iconography

Processing Extraordinary Tragedy in Ordinary Days

In the poster for Ordinary Days, four people are silhouetted against stylized New York skyscrapers

Image credit: Fresno Beehive

[Spoiler alert: if you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity of attending Ordinary Days, know that the following describes much of the play’s ending.]

Manalive, the novel by G.K. Chesterton, opens with miraculous gust of wind, a meterological phenomenon described as “the good wind that blows nobody harm.” I always found something particularly memorable about that image of a moment of impossible happiness, and it gusted into my mind once more when I attended the recent Austin production of the chamber musical, Ordinary Days.

Ordinary Days offers more than a miraculous gust of wind. Instead, its climax brings all four of the play’s cast members into contact by a single, bizarre spectacle. The image is explicitly identified not with nature, however, but with one of the greatest recent tragedies of our nation: the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11. I’m not sure that the play’s treatment of 9/11 is necessarily its most brilliant moment—but it does offer an interesting example of one artist’s attempt to use visual and narrative imagination to recontextualize the image that has driven so much of America’s foreign and domestic policy over the last ten years.

Frozen: The Anatomy of a Gaze

Elsa from Frozen gazes into the distance

Image credit: The Guardian

The first song composed for (but ultimately cut from) the recent Disney blockbuster Frozen explicitly engages with Disney's presentation of female characters. In the song, entitled "We Know Better," young princesses Elsa and Anna lay out a laundry list of objections to the traditional idea of a "Disney Princess." The film's two heroes refuse to be the sort of princess who "always knows her place," insist that a real princess “laughs and snorts milk out her nose," and maintain their right to mention “underwear.” Though whimsical, the film sets out its heroines' priorities: the only things they take seriously are their sisterly friendship and the political demands of ruling the realm. In climactic two-part harmony, the girls promise to "take care of our people and they will love / Me and you." If films like Tangled and Brave taught Disney that their princesses can (quite profitably) take center stage without dressing up as boys, Frozen insists that its female leads will be more concerned with national policy than with the clothes they wear.

Selling Beer and Selling Democracy: American Bald Eagle Logos Today and Yesterday

Eagle logo hangs over Obama and Romney; Eagle clutches arrows, olive branch and banner that reads, "The Union and the Constitution Forever"

Image Credit: Commission on Presidential Debates

Despite its vaguely governmental-sounding name, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a private, non-profit corporation funded by a handful of businesses, as described by George Farah. The Commission serves to accommodate the Republican and Democratic Parties' desire for a relatively controlled eventcontrol which drove the League of Women Voters to withdraw from hosting the debates in 1987. One of the long-standing contributors to the Commission is the Anheuser-Busch corporation (owned since 2008 by the Brazilian and Belgian conglomerate InBev). While watching the debates, I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the eagle that hangs above the heads of the candidates and the Anheuser-Busch eagle, both of which draw on deeply set US political imagery.

Some thoughts on the title page of the King James Bible

KJB title page

Image Credit: Wikipedia

As I was perusing the new Harry Ransom Center exhibit, The King James Bible: Its History and Influence, I couldn’t help but linger over the first edition’s title page. The image is gorgeous and what one would expect from King James I’s own printer, Robert Baker. It features Moses and Aaron flanking the title, with the four Evangelists around the corners. Above them, the remaining Apostles are depicted, each holding the various symbols that are associated with their individual iconographies. Of these figures, the one that caught my eye was St. Andrew. Prominently on top of the title page, St. Andrew’s saltire is much larger than any of the other objects that the various figures are holding. To a certain extent, its largeness is obvious and expected given that it’s a slightly rotated crucifix. But one can’t but help also thinking about why St. Andrew might have been given special primacy here. After all, this was a Bible commissioned by King James.

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