In keeping with my post from this past monday, I decided I would feature the cover from which my last image came. As stated previously, Sam Viviano and his team of talented artists dedicated this issue of Mad to he 20 dumbest people, events and things of 2011. What I found most interesting was that, the cover shows Obama swimming after a one dollar bill on a fishing line. from this I saw the need and hunger for money in today's economy. We are all so desperate for money because, it becomes more and more difficult to make a living each day.
Another interesting point was that if this issue is featuring the dumbest of the year, were they trying to say, Obama is dumb? Is the recession a dumb event. In the sub title they state, "the year we ran out of money." At first glance I took this as the possibility that some were not pleased with the way that Obama conducted business in the past 4 years, thus leading us into the recession in which we currently stand. But, then i was unsure if the gang at Mad wanted their point to be more literal or if it was meant to generate more thought. I would be interested to see what others thought the message was in this particular cover.
I find this image to be interesting in relationship to the article we read about Philipon. I'm starting to think of the power of prints, and political messages, in not thinking about them individually, but rather as a whole body of work. Instead of just one or two prints perpetuating a nation, it is the idea of a much larger group, many voices.
ReplyDeleteI also attribute the success of this image to the cultural cross-referencing, using the cover of Oasis, it sort of captures the "middle" percent of the United States, the 25-30 something's who would find the satirical humor in this?