Marco Acevedo's Open Salon Blog

The Striped Coffin: My Earliest Memory

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:11:11 -0500

A reconstructed scene: 47 years ago tomorrow I stood before my parents' TV set, nose practically pressed against the tube, with the rapt attention a two-and-a-half year old toddler gives to the demonstration of a new pull toy. I say reconstructed because I have no memory of the event itself, of the scene in our living room. I can't recall who was sitting on the couch behind me, or what the color of the sky was through the living room windows. All I remember is that flickering television screen, its dull gold plastic frame at the periphery of my vision, and the slowly moving object in its center: a black-and-white striped box on wagon wheels, pulled by horses.

My memory, to paraphrase journalist/photographer/blogger Ken Steinhoff (who photographed the image above on his parents' TV set on that very day), is a funny thing. It flows backwards in a mostly uninterrupted stream through the vast hazy fields of elation and regret until it vanishes into the thickets of earliest childhood. When it surfaces again what I see is something very close to Ken's picture: a composition of stripes, wheels, shadows. A moment of crystal immediacy, seen through thick curved glass, before it is smothered in layers of manufactured, mediated, meaning. The echoing clop of the hoofbeats, the mournful drum-and-brass band, the voiceover with the flat, somber Midwestern cadence shared by all (white, male, somber) news reporters of the day. The camera pulls back and I see the stunned gray crowds mourning their President.

And if I'm to believe what I see on television these days, Don Draper was at that moment sitting in his Manhattan corner office, just a few miles south of our Bronx apartment, swilling a scotch on the rocks and pondering the state of the nation (the offices of Sterling Cooper would otherwise have been unoccupied as it was a national day of mourning, but, well, we know what a workaholic Don was). One of the reasons I'm obsessed with Mad Men is the weird cognitive dissonance I experience while watching it: knowing I was already alive somewhere that strange world of early sixties America, so foreign in its ways and yet so intimately familiar. And, as a brand man I can relate to (m)ad man Don Draper's examination of his own cognitive dissonance, how he reacts to what he wants but cannot truly have, and how he tries to understands the ways that dissonance lies at the heart of American joy and misery.

I've made a habit of tweaking my own dissonance. I indulge in the disjointed cultural fragments of that transitional era: through music, from fizzy early Beatles to smoking Coltrane. Through cinema—from grainy Cassavetes to Technicolor Blake Edwards. And of course, through books and magazines: from the mellow delights of old Playboys to the fragile carboard pages of family albums. Yet compared to that visceral earliest memory, it's all hiss and pop, scratched and torn surfaces. Compelling in its artfulness, laden with zeitgeist.

I like to think that my ongoing fascination with the increasing immediacy of image, brand and icon—of electronic media—has something to do with that striped box. I like to think that before the waves of meaning crash and close our heads, before the millions of dollars spent by all the various unnamed vested interests work their magic on our impulses, thoughts and fears, there is a moment of crystal clarity for each of us, wherein we experience a given event on our own terms. That moment is elusive, for there isn't enough time to attach an unadulterated thought to it—but it's real, and underneath it all, it's forever.

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Photo by Ken Steinhoff. Read his reminiscences (and see his striking photographs) of Cape Central High in Cape Girardeau, MO in the days of the JFK assassination.

The Objectification of Emma Watson

Thu, 7 May 2009 15:05:56 -0400

It's a grand but unspoken Hollywood tradition: the child star grows up and becomes sexualized. Occasionally the initiative is seen to be taken by the actor— as in the case of Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe, when he scandalized the entertainment world (or the hand-wringing parents of underaged Potter fans, in any case) by appearing nude (and buff) in the theatrical psycho-drama Equus. In his case this was seen as a healthy thing, a smart step by a serious actor trying to avoid being typecast in infantile roles. But Radcliffe is, was, a boy. It's a depressing fact that if you happen to be a girl, Hollywood will take care of the whole "growing up" thing for you. Except the name of the game here is not sexuality per se, but sexual objectification, and it seems to be an ironclad pre-requisite for all starlets hoping for mainstream glory.

The latest victim of this old script is Radcliffe's costar Emma Watson, a young girl we have watched grow into a young woman through the course of the Potter films. I did a doubletake at a Manhattan magazine stand today when I glimpsed the cover of hipster rag Interview (above) out of the corner of my eye. Staring back at me with a dispassionate gaze was Ms. Watson, looking for all the world like a plastic blow-up doll. My immediate reaction was queasiness, similar to that reported by subjects of the infamous "Uncanny Valley" study, wherein it was discovered that an increase in the human likeliness of a doll or robot causes an increase in the apprehension and distress of the human viewer.

My second reaction was a sense of déja vu: I remember being nearly as creeped out when I read Roger Ebert's review of the second Harry Potter movie, wherein he described Watson as being in "the early stages of babehood"; at the time she was all of 11 or 12 years old. When a normally well-behaved and thoughtful writer like Ebert tosses such a disturbing bon mot, you know that the meme is almost hopelessly ingrained in moviemaking, and male movie-viewing, culture. Over and over the ritual is reenacted: Lisa Bonet, Drew Barrymore, Alyssa Milano, Scarlett Johansson. Early raves for a child's or precociously young actor's emotional range or resonance, then the steady drumbeat of questionable roles and/or increasingly suggestive magazine covers. Occasionally an actor navigates her sexuality with depth and an almost tactical creativity, as did Christina Ricci; she made smart choices so that her sexualized image always functioned as a shorthand for her unusual and challenging roles. But more typically, an uncompromising talent (i.e. Parker Posey) will fall by the wayside to be appreciated by ever smaller audiences for her efforts if she doesn't "fall into line."

It's not too late for Watson, though. Interview is offbeat enough to be a blip in an actor's career, and this issue is early enough in the season to be a vague memory by the time the next Potter is released. But the choices she makes now and in the immediate wake of the Potter series may very well determine whether she will be ultimately be known for her body of work, or just, well, her (toned/decrepit/buffed/doubled/ Photoshopped/objectified) body.

Air Force One Buzzes Death Star; Governor Tarkin "Furious"

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:04:53 -0400

Maybe President Obama needs an Image Czar, not merely in the sense of someone qualified to create and manage photo opportunities but someone who would have nixed the ill-considered Air Force One debacle on Monday morning.

The latest government official with egg on his face is Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, who approved the mission of flying a kind of stunt double for Air Force One over New York Harbor (and hence through air space still tinged with the tragedy of 9/11) for an "iconic" photo op with the Statue of Liberty. The stunt caused a panic which had office workers reeling out of buildings along the Manhattan and Jersey City waterfronts and NYC's Mayor Bloomberg in an apoplectic state. Apparently, while local law enforcement had been notified in advance of the event, they were not allowed to notify the press or the public; somehow, a prolonged aerial manuever by a 747 and two F-16 jet fighters in broad daylight over one of the mostly densely populated areas on earth was "classified information." This was breathtakingly bad judgement, to be sure; everyone from Bloomberg and the President on down to op-ed writers, citizen bloggers and commentators are in agreement on that. What strikes me is what a wrong-headed exercise this was to begin with.

First of all, the whole idea of treating Air Force One like a celebrity— framing an aircraft used merely to transport the President of the United States with a heroic narrative— is, as we say in the biz, off-brand. The President would not be buzzing the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore or any other iconic American tourist destination under any justifiable circumstances. That is not his job. That would be a job for military show pilots such as the Blue Angels; the President flies in a Jumbo Jet—in double-wide, high and distant, clear and secure air lanes. Over-promising is a marketing no-no. A cold beer will not hydrate you, and Barack Obama is not Harrison Ford; nor does he have Jack Bauer on his payroll. Most importantly: the jet is not an independent entity, and therefore should not be utilized in the manner of a mascot; or even, really, in the manner of a brand.

Secondly, this is the digital age. If you want to go ahead and defy logic and good sense to show Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty in the same shot, you don't actually have to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on jet fuel and insurance. Ever hear of Photoshop? CGI? I saw a movie last year about a 300-foot sea monster tearing Manhattan to pieces, and it was pretty damn convincing. They didn't have to sedate the thing, air drop it into Times Square and shout "Action!" And it took longer for me to write this post than it did for me to cobble together the image (above) of Air Force One flying down the Death Star trench.

If you want the cheesola that badly, Mr. Caldera, you could keep Industrial Light and Magic on retainer, you know. Or better yet, you could offer a paying gig to one of the many talented digital artists out there— many can be found at a site like SciFi-Meshes.com, for instance.

No need to freak out swine-flu-frazzled New Yorkers, honestly.

Credits—Death Star image element: scifi-meshes.com

Images of Bush: "Mirror with a Memory"

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:01:03 -0500

photo credits: upper left and right, Paul J. Rrichards/Agence France-Presse; lower left, J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press; lower right, AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

“The man beholdeth himself in the glass and goeth his way, and straightway both the mirror and the mirrored forget what manner of man he was…”— Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859

Before I post further on the Obama administration's use of and policy on imagery, I'd like to draw your attention to the January 25th entry on filmaker Errol Morris' blog Zoom at the New York Times. Here he compiles a fascinating last look at the course of the Bush presidency, in iconic photographs selected by the head photo editors from three news wire agencies: Vincent Amalvy (Agence France-Presse), Santiago Lyon (The Associated Press) and Jim Bourg (Thomson Reuters). Morris carries on a spirited discussion with the three editors about the dozens of photographs he features.

When one absorbs the legacy of these images, it is easier to understand why the same three agencies raised a ruckus last week and refused to distribute the official White House photographs of Obama's first day in the Oval Office: to be exluded from threshold moments of a presidency is to be denied the chance to be the candid "mirror with a memory," to quote O.W. Holmes (quotes courtesy of Morris' post). White House photographer Peter Souza will probably not be releasing any photographs equivalent to the Reuters series below, taken as Bush was about goodbye to his staff on January 15th:

REUTERS/Jason Reed

Jim Bourg maintains that the look on Bush's face in these pictures "was like no look I’d ever seen on George Bush’s face in my life(...) Because he just looks absolutely devastated as he comes through this door after essentially ending his eight year presidency."

Contrast with these official images by Souza from President Obama's first day:

The White House/Peter Souza

Obama in these images exudes his now familiar calm and quiet authority. I for one have no reason to doubt the accuracy of this appearance; but I maintain that the job of journalistic photography is to capture the truth behind an intention. When Obama is tested, as he surely will be, Souza's skills as well as those of the wire photographers will be sorely needed and appreciated by the present and future observers of history. The quality of humanity at all levels of power, with all its glories and humilities, is crucial to preserve.

Obama's Picture War with the Media

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:01:38 -0500

Photo: Pete Souza/The White House

Well, actually it was more of a skirmish. On Wednesday, the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse refused to distribute images provided by the White House of the President’s activities in the Oval Office during his first full day in office, including the much-discussed second swearing-in ceremony. To quote the advisory issued by the AP:

“The Associated Press' long-standing policy does not allow accepting government handouts of images such as these from situations to which the AP believes it should have independent access.”

Vincent Amaluy, a director of photography for Agence France-Presse, gave the White House the benefit of the doubt on this matter, assuming that first-day confusion was the culprit, according to an AP news item.

It is ironic that the day after a powerful inaugural speech heralding the New Transparency in government, and during a day of signing off on legislation to help carrying such a worthy goal, the Obama administration should stumble a bit on this very point. The news agencies, of course, have a point: while it is reasonable to rely on the White House for photography from areas (such as the Situation Room) which are off-limits for security and logistical reasons, the Oval Office is the President's public office, an has been accessible to the major media for historic occasions by established precedent. And it is unfortunate that a video record of the second swearing-in is not available for posterity; to rely on a single official photograph seems downright anachronistic in the Age of YouTube.

Yesterday morning the White House press office held a conference with news agency photo editors, but according to the AP the situation seems be at an impasse, with press secretary Robert Gibbs insisting that "we would have had to get a bigger room" to accomodate the media for events such as the swearing in.

While I'm willing to allow for a certain amount of unfamiliarity with the established routine with big media, I believe that Obama and his people have made a substantial misstep here, at the very beginning of his historic term of office. You don't want to mess with the press on issues like basic access if you truly want to overturn the entrenched Bush legacy of secrecy and obfuscation. Of course, there's plenty of time to fix this; and on the other hand, having an official White House photographer has its benefits, such as well-lit, perfectly composed images as befitting the legacy of a precedent-breaking President! I am confident, however, based on Barack Obama's track record, that the reality of his office will ultimately do the image justice.

Next: a profile of Pete Souza, the official White House photographer