Kevin Downing, defense counsel for former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort, outside of the US District Court building in Washington DC. Manafort, already facing 47 months in prison for tax and bank fraud, was sentenced on Wednesday to an additional 43 months in prison on federal conspiracy charges. Photo credit: Stefani Reynolds for THE HILL(.com)
So that's all well and good--or maybe not, depending on your Point Of View--but what caught my eye and engaged my curiosity is the poster sign that is being held up for the cameras near the upper right corner of this photograph.
| quote | THIS IS A SIGN (exclamation point). |
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That seems perfectly obvious. Or is there something more than meets the eye? Is there a clue from the field of Semiotics? Semiotics or Semiology, as described online at Encyclopedia Britannica(.com) :
| quote | Semiotics, or Semiology was defined by one of its founders, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within society.” Although the word was used in this sense in the 17th century by the English philosopher John Locke, the idea of semiotics as an interdisciplinary mode for examining phenomena in different fields emerged only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the independent work of Saussure and of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. |
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https://www.britannica.com/science/semioticsIs the context of any help, in terms of disambiguating whether this sign is better understood as a political expression, or as an uncomplicated, self-referential reference of a mostly whimsical attitude? A kind of "Truth in product labeling" stricture taken to the umpteenth level beyond sanity? Is it a modern day echo of Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement that emerged towards the end of the 1950s, as part of an artistic and cultural warmup act that ushered in the voltage-amplified societal soundscape that was to differentiate the decidedly more eclectic 1960s? Is it Politics, or a more straightforward and reflexive "Object d'art" ?
An examination of the video footage reveals that the person who is holding up that sign turns it around, to reveal the exact same message on the other side. Is that dispositive in any way? When I saw that it moved "my needle" on it away from Politics and towards Art, as the definitive genre. Yet I can hardly be certain.
What about a closer look at the person with the sign?
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Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty ImagesI see a puckishly attired individual, perhaps male, perhaps female, with some kind of purple-hued getup--a Halloween costume style wig or head covering of some other kind--with a color coordinated purple bowtie and purple-framed sunglasses. All matching the purple border around the poster sign itself.
Politics? Art? Political art? Artful politics?
"You make the call."[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-14-2019).]