seems quite familiar, and even when he interacts with Sirius as a human the relationship overall appears familiar.

The first scene when we see the relationship between human Sirius and Crookshanks is when Hermione, Ron, and Harry meet up with Sirius in the Shrieking Shack. Here, a lot of information and relationships are unveiled, but it is the relationship between Crookshanks and Sirius that really seems like the uncanniest revealing moment. Much like many other animals, Crookshanks seems to have chosen a preferred acquaintance, demonstrated when he decides to attack Harry while Harry and Sirius fight. He shows his loyalties here in a way that is no uncannier then when two people are fighting and their pet dog decides to bark at one over the other or even tug on a particular pant leg, if the reader doesn’t mind the random tangential example here. However, it is the next instance of Crookshank’s involvement that seems to take his loyalties to his friendly human-dog pal Sirius to an uncanny level. He decides to take action at the moment when Harry’s anger at Sirius is piqued: “…Crookshanks leapt onto Black’s chest and settled himself there, right over Black’s heart” (342). Sirius tries to get him off but Crookshanks only digs his claws deeper, refusing to budge, even as Harry raises his wand to kill Sirius. Now, if we were to consider Crookshanks as an ordinary cat, one that could be seen outside this fictional novel, then I would say that we have an element of the uncanny working here, as Freud says that the situation changes when the writer “pretends to move in the world of common reality” (840). Crookshanks senses Harry’s murderous hatred of Sirius and so he steps in and risks his own life for Sirius’s life. Would your pet cat leap onto your chest when you were in a moment of imminent danger? Maybe so, but it would be highly uncanny.

Zither music

I thought of Carol Reed’s film noir The Third Man, a picture permeated by a subtle uncanniness. Here’s a synopsis for those who haven’t seen it- the film opens on the arrival of the American Holly Martins (a hack writer and a fool) in post-World-War-II Vienna. On looking for the man he came to visit, his old friend Harry Lime, Martins discovers that Harry has just died in a car accident. In the midst of his heartbreak he finds a hole in the official story of Harry’s death and so begins trying to find out what really happened to Harry. I’ll spoil the ending later in this post. Reed complements his pulp fiction plot with a masterful use of the techniques of film noir, plenty of long shadows and off-kilter shots and jolting cuts. These techniques contribute much to the film’s sneaking uncanniness, presenting to us a slightly strange world whose dissimilarities somehow speak to our world.

The film begins by introducing the situation in post-War Vienna: after the war Vienna was split up into four zones by the Allies, each zone governed by an imported police. The center of the city is a fifth zone governed by a multinational police. This has given rise to a confusion of tongues and a bureaucratic mess, a lawkeeper’s nightmare which has led to a booming black market. A psychoanalyst might say that the id has gained the upper hand because of a breaking down of the Language and Law of the Father.

This introduction to Vienna is given by a cheery English accent while charming zither music plays, a joviality unnervingly dissonant with the darkness it rolls over; the voice is that of a professional criminal; it mentions “amateurs” as we are shown a body floating in a river near some chunks of ice; it describes Vienna as “bombed about a bit” while a series of images of Vienna in ruins is shown to us. The voice is in some ways a manifestation of the id: cheerily indifferent to law and culture and ‘humanity,’ closer to the fundamental drives of the organism. The uncanny effect of the introduction is not uncanny by Freud’s definition; it does not play upon “infantile complexes which have been repressed” or “primitive beliefs which have been surmounted” (950 in the blue book). It is rather the uncanny defamiliarization Dr. Johnson speaks of in his post “Bags of Blood”; it shows its audience (originally an audience of the late forties and early fifties) several familiar things (a post-War European city in recovery, the seedy underbelly of a city, the post-War economic boom) but presents those things in an unfamiliar way, (in corresponding order: suffering from its own recovery, gaily, and in conjunction with crime). The truly uncanny thing about this gaiety is its seductiveness; I, for one, went along with it on first viewing, and thought the film was going to be a good romp. Thus this ‘unfamiliar’ gaiety is really familiar, for many of us can easily sympathize with a criminal’s view- he speaks to our own lawless desires, our ids.

Next come the spoilers.

The film’s other prominent id-manifestation is in the form of Orson Welles. As it turns out Harry Lime (played by Welles) faked his own death- he was profiting from a penicillin shortage by selling diluted penicillin (extremely dangerous and often lethal to those who use it; in the film we visit a hospital ward filled with children made deathly ill by Harry’s) on the black market. And then, in this scene, Holly speaks to Harry for the first time:

The uncanny I see in this scene is closely related to the uncanny in the introduction: a cheerful child-murderer appears in an amusement park to sound of the cheerful zither theme. Holly’s ridiculous imitation of the hard-boiled noir hero seems stupid, and one’s first inclination is not sympathy for his side. Especially if one takes into account the hypocrisy of the film’s ‘good guys.’ Philip Kerr points out in his explication of this scene in his essay “Seeing Greene” (included in the booklet of the Criterion edition of the film), that all of the good guys in this film are part of nations (many of the good guys are even ex-soldiers) that have just spent years taking part in the killings of thousands upon thousands of “dots.” What right have they (Kerr asks), or the audience for that matter, to judge Lime?

Thus the scene is a perturbing vision of the uncanny. Our old (childhood?) friend comes back, at once familiar and unfamiliar. (This side of Harry existed when Holly knew him, as we find out in Holly’s allusion to the gambling story; yet Holly’s managed not to remember this before, in his longing to see Harry.) Our friend speaks to a part of us that we find revolting and that we reject as quickly as possible. Yet it is still a part of us. I remember that when I first watched the film the logic of Lime’s offer (of 3.43) momentarily appealed to me. It’s a damn good scene and a damn good film.

Blog Assignment: Psychoanalytical Theory

Blog Assignment 2 (Psychoanalytical Theory)

Length: 500-600 words

For your blog assignment this week, I would like you to explain a key idea from one the psychoanalytical theorists we have read (Freud, Lacan, Cixous). Then, I would like you to illustrate that idea by applying it to a reading of another text, which could be Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” the episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (episode title: “Angel”) that we watched, or some other text of your choice. You might take a look at this post published by a student a couple of years ago as a good model of psychoanalytical interpretation: The Uncanny in Mulholland Drive.

Whether or not Freud is right about castration anxiety, the Oedipal complex, or even the superego, ego, and id, his ideas have been particularly influential on 20th century artists and writers. Thinking back to the Buffy episode and to Zizek’s comment on Psycho, the repetition of using the architecture of the house (2nd floor, superego; ground floor, ego; underground, id) to visually represent the human psyche suggests that artists are drawing on Freud’s ideas (consciously or unconciously).  The fact that artists are using those ideas doesn’t necessarily mean that Freud is correct in his understanding of the human psyche, but it does point to the necessity of knowing a little bit about Freud in order to see how modern and contemporary artists have shaped their own understanding of psychology.

All entries should be published by Monday at the latest.

Semiotics of Advertising

In her article “A Gentleman and a Consumer,” Diane Barthel looks at the way advertising in the last part of the 20th century tackled the task of selling beauty products to men—by taking what would traditionally be unmanly consumer items (perfumes, etc.) and associating those products with conventionally masculine traits. Barthel observes that “different cultural attitudes toward both the social person and the physical body shape the gender roles of men and women” (172). Advertisements directed at either group can provide a kind of snapshot of gender roles in a society at a given moment. In a time when attitudes about gender are in flux, advertisements may also be revealing of new identities in the process of being  formulated.
Building on the work of semiotician Jean Baudrillard, Barthel observes that because advertisements directed at women sometimes use male imagery (and vice versa) we might more accurately speak of “two modes” of advertising that “do not result from the differentiated nature of the sexes, but from the logic of the system. The relationship of Masculine and Feminine to real men and women is relatively arbitrary” (172).

Barthel continues:
The feminine model encourages a woman to please herself, to encourage a certain complacency and even narcissistic solicitude. But by pleasing herself, it is understood that she will also please others and that she will be chosen [because of her beauty]. . . Whereas the feminine model is based on passivity, complacency, and narcissism [on making herself into a beautiful object that will be chosen], the masculine model is based on exactingness and choice. . . . The key words are masculine terms: power, performance, precision. [In car ads], the car is not simply other; it is also an extension of the owner. . . . Its power is his power. (172-73).
As a group of traits, or, as what we might call the signified content of advertising, power, performance, and precision appear as selling points for a wide variety of products (shampoo, bath soap, etc.) directed at male consumers. The trick of the ad is to associate a particular signifier (e.g. deodorant) with a particular signified (power). Not only can “powerful odor protection” mask our natural human scent, but the power and prestige associated with the product becomes ours as well.

With vehicle ads in particular, we might note that “toughness” is another valued masculine quality. This ad is from 2001, taken from Men’s Journal.

Like the owner, this truck is “built tough,” able to take a beating and keep on going. The photograph of the truck shows it in action, emphasizing not only toughness but power.

Take a closer look at the copy—what’s with the completely gratuitous France-bashing?

There are real men who drive Ford trucks, and then there are wimps who shave their legs. The wimps are in France.

Compare this ad to another 2-page vehicle ad, this one for a Dodge, which appeared the same year in the magazine Shape.

“Slip into something more comfortable” this ad suggests, and, to make that comfort clear, we have the juxtaposition of the red-tinged photo of the women wearing bunny slippers with the photograph of the red Dodge Stratus. The passivity of this feminine mode ad is indicated by both the stillness of the car (not photographed in motion as in the truck ad) and the comfortable stillness of the model in her bunny slippers.  Women in feminine mode ads are often depicted seated (or reclining);  masculine mode ads often emphasize action.

And speaking of action, check out the advertising copy for Old Spice’s Red Zone “Swagger” body wash:

The Red Zone is a bleak, maze-like environment where lasers fire in random directions and the sky is always filled with lightning. Odor never dares enter the Red Zone. The Old Spice man, on the other hand, flourishes in the Red Zone, throwing touchdowns, doing recon and saving females from danger, all while smelling great.

Power and performance indeed!

If perfume can give a man swagger, we shouldn’t be surprised at what his sandwich can do for him. This Subway ad emphasizes the tough guy boldness of its new sandwich, associating it with such traditional signifiers of masculinity as motorcycles, tattoos, and desert landscapes. One version of this commercial that I saw ends with the voiceover comment, “It’ll burn the wimp right out of you.”

Remember when Subway ads featured the bespectacled gentle-looking Jared who lost all that weight eating subway sandwiches? I guess Subway is going back to Old School traditional masculinity over new models of masculinity represented by figures such as Jared.

So, here comes the assignment part of the post. Over the next couple of weeks, start looking around for advertisements. Find two advertisements to post and discuss. The ads could be posted as videos, or you could provide links to an on-line advertisement, or you might upload a photo (as I’ve done above). Analyze those ads in terms of Barthel’s observations, discussing the way the ads employ masculine or feminine modes, the way they deploy signifiers of masculinity or femininity to associate those qualities with the products being sold.

For the two ads, you might choose one ad directed to men and another to women. Or, you might choose two ads directed to the same sex but that use two different modes (e.g., one ad directed to men using the feminine mode, the other ad, also directed at men but using the masculine mode). Or, you might even try for two ads that use the opposite mode for the gender of the audience (a feminine mode ad for a male consumer, a masculine mode ad for a female consumer).

Your final blog post should be between 250-500 words. The due date is floating. Publish your post at any time once you’ve finished, but I would like to have all posts published by September 24. The Diane Barthel article is not one of our reading assignments, but I can provide you with a copy of it if you’d like to see the whole piece rather than just the excerpts above.

See the How to Publish Your Post page (the link is on the bar above the header) for instructions on using the WordPress interface. If you have any trouble figuring out how to post, just email me or stop by during office hours, and I’ll give you a quick overview.

Diane Barthel. “A Gentleman and a Consumer.” Signs of Life in the USA. Ed. Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford, 2003. 171-180.

Sarah Palin: someone who can be trusted?

 

 

I chose Sarah Palin’s official portrait as my photograph, which is also on her official website, and there are two things that struck me most about this picture. First, she is looking staight at the viewer and into the camera, and her body and face are completely square and facing forward. this gives her the image of frankness. she is almost leaning forward with her arms inverted, like she is leaning into to tell whoever she may be looking at a secret. this makes her seem more personable and friendly, like a girlfriend that can be trusted. i think it is in this way that it is a very feminized photograph, for i dont think there are any pictures of john mccain, barack obama, or joe biden (or any male politicians, for that matter) with quite the same posture, leaning forward with both arms in. we can see that her campaign is really pushing the “first female vice president” idea. this seems to be a different approach from, for example, the picture of palin with the freshly shot elk, where she is portrayed as “the first vice female president who is also quite rustic and outdoorsy. look how rugged she is! that is exactly how she will protect our country.” here, she is a woman VP contender who will keep your secrets, america’s secrets, and has nothing to hide from us. as george bush may be to many people “the president you could have a beer with”, plain is depicted as “the VP you could have a cup of tea with, and then polish off a rack of elk meat”. she is feminine, yet strong and honest looking, which is probably an important aspect of her and mccain’s campaigning because the trust americans have in republicans has been slowly dwindling within the past…eight years.

a second thing i noticed right away was the color of her suit, bright red, a risky choice for such an official photograph. this not only contributes to making palin more “feminized”, for a red suit is probably only appropriate for a woman to wear when campaining in politics (imagine john mccain in a red suit?!?) At the same time, however, red is also a very aggressive color, and red amkes her not only stand out more but makes her seem like a “go-getter”, someone who is assertive and will make her assertive nature known, by force if necessary.

the depictions in this photograph, then, are manipulating the viewer into associating many things with palin: assertiveness and frankness, as well as feminine and someone who can be trusted.

McCain, McCain, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, no one can!

Here’s our buddy, John McCain, the guy who always puts his country first.

The first photo is the banner on his official home page, the welcome mat to his “Ready From Day One” biography of his career.  The photo is a three-quarter view of the candidate, beckoning the viewer to look towards one of his campaign slogans, “Always Putting Country First”.  The bold white letters against the blue background are evocative of the 50 white stars against a blue backdrop that can be found on our nation’s flag.  This connection isn’t hard to make since there are actually stars displayed faintly in the background; they really don’t leave much to the imagination, do they?

The position of McCain’s face suggests the “looking towards the future” ideal, and I assume that he is referencing the future of our country since he is always putting it first.  The future McCain is looking towards is outlined in his biography below the picture, which discusses his mission to reform Washington.  The stars in this case could also be viewed as suggestive of the universe, which lends itself to the whole “gazing into the future” idea; McCain must be shooting for the stars!

The actual image of his face is softly lit, which emphasizes his wrinkles a bit, and it does the same thing for his white hair.  He is formal in this image, wearing his suit and giving a speech in an arena in the photo that sits on the other end of the banner.  These are like his “game-face” photos, showing his professionalism and animation on the floor.  The picture to the left plays up his grandfather appeal quite a bit, making him a paternal figure looking over our nation.  You might even say God-like.

Ironically, just underneath this banner, is another three-quarter shot of McCain, this time in his “I’m the average, all-American guy that lives next door to you” baseball cap and button down.  I would bet anything that he’s probably got a pair of Levi’s on too.  This picture stands in juxtaposition to the first, making his wrinkles seem more like laugh lines and showing off his full set of teeth- not dentures!  The baseball cap (reading NAVY- still putting country first!) hides his white hair, as well as all the forehead wrinkles.  This picture seems to be acting as a balancing act to reach audiences of all ages and interests.

Obama goes “Old School”

“A photograph is a mirror, what we are asked to read is the familiar, the known; it offers to the voter his own likeness, but clarified, exalted, superbly elevated into a type” (1465). If we take a look at this photograph of Barack Obama, from his official website, and compare it to the ones I have selected of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy- we definitely see the “familiar” that Barthes speaks of. The essence of King and Kennedy is echoed through this photo of Obama. Not only is Obama’s photo in Black and White like those of Kennedy and King, but the some of the components of their photos are repeated in his. The view of Obama is between a full and three-quarter face, as is King’s; and he also is casting his eyes upward as Kennedy does in his photograph. As Barthes tells us, “a three-quarter face…suggests the tyranny of an ideal: the gaze is lost nobly in the future, it does not confront, it soars” and when the eyes look above, “the face is lifted towards a supernatural light which draws it up and elevates it to the realm of a higher humanity” (1465).

It is as if Obama it trying to even further distance himself from the current administration and their agendas by transcending time. He has created a “throw back” to a time when things were in some ways simpler and more hopeful; a time when the American people had faith and belief in their candidates. JFK was such a popular president, a man of the people- to attempt to emulate his spirit through this photograph is a smart choice. Also, through evoking the character of King he is showing not only his support for minorities in this country, but also his publicized platform for “Change.” What two Americans would be a better choice to echo in this photograph? Through the likeness in Obama’s photo, to the above photos of King and Kennedy, he is calling on the youth, spirit, racial awareness, charisma, determination and wisdom of these two men.

When looking at this photo I notice the “thumbs up,” perhaps a subliminal “every thing’s going to be ok” to the American people; as well as the waving flag in the background representing his patriotism. The phrase “Meet the Candidate” implies that he is the only choice- he is “THE” candidate to win, “THE” candidate to lead this nation. Another element of this photo that really stands out to me is the “halo” effect that has been imposed on Obama’ image. This greatly adds to the elevation of his persona, in this photo there really is a “supernatural light” that adds to the candidate’s “blessed” persona. I think that through the attractiveness and magnificence of the image and the apparent correlation with past photos of iconic, celebrated men- it is clear that Barack Obama fits Barthes category of the “good-looking chap, whose obvious credentials are his health and his virility” (1465).

-HIQ