Epimemeology, Week #8: The Obama Hope Poster

by Pat

Happy President's Day! In my perfect America, we would barely remember the President's name. Not in a "profound literacy crisis" way. In a "too busy administrating the nation" way. Also, my perfect America would allow flamethrowers in all fifty states, instead of just forty-nine. Maryland is a buzzkill. 

The Meme:

A stylized portrait of former President Barack Obama. He is depicted looking upward and into the distance. The left half of his face is blue, while the right half is red (get it?).

Where You Might Have Seen It:

Gather 'round, youngins, and I'll tell you the story of a presidential election that didn't make us all want to die. On one side, a senator from Arizona who was an actual war hero, and a mere 72 years old. On the other, an outrageously charismatic 47-year-old senator from Illinois. It was a simpler time, when a Republican candidate could publicly reject idiotic conspiracy theories, and a Democratic candidate could inspire passion in their voters instead of just exhausted resignation. Also, I was seventeen, so I had all of my hair, and could swing on monkey bars without blowing out my shoulders. Man, the past was awesome. 

Nostalgia notwithstanding, the Hope image was everywhere in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. It was on buildings! 

It was on street corners! 

It was on pumpkins!

It was on frightening pizzas!

And, most regrettably, it was on ourselves!

The Message:

Much like the ability to order a nuclear strike, the Hope style shouldn't be limited to the President. It should be an option for everyone! The Hope message quickly evolved from "Vote for Barack Obama in 2008" to "We can summarize this character/event/concept in one word!"

For whatever reason, I found a ton of Star Wars references. 

It's also one of those memes that can easily swallow other memes. 

Overall, the message of Hope-style images is that the subject is iconic; the premier example of whatever it is. 

The Source:

I couldn't find any information about the life of Barack Obama, so I opted to examine the creator of the original image: artist Shepard Fairey. 

The use of this photo is intended for nonprofit educational purposes.

For those unfamiliar with Fairey, he's a street artist and designer long associated with graffiti, skater, and punk subculture. He's also the creator of the "OBEY" image that you sometimes see in bar bathrooms. 

My main source for this week's column is Obey Giant, the 2017 documentary on Fairey's life and work. Right away, I was surprised to see the film opens with a montage of criticism against Fairey. Really brutal stuff, too. The collection of sound bites accuse Fairey of being a hack, a sellout, a professional plagiarist, and "not only... not an artist, he's about the furthest thing from art there is." "Wow," I thought. "This documentary might actually examine Fairey's work with a critical eye. This is fascinating."

Unfortunately, that's not at all how the next ninety minutes played out. The idea that Fairey is a genius and a hero is taken for granted. I guess that critical montage at the start was just to prove the haters wrong. It's a shame, too, because Fairey is a talented guy, but from my perspective he's also the villain of his own story.

I'll concede that the documentary isn't boring, and it was interesting to trace the evolution of Fairey's work. (Me, interested in how memes develop? Who would've guessed?) Fairey's first widely recognized work was "Andre the Giant Has a Posse," which began its life when Fairey used a newspaper photo of André Roussimoff to show a coworker at the skate shop how to use the stenciling machine.

Fairey printed out a few stickers of the image and put them up around Providence, RI. When he heard people talking about them, Fairey began driving between Boston and New York in his spare time, putting André stickers up wherever he could. 

The documentary glosses over this point, but this is the first example of Shepard Fairey's greatest talent, even more so than art: promotion. Fairey has a superhuman ability to spread his art to the ends of the Earth. He carries and hangs up André posters on his first date with his future wife. Their honeymoon is essentially traveling around the U.S., putting up posters all night, and getting brunch the next day. He put André's head over Buddy Cianci's face on a giant billboard. If you know anything about former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci, you know this is the least insane thing he was ever involved in.

The gallery owner who first displayed Fairey's work under a roof gets the closest to this truth in the whole movie. He recalls that he picked Fairey's work, even though it was "not technically impressive," because it was everywhere. The documentary is too wrapped up in the quality of Fairey's work, when it was really the quantity that made him famous.

Fairey is also quite good (but not great; you'll see what I mean in a little bit) at adapting his work based on the response he gets. Not audience response, mind you. The legal response. When Fairey received a cease-and-desist from André the Giant's estate, he simplified the design to basic geometric shapes and added the word "OBEY." According to Fairey, these modifications were inspired by the Soviet Constructivist style and the movie They Live, respectively. 

"Is that Andre the Giant?"

When we finally get to the Hope image, Fairey explains that the birth of his children inspired him to be "for" something, instead of reflexively rebelling against the status quo. Consequently, he reached out to the Obama campaign and offered to make a poster free of charge. I don't doubt that Fairey liked Obama, felt strongly about his campaign, and wanted to help. I do doubt that this was an entirely selfless act on Fairey's part, as the documentary portrays it. Fairey wasn't paid for his work, but by his own admission ("I was doing daily interviews"), his profile as an artist rose dramatically after Hope went viral. According to later documentation, Fairey earned nearly $1,000,000 from the sale of four "fine art" versions of the poster and royalties from merchandise. I think it can be simultaneously true that Fairey believed in a cause and also saw a golden opportunity for himself. But Obey Giant doesn't, and that's endlessly frustrating. 

Even more frustrating is how Obey Giant frames the personal fallout for Fairey after making the Hope poster. Fairey didn't draw Obama freehand. He wanted to model his poster after a specific portrait of John F. Kennedy. To do this, Fairey simply went on Google Images and found a picture of Obama that most resembled that pose. The problem was that this photo was taken by photojournalist Mannie Garcia and owned by the Associated Press. Garcia appears in the documentary and calmly explains that he wished Fairey had asked permission, but otherwise didn't really give a shit. The AP was less cool about it, and sent a letter to Fairey advising him that a copyright infringement had occurred. 

At this point, Obey Giant starts lying by omission. Fairey explains that only after his legal dispute with the AP got started did he realize that he had confused which photo he had used for Hope. Long story short, the AP said he used one specific photo, Fairey claimed he used a different one, then Fairey realized the AP was right. In order to hide his fuckup, Fairey deleted a bunch of files off his computer before handing it over to the AP in discovery. Eventually, Fairey admits this to his lawyer, it taints the case, and he's forced to settle with the AP before getting indicted for criminal contempt. 

This story makes for good television, I guess. A socially conscious artist/activist is cruelly beaten down by a greedy, all-powerful news organization. (Quick aside: it's kinda wild in 2024 to see a story where a news organization is the big bad guy). But Obey Giant completely omits several crucial facts from its telling. To start, the AP didn't sue Fairey. The AP reached out to Fairey about a copyright infringement, and Fairey responded by immediately suing the AP. 

Granted, Fairey was only asking for declaratory judgment—basically asking the court to say he didn't do anything wrong—and the AP responded with a frankly ridiculous countersuit. But this is where Lawyer Pat forcibly pushes aside Column Pat to say two very important points. First, if you're suing anyone for anything, get your fucking facts straight before putting them in a complaint. Yeah, you can amend complaints, but the stupider the amendment, the angrier the judge will get, and that's bad for you. Second, if you do realize you made a mistake, don't destroy discoverable materials to cover it up. And certainly don't create totally fake documents and pass those off as the real things. The documentary seems to have forgotten that Fairey didn't just delete his old files, but actively created fake files to mislead the AP and only came clean after the real files were found on a hard drive Fairey didn't wipe. 

Don't do this, but super duper don't do this over the course of eight months.

You might think that given Fairey's documented history of lying to everybody, Obey Giant would be a little less credulous when he offers an explanation for why he hid the truth. But no, the documentary just handwaves it away and takes Fairey at his word. Fairey says he couldn't bear to face his mistake, and was under a tremendous amount of stress in 2009. That was the year he was charged with thirty-two felonies by Detective Bill Kelly, the Boston Police Department's resident graffiti expert. 

That might add context, but it doesn't... I'm sorry. Hold on. What the fuck did I just write? "Detective Bill Kelly, the Boston Police Department's resident graffiti expert." No fucking way that's a real guy. 

Holy shit!

I'm sorry, folks, but I need to temporarily derail this entire column to talk about Detective Bill Kelly, the Boston Police Department's resident graffiti expert. I didn't expect to come face-to-face with a real-world Mr. Show character, but here we are. Some calls must be heeded, no matter the cost. 

The screenshot above comes from a public access-looking show named Call the Cops, in which cops interview other cops about cop stuff and then "random citizens" call in to either ask cop questions or complain about something unrelated. Boston is already a city so conceptually ridiculous that I wouldn't believe it was real if I hadn't been there myself. It's a city designed by cows, built atop garbage, and destroyed by syrup. 

Its greatest living actor worships completely mid fast food coffee and donuts. If you had told me there was also a public access show in Boston that features a bunch of extras from The Departed taking fake calls from a bunch of extras from Mystic River, I would've responded with a Schrödinger's answer. A simultaneous "No, that's impossibly dumb" and "Yes, that is exactly what I expected." 

I watched Detective Kelly's interview and it did not disappoint. Cops are always fun, because for some reason, they're always the most egregious regional stereotypes within their city limits. William Kelly is the most Boston man to ever exist. He will draw his gun if you pronounce the letter "R." I bet he's written "Suspect was observed wearing a Yankees hat" as probable cause. Every night he dives into the Charles River and emerges rejuvenated, ready to take down the hooligans thar keep spray painting penises on mailboxes.

Detective Kelly makes several wild claims during his interview, and you know what? On a human level, I get it. Everyone wants some kind of fulfillment from what they do. No one thinks of graffiti as the biggest problem America is facing. Being a graffiti cop requires long hours of undercover work for little praise. So Detective Bill Kelly, the Boston Police Department's resident graffiti expert, tries to sex it up a little. 

He explains graffiti is "the single most destructive property crime in our city." I would've said "winning a sports championship" or "being a Wahlberg" posed more danger to Boston, but hey, you're the maniac that lives there. Detective Kelly then really goes for broke by saying that the graffiti subculture "in several ways, it is parallel to the Mafia." Picture it, America. Picture Tony Soprano yelling at Christopher because he bled through his stencil and ruined the tag.

Story time! I've been stopped by police a few times in my life and none of those stops were very interesting. The most interesting one that didn't end with me getting a ticket was the time a graffiti cop tried to recruit me. I was fourteen, and some dipshit was writing "FOCUS" on all the stop signs in my neighborhood. I was walking home from my bus stop, and a police cruiser pulled up next to me. The officer asked if we could talk. He was investigating the Focus Phantom (my name, not his) and asked if I knew anything about it. Truthfully, I did not. I was a Boy Scout, both in the literal and the pejorative sense.

The officer then offered me his card, in case I heard anything. I don't think I took it, which was not a moral stand so much as being profoundly confused by the whole situation. I should have taken it though. I should've worn a wire to my high school art class, then been found dead with the outline of a rat painstakingly spray painted onto my torso. I could've been graffiti Laurence Fishburne. It could've been different. It's overwhelming to think about all the forks we've come to in the road of life. 

What was I talking about? Right, Shepard Fairey.

I eventually finished Obey Giant. In my opinion, Shepard Fairey is a decent artist, an outstanding self-promoter and businessman, a guy who genuinely wants a better world, and an occasionally self-sabotaging asshole. His biggest setback—getting countersued by the AP, then charged with falsifying evidence—was a completely self-inflicted dick shot. Obey Giant unintentionally portrays Shepard Fairey as Shepard Fairey's greatest enemy. A better documentary would have examined this phenomenon instead of coming upon it by happenstance. 

I didn't like Obey Giant, but it helped me appreciate the gulf between propaganda and its subject. "Propaganda," as I understand it, is zealously advocating for an idea; it's not necessarily evil, and it doesn't have to be a lie. Think about those "Tips from Former Smokers" ads. They're over-the-top and emphasize uncommon medical outcomes; they also aggressively advocate quitting smoking, which is an unquestionably good thing. Its non-evil propaganda. In that same vein, Obey Giant is propaganda for the genius of Shepard Fairey, and the Hope image is propaganda for an Obama presidency. 

But one of the problems with propaganda is that it leaves no room for nuance. When a consumer is faced with the reality, it can lead to disillusion and disappointment. Obey Giant says Shepard Fairey is the patron saint of underground revolutionary art. The reality is that he's a complicated, talented, sometimes shitty guy. Realizing that disparity shows me how much opportunity Obey Giant missed. It's disappointing. 

A lot of people who bought into the message of the Hope posters were also disappointed. Shepard Fairey was one of them. Obama's presidency saw a lot of rad shit happen, but it didn't fix everything. It didn't end racism, or close income inequality, or get our country out of foreign wars. And the backlash was brutal. It's been sixteen years since his election, and America seems more disillusioned than ever. 

However, I don't think the takeaway from the Hope poster is to be cynical. We can embrace a message of hope while still understanding that the world is imperfect. Don't take the failures of someone you've never met personally. Aspire for something better, but stay flexible. Read propaganda critically. I don't have a joke to end on. 

Next Week: Pat gets physical with the 1988 National Aerobic Championship.