Reading into the Obama-as-joker poster . . . or not: LA Times

Quoted via LATimes:

There's nothing like a controversial political caricature to get people talking, blogging and tweeting.

But when it comes to understanding those same cartoons -- as opposed to rehashing, reblogging and retweeting them -- context is key.

The New Yorker magazine's infamous cover illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama in radical drag, bumping fists in the Oval Office as an American flag burns in the fireplace, is understood to be a parody of conservative paranoia, not an attack on the first couple. But put that same image on the cover of the Weekly Standard and the illustration takes on a vastly different meaning.

In this respect, the image of President Obama in Heath Ledger Joker-face is especially disturbing because it is completely devoid of context -- literary, political or otherwise. The image seems to have emerged from nowhere and was created by no one. Deracinated from authorial intent, Obama-as-Joker becomes a free-floating cipher that can be appropriated and re-appropriated by everyone.

Clearly, the poster -- which has already mutated into countless variations on the Internet -- communicates a virulent hostility to Obama, but in a vague and flailing way. It can mean anything and it could mean nothing. (The latter seems more likely than the former.) In some versions of the image, the word "socialism" has been appended to the poster. But as media outlets like CNN have pointed out, the Joker (as portrayed by Ledger in "The Dark Knight") was a rabid anarchist, which doesn't jibe well with the accusation of socialism. more