Why The New Yorker's Obama cover flopped
Writing in yesterday's New York Times, Lee Siegel sums up the biggest problem with the recent New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas a la conspiratorial right-wing email forwards:
The problem is that the cartoon accurately portrays a ridiculous real-life caricature that exists as literal fact in the minds of some people, and it portrays it in terms that are absolutely true to that caricature. An analogous instance would have been a cartoon without commentary appearing in a liberal Northern newspaper in the 1920s — a time when Southern violence against blacks was unabated — that showed a black man raping a white woman while eating a watermelon. The effect of accurately reproducing such a ridiculous image that dwelled unridiculously in the minds of some people would have been merely to broaden its vicious reach. The adherents of that image would have gone unsatirized and untouched.
In satire, absurdity achieves its rationality through moral perspective — or it remains simply incoherent or malign absurdity. The New Yorker represented the right-wing caricature of the Obamas while making the fatal error of not also caricaturing the right wing. [New York Times]
Another thing The New Yorker failed to realize was that the cartoon's audience would be broader than New Yorker readers and others who are familiar with the magazine. As soon as the story was on the internet and cable news channels, the cartoon's audience jumped from niche to mainstream. And most of the media outlets did not make any effort to explain that The New Yorker is a liberal magazine that has broken numerous major stories about Bush administration scandals during the last eight years, or that the magazine's readership is probably going to vote for Obama by a 9-to-1 ratio.
Instead, they approached the cartoon by asking "what would someone with absolutely no knowledge of this magazine think it means?" - which is kind of stupid, but that's how the media approaches things now. The media doesn't ask "what was person X trying to say?" - they ask "in what ways could someone misinterpret what person X said?" As frustrating as that approach to journalism might be, it is also incredibly naive of The New Yorker's editors not to have anticipated the scandal.
But even if The New Yorker had done a better job of clarifying the meaning of the cartoon, which would have preempted the lazy media coverage that ensued, there still would have been a problem. I'm a New Yorker subscriber (so I know where they are coming from), and I have a very sarcastic sense of humor (it is pretty hard to shock me), and yet, the combination of images in the cartoon made me feel uncomfortable. The cover reminded me of shocking early 80's punk rock album covers by bands like the Dead Kennedys - which probably isn't the comparison you want when you publish a magazine people like to put out on their coffee table or read on the airplane.
The problem is that the cartoon accurately portrays a ridiculous real-life caricature that exists as literal fact in the minds of some people, and it portrays it in terms that are absolutely true to that caricature. An analogous instance would have been a cartoon without commentary appearing in a liberal Northern newspaper in the 1920s — a time when Southern violence against blacks was unabated — that showed a black man raping a white woman while eating a watermelon. The effect of accurately reproducing such a ridiculous image that dwelled unridiculously in the minds of some people would have been merely to broaden its vicious reach. The adherents of that image would have gone unsatirized and untouched.
In satire, absurdity achieves its rationality through moral perspective — or it remains simply incoherent or malign absurdity. The New Yorker represented the right-wing caricature of the Obamas while making the fatal error of not also caricaturing the right wing. [New York Times]
Another thing The New Yorker failed to realize was that the cartoon's audience would be broader than New Yorker readers and others who are familiar with the magazine. As soon as the story was on the internet and cable news channels, the cartoon's audience jumped from niche to mainstream. And most of the media outlets did not make any effort to explain that The New Yorker is a liberal magazine that has broken numerous major stories about Bush administration scandals during the last eight years, or that the magazine's readership is probably going to vote for Obama by a 9-to-1 ratio.
Instead, they approached the cartoon by asking "what would someone with absolutely no knowledge of this magazine think it means?" - which is kind of stupid, but that's how the media approaches things now. The media doesn't ask "what was person X trying to say?" - they ask "in what ways could someone misinterpret what person X said?" As frustrating as that approach to journalism might be, it is also incredibly naive of The New Yorker's editors not to have anticipated the scandal.
But even if The New Yorker had done a better job of clarifying the meaning of the cartoon, which would have preempted the lazy media coverage that ensued, there still would have been a problem. I'm a New Yorker subscriber (so I know where they are coming from), and I have a very sarcastic sense of humor (it is pretty hard to shock me), and yet, the combination of images in the cartoon made me feel uncomfortable. The cover reminded me of shocking early 80's punk rock album covers by bands like the Dead Kennedys - which probably isn't the comparison you want when you publish a magazine people like to put out on their coffee table or read on the airplane.
posted at 8:52:00 PM | permalink
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