Obama “Hope” Poster: Culture Jamming for publicity
Ekin Su Asci
In his 1990 manifesto, Shepard Fairey states that his artistic mission is ultimately “phenomenological,” aiming to “enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation” (Terrell-Curtiss, 2012, 23). As such, his works utilize culture jamming, defined as a tactic of dissent and political protest, involving the appropriation of commercial and government images to highlight the ideological codes hidden within them and subvert the intended message (Glassco 2). It aims to expose the prevalence of images that emphasize “image over substance and form over content”, offering a critique of The Society of the Spectacle (Glassco 213). It is thus telling that during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Fairey created a campaign poster supporting Barack memorable image from the election, going ‘viral’ in a matter of weeks, leading to the question: Does the Obama “ Hope” poster occupy the same terrain as publicity, or does it maintain the political subversiveness intended by culture jamming as its ultimate purpose?
In itself, the “ Hope” poster can be seen as an effective communicator of the Obama campaign. Red dominates the right and light blue the left, symbolizing the color of the political “right” and “left” and with the white strip on Obama’s face, forming the colours of the flag, showing Obama as a leader that can unite political ideologies. Greater variety of colour, highlight, shading, and crosshatching on Obama’s face show the complexity of ideology, while deracializing and nationalizing him with colour. Nevertheless, when seen in the light of other dominant imagery, one realises that the image is a hybrid of appropriation, including the spotlit look of Andy Warhol’s icons, the sans-serif lettering, bold graphics and reduced colour palette of Russian Constructivism, Obama, that became the most as well as the textured appearance of graffiti. The image of Obama itself is appropriated from a 2006 Associated Press photograph by Mannie Garcia, and thus disseminated illegally at times (Yanes and Carter 37).
Fairey’s style in the Hope poster does not digress from his previous works, maintaining appropriated elements that previously served culture jamming. Portraiture, for instance, is used in “Obey Giant” which he deemed a “parody of a propaganda poster, clearly authoritarian, but with no definable political message,” serving as a critique of systems of authority and unquestioned obedience (Terrell-Curtiss 22). A similar use of portraiture, this time combined with the same upward gaze in the Obama poster — a common signifier of hope for the future in Socialist Realism — is apparent in the poster of Stalin (Image 3). Indeed, Fairey himself states, alongside his belief in Obama’s authenticity, that portraits make “the best tool for propagandist manipulation because they can project an essence onto someone that they might not really have” (Keys 2010). This suggests that the same visual elements that were previously appropriated for critique of political propaganda are used in the “Hope” poster in similar fashion to the original propaganda posters — for authentic publicity.
Appropriation, without the purpose of culture jamming, is at the service of publicity. In Ways of Seeing, visual culture theorist John Berger argues that there are many direct references in publicity to works of art from the past, often becoming almost a “pastiche of well-known paintings” (Berger 134). Indeed, Fairey, unlike most graffiti artists, specifically references well-known, canonical sources from 20th century art (Yanes and Carter 97). Berger states that in the language of oil painting and thus publicity, “vague historical or poetic or moral references” that are
“reminiscent of cultural lessons half-learnt”
are present, making all history “mythical” (140). Similarly, the poster employs references to the depiction of hope, progress, authority in the historical examples of socialist realism (Image 4), as well as the subversiveness/edginess of pop art, embodying the glamour of both in Obama for different demographics.
Fairey’s consistency of style also serves publicity. The Obey star, recognisable from his previous works, is in the background of the poster like a brand logo, a badge of authorship adding value to the image. Fairey claims to have included this “not to try to hijack Obama’s credibility as some have claimed”, providing false proof that the poster is a parody like Fairey’s previous works, but to encourage “hard-core collectors… to buy the poster just because it had an Obey logo” (Yanes and Carter 98). The original poster, displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, is even reinforced with his signature as in the fine arts tradition, bringing the poster from the realm of the street to the realm of art. Thus, the poster’s value, in this case, also determined by its propagation, is shown to be a function of the “mystification” of the figure of the artist, as Berger states, in contemporary times, as a figure with ‘street cred’ and ‘buzz’ (21).
Publicity becomes the ultimate purpose of the project when Fairey accepts interference from Obama’s surrogates to change the initial inscription “progress” to “hope” in order to avoid Marxist associations, disregarding his ultimate aim of exposing how dominant images and icons are not naturally connected to ideologies, while establishing clarity and singularity of meaning in service of the campaign (Yanes and Carter 37). Nevertheless, the image does not merely operate within the campaign, commerce or the museum — institutions restrained by an ideological lens. By maintaining a free-distributive model and allowing the download of images for free, Fairey intends the image to operate as a meme, propagating not only the image in service of the campaign, but also encouraging
culture jamming through serial appropriation by the receptors themselves.
Indeed, Shifman argues that memes can play a “key role in contemporary formulations of political participation” (Delaure and Fink 22). This is exemplified, among others, by the website “Obamicon.me”, that allowed users to upload their own images and appropriate the poster’s graphic style to create parodies, both political and non-political. Users created “NOPE” and “HYPE” images of both Obama and opponents demonstrating their ability to participate in the discourse (Terrell-Curtis 28). This shows that the poster was open for propagation as well as ‘sabotage’, by the public, adding to the populist character of the campaign while rendering culture jamming an actor in propaganda itself.
Thus, the Obama “Hope” poster is shown to operate on multiple levels. While serving publicity at the level of the image, and in the process, emptying the style, associated with culture jamming, of its meaning; through the publicity it achieves, along with the free-distributive model, it disrupts the singularity of meaning delivered by a dominant image, transferring its authority to the receivers. The poster ultimately illustrates that design in the age of the internet acts as an agent in the evolution of both image and substance, as opposed to authority determining the absolute result.
