More New Yorker

[lollardfish]

Ok, so I'm over the New Yorker thing. It's a well-executed cover that successfully encapsulates all of the preposterous lies about the Obamas. It's not a well-executed satire, to do that, they would have needed the image coming out of an elephant's mouth, or something.

Anyway, it didn't work as satire. But now, I hope, every time some idiot tries to spread lies, one can use the cover as counter-ammo.

Comments

[pied-piper70.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as someone who watches and appreciates and studies satire, I thought the execution of the cover was missing a couple elements to make it understandable as satire...Sure it encapsulates all the lies, but does nothing to represent the lies as ridiculous...It's like the artist thought that putting the Obamas in those clothes seemed like enough to make it into "funny/offensive" category and really it only put it in the "offensive" category...There's nothing in the picture to counter the opinion that's being represented...

Rule Number 1: If you have to explain the joke, it's not funny...

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

A cartoonist's take:

"I keep running across the alleged truism that “if you have to explain why a joke is funny, it’s not.”

Sometimes that’s true. But sometimes a joke is not, or maybe more accurately “does not seem” funny because the reader/audience member/whatever lacks the information, reference points, perspective, and/or sense of humor to appreciate the joke.

Humor is subjective."


http://www.thismodernworld.com/

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this. I feel that in this case the image does not successfully direct the reader toward the alleged object of the satire (the people making up negative myths about the Obamas), but instead seems to mock the Obamas in the worst way possible.

It's within the rights, of course, of the New Yorker and the artist to just mock the Obamas, but they have said that this is not their intention. So either they are lying (unlikely), or the image does not effectively reach its intended goal (likely), or the people at the New Yorker and the artist are so clever that what they are actually satirizing is "us" in the broadest possible sense having predicted "our" reaction to the image.

Regardless, if they are telling the truth about their goals, the image does not, I think, meet those goals. I also think they wouldn't do a similar image of McCain the angry, womanizing, war-mongering, flip-flopping, super rich, corrupt, kow-towing to the party's positions, yet pretending to hold a sense of moral superiority. This is just as lampoonable in image, is much more true than Obama the unpatriotic Muslim, yet I think they would never do it.

[pied-piper70.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this. I feel that in this case the image does not successfully direct the reader toward the alleged object of the satire (the people making up negative myths about the Obamas), but instead seems to mock the Obamas in the worst way possible.

I agree...There's no contextual signifier within the picture to denote that they are poking fun at the negative representation rather than at the Obamas themselves...

As the kids like to say: FAIL

Oh I don't know

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

I can certainly think of the cover as a BAD THING for Obama, in that the image is out there and all that--just like all the Fox News 'slips' that create mental links where none need be. But I can't imagine a viewer like myself (ie, one of those culturally elitist New Yorker readers one hears so much about) looking at the cover and thinking "oh, look, the New Yorker thinks that Obama is a muslim and his wife's Angela Davis." I think there is a middle ground, in other words, between taking it as satire with a specific comic zing in mind and taking it as criticism of Obama, and that's pretty typical for New Yorker covers (which are often topical in a less-than-pointed way): a kind of snap-shot of the discourse or something.

Tom Tomorrow (in the link above) gives two other examples of the same artist's covers--one with Obama and Hillary in bed together reaching for the red phone, and one of Buch and his cabinet flooded post-Katrina.