Obama Art

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

...and that, imo, is a problem. Hollywood is make believe and celebrity/movie star groupies are all too often lapping up the superficial glitter of a person and never understand the substance.

Plus, charisma is both a blessing and a potential diabolical tool. Remember, some of the most horrible depots and evil women and men in history had great charisma, luring the unknowing (or more likely the unwilling to know) into their power grip.

Regarding the well circuluated "art" of Obama's image in red and blue, I think it looks more like a Chez Guevara poster or other revolutionary leader than anything Americana.

I agree! That makes me very uncomfortable for some reason.
I don't like the comparison. I hope it is purely unintentional.

It could be intentional irony--in a good way (IMO, of course).

It could also be straightforward, POST  irony--which is actually very Obama (again, IMO).

Look at this, published about six months before the Fairey poster; very red, white-beige and blue, anyway. Interesting:

DC Comics
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters
cover
November 2007 issue

http://www.comictreadmill.com/CTMBlogarchives/2007/2007_Monthly/2007_11.php

Intentional? Very. (Look at the star, look at the hair.)

Anyway, interesting....

[Mikaela]

Mad Magazine
Cover
March 2009 issue

They truly have managed to portray the bizarro-Obama! Whatever happens, I just cannot imagine him ever looking like this. He's the ultimate poster person where calm, cool, and collected is concerned. I bet that characteristic was very possibly the single most important reason for many people who voted for him.

---

Concerning the other issue at hand and the possibility of the Fairey poster intentionally drawing on the Che image - that doesn't bother me the least. (And I'm not a Che idolizer, by any means). I don't see the Fairey portrait as as comparison between two persons at all, but if the similarity is intentional and not just unavoidable, the Obama image manages to re-invent, re-invigorate and re-possess a political form of expression that had grown stale, powerless, over-used and utterly diluted with the Che image. I mean, Che is everywhere! Used in so many inane contexts by people who only have the vaguest idea who Che Guevara was and did and represented.

[loneleeb3]

It could be intentional irony--in a good way (IMO, of course).

It could also be straightforward, POST  irony--which is actually very Obama (again, IMO).

Look at this, published about six months before the Fairey poster; very red, white-beige and blue, anyway. Interesting:

DC Comics
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters
cover
November 2007 issue

http://www.comictreadmill.com/CTMBlogarchives/2007/2007_Monthly/2007_11.php

Intentional? Very. (Look at the star, look at the hair.)

Anyway, interesting....

VERY Interesting!
Wow!
Amazing what Ya learn here!

[injest]

oh great...now they are putting Uncle Sam as a revolutionary? how stupid can the public be?

 

people are such sheep.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

They truly have managed to portray the bizarro-Obama! Whatever happens, I just cannot imagine him ever looking like this. He's the ultimate poster person where calm, cool, and collected is concerned. I bet that characteristic was very possibly the single most important reason for many people who voted for him.

I agree!

I don't see the Fairey portrait as as comparison between two persons at all, but if the similarity is intentional and not just unavoidable, the Obama image manages to re-invent, re-invigorate and re-possess a political form of expression that had grown stale, powerless, over-used and utterly diluted with the Che image. I mean, Che is everywhere! Used in so many inane contexts by people who only have the vaguest idea who Che Guevara was and did and represented.

Mikaela, could we even say that Shepard Fairey subverted  the (Jim Fitzpatrick/Alberto Korda/'Guerrillero Heroico') Che poster??   

I sort of like that word in this context!

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

VERY Interesting!
Wow!
Amazing what Ya learn here!

Oh, I'm just blowing smoke, never mind me! 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

oh great...now they are putting Uncle Sam as a revolutionary? how stupid can the public be?

 

people are such sheep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

American Revolutionary War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence,[1] began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen united former British colonies on the North American continent and ended in a global war between several European great powers. The war was the culmination of the political American Revolution, whereby the colonists and their allies overthrew British rule.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

American Revolution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The American Revolution refers to the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which the Thirteen Colonies of North America overthrew the governance of the British Empire and then rejected the British monarchy to become the sovereign United States of America. In this period the colonies first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation, and formed self-governing independent states. These states then united against the British to defend that self-governance from 1775 to 1783 in the armed conflict known as the American Revolutionary War (also: American War of Independence). This resulted in the independent states breaking away from the empire with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, now rejecting not only the governance of Parliament, but also the legitimacy of the monarchy to demand allegiance. Over the next seven years came effective American victory on the battlefield in October 1781, and British recognition of United States independence and sovereignty in 1783.

The revolutionary era began in 1763.... (and etc.)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats

The Sheep and the Goats
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sheep and the Goats or "The Judgment of the Nations" was a discourse of Jesus recorded in the New Testament. It is sometimes characterized as a Parable, although unlike most parables it does not purport to relate a story of events happening to other characters.

One theory is that it tells of the judgment, see also Last Judgment, and division of all the world's people into the blessed, who are welcomed by the Father, and the cursed, who are cast out. The division is entirely based on the acts of kindness and mercy done by people to their disadvantaged fellow men; Jesus identifies such kindness with kindness towards himself.

(and etc.)

(....)


From Matthew 25:31–46:

 ‘When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and He will put the sheep at His right hand and the goats at the left.

[injest]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary

http://www.slate.com/id/2107100/
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.

I find the comparison of Uncle Sam to this communist guerilla extremely distasteful. I am startled to see you extolling the virtues of a man that has this kind of background.

but how bold of you..most Obama supporters are still trying to pretend he is a liberal...not a socialist revolutionary.

Fortunately this isn't Cuba...and there is already an underground insurgency growing up to fight him.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary

http://www.slate.com/id/2107100/
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.

I find the comparison of Uncle Sam to this communist guerilla extremely distasteful. I am startled to see you extolling the virtues of a man that has this kind of background.

but how bold of you..most Obama supporters are still trying to pretend he is a liberal...not a socialist revolutionary.

Fortunately this isn't Cuba...and there is already an underground insurgency growing up to fight him.

Uhm--what?

[Monika]

Uhm--what?

Uhm indeed.

*Ennis face*