Now that the creator of the Obama Joker image has been identified as 20-year-old Chicago history major, Firas Alkhateeb, can we put to rest the claim that the image is hate speech or racism? Philip Kennicott in a recent Washington Post column declared the poster racially charged, writing, “The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can’t be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he’s black.”
It is interesting to compare the reaction to this work with another famous Obama influenced piece. During the campaign, we had the iconic image of Obama, the multicolored now legendary work of artist / businessman Shepard Fairey. The Fairey image and Obama’s use of it during the election was propaganda use at its best, and no one can deny the important role it played in his successful campaign: presenting and positioning Obama as the candidate for a younger generation.
It’s common for the left to declare imagery or art contra to their beliefs to be evil propaganda, and it is also a tool of the left to declare one at least partially racist for criticizing this president. Guilt is a powerful weapon and so is art. Yet, for decades art which was anti-Nixon, anti-Reagan, and anti-Bush was the weapon of revolutionaries and romantic freedom fighters.
Patrick Courrielche, writing in Reason Online wonders if,
the incendiary criticism will keep others from creating similar images. But regardless of political affiliation, the art community must embrace all rational dissenters. Art must not exclusively serve the interests of any presidential administration.
An excellent point. Its doubtful, however, that anyone in the art world is listening.
16 responses so far
1 ottovbvs // Aug 19, 2009 at 2:18 pm
……..How can you generalize……some are some aren’t…….I didn’t have a lot of problem with Obama as Joker but Obama with Hitler moustache is another matter
2 Which President Would Be Cesar Romero’s Joker? Nixon, Obviously. « Around The Sphere // Aug 19, 2009 at 2:29 pm
[...] #2: Pictor Publius at New [...]
3 midcon // Aug 19, 2009 at 3:53 pm
To be clear, I never thought it was intended in a rascist manner. BUT….are you asserting that 20-year-old Chicago history majors, named Firas Alkhateeb cannot be rascist? Or is it because he is not Caucasian, therefore he cannot be rascist? I really would love to see the deductive logic for that.
4 anniemargret // Aug 19, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Hey, he can paint Obama as the Joker, and SNL can lampoon him with glee. When your the prez, you get your comeuppance from the opposition. Bush took a lot, and frankly, despite my dislike of his administration, some of it was well deserved and some was not…
…. let’s not fidget around with the other epithets being hurled at the President by the far right…. and hail – kudos – mega-cheers to Rep Barney Frank for standing up to the idiot in the audience yet again comparing the efforts for healthcare reform “Nazism” and Obama defaced as Hitler. Enough already! As Paul Begala wisely said …that the first idiot on either side that likens the President to Hitler or policies as Nazism, loses.
I for one am sick to death of the Nazi comparisons, the Hitler comparison, the Russia comparison, the deathers’ comparison, etc… Oh, yeah….and those gun devotees who are ‘just exhibiting their second amendment rights’ showing up with guns and other assorted weapons to just prove ‘can.’ Who are they kidding? It’s attempt at intimidation, nothing else. We all understand the second amendment. These debates are supposed to be about healthcare reform!
These guys are forcing extra secret service to watch over these town hall debates now to make sure someone doesn’t grab one of them in a heated moment….it is disgraceful and unnecessary. Yet again an example of the hyperbolic twisted road the right has taken.
5 David Granton // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I think the whole issue speaks to how all of us do make assumptions based on racist. I am not sure that puts us all in the racist category however. I view the image and can see a political message that has nothing to do with race, although I acknowledge that it could be perceived in another manner. But that is just the challenge of the art. Of course the artist who made the image is capable of being racist, but we just generally assume that is only a trait of white people. One conclusion on all of this might be that all of us are just a little too preoccupied with the race issue and that is hampering any meaningful discourse or artistic portrayal, satiric or otherwise.
As for the dudes with guns – use your rights or lose them! Because that is what is continuing to happen in America today: the loss of constitutional rights.
6 JohnMcC // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Limits? Legal limits? None are off-those-limits. Limits of sanity? Of decency? Of sanity? There are limits in that universe. Interesting that the Right points to LaRouchies as the party that sets their limits.
And I can’t wait to put on my Obama hat and T-shirt and carry MY shotgun and .357 to a TownHall. Sauce for the goose and all that…
7 SFTor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:28 pm
The joker, a hysterical clown, out of control, utterly sociopathic—the icon of callous evil.
Perhaps not so apt when applied to Barack Obama?
8 rbottoms // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Who says all Obama cartoons.
Howver, one comparing him to a chimpanzee do not carry the same racial connotations as say BushorChimp does. You may not like it, but the baggage is not the same.
BlackFace or the reverse, WhiteFace has racial connotations. The original art work was probably nothing more than a cool Photoshop experiment, and the Socialism poster itself is probably nothing more effective (though wrong headed) commentary since the Joker stood for anarchy, is destroying the system for the sake of watching it burn.
Just as the Confederate flag can never again become a neutral symbol, there are just some things you can’t say about a black man without out the comment itself causing a ruckus.
The difference between us and say Belfast is you won’t get kneecapped for you opinion.
9 sinz54 // Aug 19, 2009 at 6:24 pm
rbottoms: You’re right. Symbols can acquire certain connotations based on history. But it causes confusion among those who are familiar with that history versus those who are not.
I doubt that many of today’s young white folks are that familiar with the days when white comedians like Al Jolson appeared in blackface, or when some black folks “passed” for white by virtue of having relatively light-colored skin. It’s just utterly beyond current culture. I doubt very many of today’s youth even know who Al Jolson was. So to black folks and certain guilt-ridden white liberals, the Joker poster might remind them of that earlier era. But it was not the intent of the artist, or of all the young folks passing the poster around on the Internet.
Carl Sagan related how, when he and his production crew were filming a segment of “Cosmos” on location in India, they were taken aback when Indians began drawing swastikas on the ground. To Indians, the swastika is a harmless Sanskrit symbol of good fortune. (That’s part of its original heritage.) To us in the West, the swastika acquired a whole different meaning in the 20th century.
And if you saw someone in your local shopping mall or supermarket wearing a swastika ornament or swastika tattoo, would you believe them if they told you it’s just a Sanskrit symbol of good fortune?
10 SFTor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 6:49 pm
The cartoon certainly did not draw my attention towards whiteface/blackface. The Joker imagery stands for something entirely different. So I for one will agree that this did not offend my sensibilities on racial grounds.
11 rbottoms // Aug 19, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Doesn’t offend me either. It does tell me the person who appropriated the imagery doesn’t know the difference between anarchy and a democratically elected administration implementing the policies it was elected to for.
12 Rodak // Aug 19, 2009 at 9:34 pm
It would seem to go without saying that Obama is no more exempt from being the target of partisan ridicule than was his predecessor. Should that ridicule cross the line into racism, it will do more harm to those publishing it, and their associates, than it will to Obama.
13 barker13 // Aug 20, 2009 at 11:39 am
Re: Rodak // Aug 19, 2009 at 9:34 pm (#12) –
Agreed.
BILL
14 ProfNickD // Aug 20, 2009 at 7:07 pm
There is no such thing as an “inappropriate” cartoon of a President — if you want to play in the Big Leagues, you’re going to have to take your lumps. A President is the head of the armed forces, has his finger on the button of 7,000 nuclear weapons, and throws people into federal pentitentiaries by the hundreds of thousands. He’s just going to have to take the cartoons and not be a crybaby about it.
15 cwillia11 // Aug 21, 2009 at 10:57 am
The poster uses Obama’s race but that doesn’t make it racist. The basic idea of the poster is that Obama is not what he seemed to be at first, that his true agenda (socialism) was intentionally misrepresented and that we now understand this. The poster would not have worked so well if Obama were a Swede. This is a case of racism in the eye of the beholder. And I don’t deny that some of those attracted to the poster message might be racist – although there are fewer of these people than Obama’s defenders would like to think.
16 Rodak // Aug 21, 2009 at 12:16 pm
there are fewer of these people than Obama’s defenders would like to think.
Interesting, cwillia11. Just how many of them are there, anyway?
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