New Mythologies in Design and Culture by Houze Rebecca

Author:Houze, Rebecca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reading Signs and Symbols in the Visual Landscape
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2016-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Red State, Blue State

Totem and Taboo

The somewhat odd colloquial expressions “red states” and “blue states” recall the title of Dr. Seuss’s popular reader for young children, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Theodore Seuss Geisel, the author of many beloved children’s books, wisely observed in that story: “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.”1 Dealing with themes near and dear to the hearts of progressive activists of the 1960s and 1970s, such as social justice, civil rights, and the environment, Dr. Seuss captured not only the surreal imagination of children with his musical, nonsensical poetry, teaching many to read along the way, but also the strangeness and absurdity of the human experience. This strangeness is captured in the totemic Red State, Blue State map of the United States that emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century.2 What does this map signify? And why has it become fixed in the collective imagination? In what ways are ideological messages designed, mythologized, and communicated visually? This chapter explores the trouble with information graphics, especially those that proliferate in the news media today. It asks if there is a better, more productive, way to understand how we perceive ourselves, and our political differences.

On July 27, 2004, Barack Obama, then a U.S. senator from the state of Illinois, delivered a memorable keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, which selected Senator John Kerry as its presidential nominee that year. In that speech, which launched him into the public eye, the young politician drew attention to his own unlikely name and family background. Explaining the union of his black father from Kenya with his white mother from Kansas, who met while students at the University of Hawaii, “a magical place,” Obama claimed that “only in America” could be written such a story.3

The rousing speech, delivered with what would become the future president’s characteristic rhetorical style, introduced the seeds of his own mythic identity, and was designed to move beyond partisan divisions, an effort that President Obama has continued during his subsequent two terms in the White House.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states, and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.4

Contrary to Obama’s view that the nation could move beyond partisan

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.