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I checked one local Wal-Mart in Baton Rouge - no shirts, and the display shirt was pulled down.
I wasn't able to tell if there was a posse of LSU students moping about it anywhere.
I checked one local Wal-Mart in Baton Rouge - no shirts, and the display shirt was pulled down.
I wasn't able to tell if there was a posse of LSU students moping about it anywhere.
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as a designer, i have to agree with the guy. symbols dont kill people, people do.
symbols dont kill people, people do.
As an amateur sociologist, I disagree with you, guy. Symbols reinforce ideas of people of killing other people.
Symbols have power. Check out the Washington Monument sometime and tell me that you can't figure out why Washington is so sex-obsessed.
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\"symbols dont kill people, people do\" - I bet there are still people alive today, who will remember that symbol from their childhood, who will disagree with you. And what better group to comment on the overuse of symbols than designers.
Whoops, s/overuse/over blown importance/, sorry.
I agree with the designer on this. If we take it the way Ben apparently feels about it, then we may as well allow copyright to last forever. In effect what you're saying is that this particular image of the skull is permanently associated with a sub-sect of the SS and can never be representative of anything else ever again. Sounds like copyright to me.
I think we should allow symbols to evolve in their meaning and their relevance to society. Sorry that there just happen to be a few people still alive that remember the original meaning, but for those of us that never experienced the world wars, it doesn't appear as offensive. If I'm destined to repeat history, so be it. But - I'm not about to go through life afraid of what every symbol I see *might* have meant in the past.
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Drmsith, I'm not saying be afraid, but be aware. Shep himself said he was sorry he wasn't more aware about the symbol's history. If he had known the symbol's significance and still used it as part of an artistic statement, that's would one thing.
Here's a repository of extremist symbols. Don't look at them. I would hate to disturb you if one of them was on your favorite tshirt.
Great, Ben, there goes my wardrobe!
Great link, Ben.
My point is, designers (especially fashion designers) deluge us with icons because we're an iconiclastic society. It's not their fault, they are just selling what we want to buy. But I don't think that it's appropriate for designers to then tell us \"Hey, it's just a picture, it doesn't mean anything\" If it didn't mean anything at all, nobody would buy them. Given that designers are fulfilling our need for icons at a profit, I think the least they owe us is a little research on their icons before they try to sell them.
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Aww, I actually would have been more impressed if Fairly used an obscure Nazi symbol as part of a sly, quintesentially ironic reference to unthinking consumerism. Especially with \"Obey\". In these times.
Dang, must ALL heroes have feet of clay?!
What's a quicker death for Cool of an icon: it being in Wal-Mart or it being seen on 14-year-olds? Never mind: skulls are both.
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I don't mean to stir things up here (really, I don't)… buuut….
Ok. So Fairey accidentally makes a nazi shirt, apologizes, and consumerist says that he \"might be well served by picking up a few history books\" and then throws in a little quotation. Walmart copies said accidental nazi shirt, apologizes, and consumerist has 1.5 billion subsequent posts about walmart's evil ways surrounding this stupid shirt, etc.
I'm not saying you should come down any harder on Fairey (because in all likelihood it really WAS an accident). I think maybe this whole incident just goes to show that consumerist is overtly and unapologetically bias against Walmart. I dunno. This just isn't sitting right with me for some reason.
He sez: \"I think people are much too sensitive about loaded symbols...\"
Oooo, Shep, time to take Semiotics 101, and then maybe an all-day guided tour of Auschwitz. Tsk tsk.
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Enough already!
All this over-sensitive PC BS is enough to make any half-reasonable person go insane.
Yes, it was stupid for a worldwide retailer to sell shirts with a symbol tied to the Third Reich, and at least they pulled the shirts when they were found to be offensive. But seriously, how many Wal-Mart shoppers would have known what the totenkopf stood for? Only a few WW2 history buffs like myself recognised it and once that got out the true uproar began. Mistakes were made, first buy this \"designer\" (I use the term loosely) and then then by the Wal-Mart suppliers plagerism team.
But enough is enough already, especially with the \"pro-nazi\" this and the \"anti-semetic\" that. These symbols only hold power if people let them. Everyone has a responsibilty to not only to be aware of history, but also to not overreact if ugly reminders inadvertly pop up from time to time.
But, onrampofframp, I think this is disingenuous of you: \"These symbols only hold power if people let them.\"
What?? You mean, I can \"decide\" that the specific skull symbol on the Wal-Mart shirt means nothing, despite its dire history a mere 65 years ago, and then everything will be OK?
I'm not buyin' it. (Literally or figuratively.) The meaning stays attached to the symbol decades, centuries, after the events are past. Labeling arguments like mine \"P.C. B.S.\" is a cop-out, as you knew when you typed it. It is human decency and respect we are after, not some Marxist canard.
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Of course the Consumerist would give an independent artist more of a benefit of the doubt and easier treatment than a widely loathed multinational corporation. Thank goodness.
Now, if only that annoying GIANT were an offensive symbol. I'd love to see that thing go away.
Yeah, but the SECOND that a subversive artist locks thousands of his employees overnight, hires scores of illegal aliens, or bankrupts broad swaths of both manufactures or mom-n-pop retailers across these United States, *boy* is Consumerist gonna go medieval on their ass.
Or if they hire Melman.
Either/or on the moral imparative score...
it would be pretty ironic for Shepard Fairey to complain about plagiarism or \"ripping-off\" anyone.
Don't support Obey.
Educate yourself.
That guy, Shepard Fairey, is totally ignorant and pretentious.
check these links.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellydwilliams/388221782/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thenerd/332243824/
http://www.brghtnghts.com/YTWWNOBEY.html
http://www.brghtnghts.com/blog/?page_id=33
http://www.brghtnghts.com/blog/?page_id=46
http://consumerist.com/consumer/co_options/rupert-murdoch-...
sure were condemmed to repeat the past, but who cares if we exploit the cool symbols they had.... excluding the meaning, just as the swatika used to be a religous symbol..... (message)