A Work In Progress

Williams: You are on the cover of Time magazine here in the United States and around the world. Inside, it says, "A Date with a Dangerous Mind."  Why do you think they think you have a dangerous mind?  Do you?

Ahmadinejad: You should hear what I have to say, and then be the judge of that. I think that if people have a hard time accepting the logic and fact, they should not actually accuse others. The picture is an attempt to darken my face a lot. I think it actually shows me much younger than what I am. The first page, the cover.

Williams: Oh, the cover?

Ahmadinejad: This one? The cover page. Oh, it's really…

Williams: You approve?

Ahmadinejad: …questionable. It's darkened me. And also much — it looks much younger than what I am.

-- Brian Williams/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad interview.  Sept. 20, 2006.

Of course it's darkened you and made you younger, AA.  Because the title (a sickeningly insane, Administration-pandering throwback to Gulf War fever) not only refers to the story inside the mag, but to your photo-illustration.  That war would look like an attack, once again, on a single figure, a cartoon --without regard for a people or country.

Whether intentional or not, this illustration calls up an effect, popular in commercials and films lately, turning actors and settings into their animated equivalents.  The method engages the viewer through its novelty, as well as the task of completing the bridge between the animation and reality inside one's own head. (I'm assuming the marketing people believe the "fleshing out" also leads to greater story or sales "buy in.")

It's telling how Ahmadinejad is no longer real, but isn't yet a cartoon.  (Only from the neck down is he's a finished character.)  This suggests two things.  First, in spite of the intense effort to flatten him out, there remains a thoughtful interest in understanding who this guy is, and how much of a threat he might actually represent.  (That may be why his body is converted, but head isn't there yet.)

Second, it suggests that the job of the Administration -- to turn AA into a total cartoon villain -- is coming along well, but remains a work in progress.

(hat tip: JR)

(photo-illustration: unattributed.  TIME.  Sep. 25, 2006.  Cover.)

Comments

[jtfromBC]

First I would suggest this is an extended sound bit rather than an interview. And second the implied but not stated *real question* was not asked directly or pursued. "Israel must be wiped off the map" which must be the most widely dispersed quotation of this decade.
So before the evaluation of the cover and interview be considered I suggest a perusal of:

Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:34:18 -0400 From: "Cole, Juan" extract
The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."
Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.
Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.

[black dog barking]

The smooth 2D cartoon flesh tone expanse around the eyes is stark contrast to the 3D detail of the brows, lids, etc. centering finally on 2D whites of the eyes. Net effect of this morphing of perspectives is creepy. To me the eyes look like they were lifted from a smaller photo.

It took me an uncomfortable quarter of an hour to get used to the cartoon veneer of A Scanner Darkly. Unlike the "Chuck" Schwab ad the Scanner cartoon shapes were constantly shifting just a little bit conveying an underlying agitation completely consistent with addiction and Substance D. Very effective.

[Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez]

Perhaps it's just a sign of how absolutely disgusted I am with our leadership that I feel some odd detached fondness for the men who are vilified by that same cabal. This may be one of the most dangerous things Bush et al has done to our country's unity.

I really don't know anything about Ahmedinajad. But if his cartoon is on Saturdays, I'll check it out.

[Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez]

...Or maybe it's just that Chavez and Iran-guy actually sound sane next to our deranged monkey team. Sanity, reason. I'm fucking starving for it.

[caraf]

He's a Warhol in this image.

[ummabdulla]

I think it's a very flattering picture of him.

I have to laugh at the "exclusive" interview label, though; he was talking to anyone who would listen while he was in New York, wasn't he?

All they say about him is that he's the son of a blacksmith and was the mayor of Tehran. The Bush administration uses those facts to try to paint him as a nobody. But "son of a blacksmith" fits in with his populist, regular guy image; why do they think that's an insult? And Tehran is a city of around 12 million people. He also has a PhD and was a professor at a prestigious university there.

I'm not a fan of his, but like many people around the world, I kind of enjoy watching him (and Chavez, too) say what they think about Bush, unlike so many leaders who won't. (At rallies against the Israeli war on Lebanon, Arabs held signs that said "Chavez: the real Arab leader", since he had recalled his ambassador from Israel while countries like Egypt and Jordan hadn't.)

JT, I've also seen Juan Cole attempting to explain that "Israel must be wiped off the map" quote - over and over again - but everyone still mistranslates it. The Quran says that every nation has its appointed term, and we see that throughout history (which is why the whole "end of history" hype always seeemed ridiculous).

[ummabdulla]

I also agree it wasn't much of an interview. I'd like to see him on something like the BBC's Hard Talk, where the host is actually knowledgeable and prepared, so that he can ask challenging quesitons and then follow them up.

[KingElvis]

Time is such a shameless agit prop arm for US militarism - it's self parody.

Take them at their word:

War with Iraq would "look" cartoonish, over-simplified and dumbed down for you stupid, filthy masses.

After all, what it is the point of Time? To break news? Of course not. It's to tell you how to feel about what's already been reported. I'm amazed these weeklies still exist - thank doctor's waiting rooms and NPR for throwing Newspeak, I mean Newsweak, I mean Newsweek in with a credit card pledge.

[Keir]

The 'M' in 'TIME' gives the man horns.

WAR WITH IRAN: big
(how to avoid it): small

It also seems that facial hair is apparently always a sign of evil, at least from US/UK perspectives, at least within living memory. The only two exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are Walesa in Poland and Havel in Czech Republic (but those were just moustaches, and they were merely Slavs. . . )

[Barnaclebart]

Bravo

[ummabdulla]

The big, red letters proclaim "WHAT WAR WITH IRAN WOULD LOOK LIKE", and only as an aside - smaller, white, below, and in parentheses - do they put "And how to avoid it".

A magazine with different priorities might say: "HOW TO AVOID WAR WITH IRAN (And what it would look like)".

[butterfly]

Keir: "The 'M' in 'TIME' gives the man horns." !!!

I think they made him look more like a Terry Gilliam cartoon than a Warhol screen print. It's ridicule of an unpopular character not celebrity of a popular icon. If he was animated his mouth would drop down like an old Monty Python clip art mouth and whatever he says people would laugh at him. I don't think many people will see the subliminal M horns! I don't think Mr. Ahmadinejad realized that he had been made into a cartoon but he knew something was wrong with it. I don't think that the people at Time realized that when they put a cartoon on their cover it makes their magazine look like a comic book and not a serious magazine. If I was a writer for Time I would not like this cover because this cover is a cartoon and mean and unprofessional and people would not take my work seriously.

[jt from BC]

caraf > He's a Warhol in this image,

"The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet".
Would Andy think that about Mr. A and Mr. W as well ?

[limapup]

Actually, I find many similarities between the faces of Ahmadinejad and Bush - those close-to-each-other eyes,protruding ears,etc, etc....

[Mona]

Here is a profile by Jason Burke from the Observer on Ahmadinejad (Jan. 27th, 2006). His intellectual acumen is impressive. www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1686793,00.html

[Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez]

Keir with the horns observation, that was right on time, bro. I can just hear the TIME designers giggling over it.

[donna]

Sigh. I'm so old, I remember when Time was a real news magazine, instead of a propoganda catapulter.

Oh well. I was in the airport today waiting for a flight home, and almost threw my shoe through the TV when one of the propoganda shows came on, I think on Fox or CNN or something. Some idiot ranting about Iran, anyway.

No wonder I don't watch TV or read "news magazines" anymore.

[Foxklub]

John Ritter is a very talented photo-illustrator who produced this piece. (his website = http://www.ritterillustration.net/). This is the style in which he works. I think you are all reading too much into this one. My guess is the art director called him on short notice, he put this together and it got printed. Magazines dont like using straight photos all the time. I have no doubt that the essence of the criticism is accurate - this Iranian will be demonized and made into a cartoon by the media, blamed for everything wrong in the universe, maybe even the spoiled spinach.

[Al Shaw]

this post is spot on. awesome.

[Enoch Root]

TIME: News for stupid people.

I immediately made the Warhol connection, too, having just seen the excellent PBS series about him.

And look: If the 'M' gives him horns, then the 'IM' gives him three horns. I doubt it's intentional. One has to wonder about the figure being submerged in a very deep pool of blood, however. Was that the intention, or was red just a neeto color for the background (and text)?

[Cactus]

Having given up taking TIME seriously in the 60's, since it was so reactionary, I still don't pay that much attention to it. Of course, Luce is long gone and they've made some attempt to appear balanced in the past 20 years, but......

Maybe the rotoscoping is a hip way of photo-shopping without photo-shopping; a photo can be cleverly changed into an "art" form without editors being accused of altering the image. Ahmadinejad said that it makes him look darker and younger. I don't see that; rather it is slightly yellower than most of the shots of him on google. Only older (younger?) photos of him show a lighter skin tone. It does make him look younger due to the erasing of lines on the face.

However, there are some other subtle differences that, if indeed they were added, would serve to make the viewer uncomfortable or uneasy about him. The eyes are slightly off-plane and the nostrils are slightly off in the opposite direction. Although he does have heavy eyebrows, it seems to me that this image exaggerates them and they are not equal in size or shape. Perhaps another thing that bothers is that it IS a cartoon kind of image, which we expect to be perfect, yet there are all those anomalies which belie the cartooniness of it.

As to the words......WAR WITH IRAN is obviously supposed to insert itself into our brain with (and how to avoid it) added as an 'oops' almost forgot about that. When I first saw 'what it would look like' I thought they had come up with a video game about it already.

BTW, that Schwab commercial makes me uneasy, too, and I usually avoid looking at it. And I agree with Nezua-Limon that our insane guy makes their insane guy look absolutely rational. And he can talk!

[veh]

I think the effect they are going for is to make him look like a silk-screened political rally poster. A US audience can easily conjure up the implied images of a large mass of hostile bearded Iranians waving guns and holding up this poster. This image is less about the personality of the man himself and more about the attempt to conjure up images of Islamic political rage.

also, this is not the first time an iranian president has gotten the warhol treatment:
http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/iran/imageposters/index.html

[quixote]

Every actual photo I've seen of the man shows him with very small eyes, so much so that you hardly ever see the whites or the irises. And yet, on this picture, the whites are the brightest, most noticeable thing about his whole face.I would think that more visible eyes ought to have the effect of humanizing the man, but somehow on this picture it doesn't. Possibly something to do with the whole cartoon quality of the way it was done.

[ericverlo]

How do you suppose the Time editors excuse themselves for their choice of art direction? Do readers think it fair that one person is accorded an intimate portrait, and yet another a posterized image?

I'm encouraged that children's cartoons of today make obvious the deliberate use of caricatured expressions when they are being manipulative. Bambi eyes would be one example. Our children's media literacy will be greatly enhanced.

I think this image of Ahmadinejad is less like a cartoon and more like an old tin-type photograph. The composition of the picture, particularly the woodgrain backdrop not sufficiently behind Ahmadinejad's head, reminds me of the post-mortem pictures circulated in the old west to publicize the proof of the killing of an outlaw.

Add to the resemblance the dark hair and beard and I think this Time cover emulates a photograph made iconic in Latin America at least, of the Dead Che Guevara.

[ummabdulla]

I just got around to reading the Time interview, after reading Media Tall Tales
for the Next War by Norman Solomon.

They really are so blatant; they might as well paint a sign on his forehead saying "bad guy". Of course, the first thing is the title:

"A Date With a Dangerous Mind
EXCLUSIVE: Face to face with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with the U.S."

"Dangerous Mind"? "Face to face"? As if sitting across from him for an interview is an act of bravery?

I've noticed a lot of references to his being short, too, like this one from the Time interview:

"...He mutters something to himself as he settles into an aging leather chair with bad springs. For a moment, he seems irked by the chair, perhaps because it makes him seem even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in., but soon he's smiling, prodding, leaning forward to make his points..."

(Or perhaps he's irked by the chair because it's uncomfortable with its bad springs...)

"...Ahmadinejad is a skilled, if slippery, debater..."

"...he was serious, smiling and cocky--evidence of a self-assurance that borders on arrogance..."

"...Ahmadinejad bolted from the room, swapped his jacket for a suit coat and climbed into a Mercedes..."

(Faker! He's riding in a Mercedes!)