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(Image Credit: Michael Nagle, Getty Images via In Focus)

During the past week Occupy Wall Street has gained increasing media attention. The movement, initially called for by the group Adbusters, began in earnest on September 17th when protesters first began to occupy Zuccotti Park. This initial act seems to have largely been met with bemused ambivalence, and while there was originally a single demand articulated by Adbusters in their July call to action—that “Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington”  (Adbusters) –things were quite murky by the time the occupation took shape. Much of the media attention that the movement has gained, especially during this surge in participation, has focused on the apparent lack of concrete demands set forth by OWS. This confusion is misplaced. While the list of hopeful outcomes is amorphous a clear sense of oppositional branding has been developed   from the wealth of signs and images created through the movement. OWS demands that we put a hold on our love affair with notions of prosperity that put us in a double bind. 

(Image Credit: Adbusters)

This early poster by Adbusters does a nice job of simultaneously crystallizing and confusing the movement.  By asking about a single demand it offers the possibility of a unified, concrete protest while leaving that single demand open to interpretation. And while the question broadens possibility the image suggests a possible outcome. Raising above clouds of teargas and crowds of appropriately gasmasked protesters a dancer postures serenely on the Wall Street Bull. She rides the bull when most visitors pose for pictures as they fondle the bull’s balls. The bull can be more than a system by which the 1% (to use the popular 1/99% split that the movement has espoused) cows the other 99%. 

(Image Credit: David Shankbone via In Focus)

The Charging Bull, a sculpture created by Arturo Di Modica in the late 80s, has become an icon for Wall Street. Originally created to represent the “strength and power of the American people” the bull has come to stand in for the strength and power of a particular system. What Occupy Wall Street is demanding is that we stop worshiping that system. That all this symbolism has been poured into a bull makes a certain amount of sense. Bulls are domestic animals that never feel quite domestic, yet even with all their power (and perhaps because of it) they are kept under strict control by the humans that own them.  Bulls have largely been turned into a tool of reproduction. 

The movement has, in some ways, twice enacted a barrier around the bull. Fearful of any particular harm that could befall the icon it was quickly fenced in. The fence and the guards prevented both protestors from nearing the bull and tourists who flock to the bull daily for lucky rubs and pictures. And by enforcing the cordoning off of the bull the OWS protests have perfectly created a visualization of their message. By enforcing this barrier the bull (and, more importantly, what it has come to represent) is show to be something that we cannot access. The above video by BLUCHEEZ accurately portrays some of the frustrations inherent in this sudden distance between the bull and its followers. 

(Image Credit: Erin M via Fast Company) 

Gaps have value. And creating distance can be a goal in and of itself.  Through this distance we can begin to recognize the multitude of relationships that are manifest between the economic and political systems in this country and the people that inhabit them.