| Tuesday, August 10, 2004 |
11:42 - I knew I'd see the magic picture if I stared long enough
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So I was idly perusing earlier posts from this week (yeah, I'm obsessive that way), and since I well know that taking a break of a day or so from a piece of visual art can completely change your take on it, I gave this post another look. The one about the German Subway tray-liner advertising, which LGFers had been arguing over whether it constituted a satiric depiction of 9/11.
Many LGF readers didn't follow the original link and didn't see the picture. But many eventually did; and of those who did, most agreed that it isn't a 9/11 parody—but others still maintained that it was. I wasn't sure what to make of that; it doesn't much look like it to me. It looks more like the burger is being depicted as Godzilla. It's a stupid way to parody 9/11, if that's what the artist's intention was. The latter interpretation mystified me.
But just now I realized: it all depends on which direction you see the burger as traveling.
I was seeing it moving from right to left, emerging from the buildings, and sort of "rearing up".
The people who see 9/11 in it are probably seeing the burger as moving from left to right, which would indicate that it's crashing down at an angle, leaving burning destruction in its wake.
This interpretation only just now occurred to me; for a minute or two I told myself that it didn't affect the overall message, that it didn't matter how I saw the burger's movement occurring—the artist sure gave us plenty of ambiguity. But on further reflection... no, if you see the burger coming in from the left, this picture immediately becomes a whole lot more alarming.
It may not have been intentional; I still maintain that whatever the artist was paid for this contract job, Subway got ripped off. But I can certainly see the source of confusion now, and at the very least Subway should have been a little more circumspect in considering how at least one or two people in the ad division must have interpreted the picture.
This still just makes them careless, rather than deliberately offensive.
I think.
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Brian Tiemann
