Oh, you have to put some clown makeup on - but the bedraggled appearance is the original Joker, and the key to Jokerdom. That poster of Obama was not bedraggled - it was a clean, simple whiteface. Not smudgy. And the (unkempt) green hair w/ purple jacket turns out to be unnecessary, for the artist's satisfaction.
Well, yeah, but the smeary face-paint makes the connection all on its own. The jacket isn't really necessary - Obama usually wears black - and he did have the green hair actually.
I admit to being out of the loop about any widespread ecstatic veneration of Obama - I put most of that exaggeration down to the usual suspects, the ones who inform us that Reagan was wildly popular and "everyone except a few kooks" supported the invasion of Iraq. So I may have missed out on a large population of people who would be shocked, surprised, or thrilled, by seeing Obama presented as the Joker by the 27%.
I'm even further out. What the hell is the 27%? Republicans?
It looked like same old same old, to me - been getting a steady diet of this lame-ass point-missing semiotic-illiterate noise since the 80s. What is even unexpected, let alone thrilling, about seeing cartoons of any national Democratic politician as a sociopath?
Well, I think a lot of people were shocked by it, especially considering his huge support. I've met a fair few people who were positively
giddy about the upcoming election. I think given Obama's approval, and the fervour with which that approval is expressed, plus the shockingly amoral portrayal of the Joker by Ledger - the best yet including the old dog Nicholson, and Ledger is
dead, damn all,
dead dead dead, damnit! - results in a stark, jolting image. So...it is kinda new. I don't know that there have been any really noticeable lampoons of him
per se, so I think it's different, which is reason enough. But what did you mean about the "ME connection" re: the artist?
The racial implications of putting Obama in whiteface can hardly be avoided by calling the Joker a Socialist - which, as you notice, is off-kilter.
Well, I think it's enough that it's meant to be scary. Ledger, as the Joker in that makeup, is actually, surprisingly, scary. That Joker didn't strike me as a joke, as all the rest have been in one form or another (RIP Cesar). And the right wing is big on "Obama = Socialist", which no one can have missed, and thus that "Obama = Socialist = Scary". I think the Dems are doing themselves a disservice with that nonsense about "finding the guilty party". Good god. What country is this?
A black guy in whiteface as a Socialist, on the other hand, is more on kilter among the wingnut crowd, not so?
Poooossibly. But wingnuts go for a lot of things that regular conservatives go for; it's just that they believe also in inequality and shooting lots of people. While the Repubs are outspoken or even vitriolic, I just don't find that it's a racist portrayal. Maybe we'll have to agree to disagree.
Best,
Geoff
