Post-GWOT Recruiting Poster?

Did you catch this image in the NYT Mag piece on actor and eco-activist Ed Begley?

The most likely gestural explanation is that Ed is shielding the sun.  The pose, along with the first paragraph reference to Begley having been a boy scout, however, seems to pull for more timely symbolism.

As another building block in the shift to a post-GWOT era, the "get natural" portrait might be read as part of a larger patriotic make-over.  With BushCo. in its last moral throes, perhaps the next war is going to be a green one.

(image:  Jeff Minton.  published. May 20, 2007. Los Angeles. nytimes.com)

Comments

[Bluegrass Poet]

Certainly a contrast of atmosphere from the Baghdad photos you've posted the last couple of days.

[Anon]

M*A*S*H???

[KingElvis]

Norman Rockwell-ization of solar energy.

[acm]

MASH is a good note, but in all honesty, when I started reading this post, I thought you were going to talk about the sexi-fication of eco-awareness, with this guy serving as an unexpected pin-up. I get the salute, once you mention it, but before that I was distracted by the boyish knees....

[donna]

Green is Good....

[Gasho]

I've been waiting for a green poster-boy for a looong time. I'd love to start seeing more and more positive examples of 'the right thing to do'. Who else is modelling green behavior, anyway?? Gore is talking about the right stuff, but is he really showing us what to do? I don't see it.

More more more.

[marysz]

I enjoyed reading the article about Ed Begley in Sunday's Times. However, it does show that it's expensive to "go green." How many of us can afford to buy an electric car, or a new Prius? High-income couples like the Begleys spend money to be environmentally responsible. Low-income Americans can't afford to buy pricey "green" products. They can only cut back (involuntarily) on consumption and buy stuff used from thrift stores and yard sales. Despite their sincerity about saving the planet, I don't think we'll be seeing the Begleys at the local Goodwill anytime soon.

[noen]

I like the composition and how the angle of his right arm echoes the angle of the solar panels. He doesn't look that wealthy to me. I have no idea how much he's worth but just from the pic I'd say that if I were middle class, (I'm not) I could identify with him.

I am suspicious when the media decides who my icons are supposed to be though. And good god we don't need a green war. That we seem to need to frame everything as a war is exactly what is wrong with this country.

[japandrew]

Sorry if this is off topic, but the online NYT right now has the most amazing photo of Harry Reid holding up both hands (in surrender) next to the banner "Democracts Drop Troop Pullout Dates from Iraq Bill." Anyone for subtlety?

[Gasho]

The image is extremely patriotic graphically, and the inclusion of green feels like a welcome addition to the strickty red white and blue color scheme.

It is rather a stiff view of our modern green hero, with all the right angles and straight edges, but that keeps the image from falling into the hippy category; probably a good idea if you want any 'ex-redstaters' to appreciate the underlying concepts its promoting.

[gmoke]

He got his wife to agree to the red rain barrel! I remember their fight over that issue on their Home and Garden reality show.

Begley's been doing this stuff for a couple of decades now. On the reality show, he does an instore appearance at an organic grocery to sell the cleaning product he developed (and sells for charity, his version of Newman's Own). He walks the walk as well as talks the talk.

The old WWII homefront posters are still powerful images. You can see my favorites at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/29/2145/7162

This is one of my favorites:

[IMG]http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k18/gmoke/tanker-1.jpg[/IMG]

[Basilisc]

Kind of off-topic, but there's something strange about this photograph, something which seems to be common to a lot of photos in the NYT Magazine in the last few years.

It's sort of - stark. A little too colorful. The sky's a very deep blue, and the plants are a very deep green. Maybe it's a little too in-focus - distant things are as sharply defined as close things. This makes it seem artificial, like a photo-shop image or a hyper-realist painting - a commenter above mentioned Norman Rockwell - rather than an actual photograph.

Does anyone else have this reaction? Is there someone out there who knows more about magazine photography than me (not difficult since I'm pretty ignorant about photography) who could explain this?

[Basilisc]

... and, in the spirit of this blog, I'll venture my thoughts as to what this stylistic choice means. The NY Times is (or wants to present itself as) the newspaper of winners. It has ads for products (mainly fashion) that 99% of us couldn't possibly afford, its real estate section looks at houses 99% of us can't afford, its travel section looks at vacation spots and hotels 99% of us can't afford. It makes its opinion pieces available online only to subscribers, or to those willing to cough up $49.95 - a ridiculous move for attracting anyone except those to whom this is pocket change, ie their target audience - or those who want to pretend that it's pocket change and not a huge waste of money.

And the hyper-realist photographic style in the NYT Magazine reinforces this image: the world is portrayed as too perfect, too neat and tidy, too precise, compared to the one most of us live in. Those who don't live in a world so perfect as pictured on the pages of the NY Times magazine (ie, everyone, but they don't want us to think that) are obviously not among life's winners. So we should read more, so we can stop being such a loser. We're anxious, uncerain, on edge - we have to keep reading! And subscribe! At least, that's what they want us to think.

[Basilisc]

... just to complete this three-part rant, the Begley piece broadcasts the "you're not perfect enough" message loud and clear. We read about how he took out the lawn and planted "drought-tolerant California plants like lavender and ceanothus. We also grow produce, which is more efficient then trucking it in using fossil fuels." He uses recylced paper in his home xerox machine, his solar panels work "flawlessly" and track the sun, owns one electric car and one hybrid, separates his paper by color for recycling, uses a solar oven, drives around with trash in his car if he can't find a recycling bin, composts his xmas tree, collects rainwater ...

Obvious subtext: AND YOU DON'T! YOU'RE NOT PERFECT ENOUGH!!! A NYT article through and through.

[ummabdulla]

Basilisc, the colors do look a little unreal - like an illustration from a children's book. He's dressed like a boy, and the house looks small behind him, almost like a playhouse for kids.

[jtfromBC]

Basilisc, if you go to Jeff Minton @ www.jeffminton.com/
and spend 10 minutes looking at his portfolio your question may be answered.
I noticed he prefers lots of blue skies, in his advertising and portrait work .

[anwaya]

Basilisc - yes, the hyperreal - the lighting is sharp: contrast the shadow from the eaves with the drum's shadow and the reflected light, they show that Begley is artificially lit from just left of the lens. He's shading his eyes from the sun but the flash lights his face. The position of Begley picks out the ridgeline and the midpoint of the wall between the windows ignoring the single asymmetric shutter, and throws the path off orthogonal. The shading hand picks out the line of the gutter.

There's something Dutch about it - like a Vermeer exterior, with the subject looking out of the frame, which is emphasized by the shade/salute. The asymmetry in the composition - the barrel, the tree, the gable, the fake shutter, the arm, the solar panels - around a strong vertical axis also look Dutch.

[mister p]

so are you implying that ed begley has become a tool of the right wing? surely you're not that daft...though i've been known to underestimate such things in the past.

[anwaya]

And when I say the Dutch, I mean the realistic urban and domestic, which they still do, and set a fine example by it. I don't much like the Saturday Evening Post salute here, or the boy scout. I'd like a nod to the working garden, some tool in his hands, even a pair of gardening gloves - but Rockwell will out.

[The BAG]

I was just going through some old posts for an article I'm writing.  This post, from a NYT Sunday WIR piece in February '05 (about the colors of different democracy movements), is also about the use of color saturation to give a visually-oriented story more punch.

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2005/03/all_the_hues_th.html

[Basilisc]

The question is, at what point does color saturation cross the line from realism to seeming unreal? The Jeff Minton site (thanks for the link, jtfromBC) has this shot of the Grand Canyon, which looks like it comes from a studio with a Grand Canyon photo as a backdrop. Maybe the NYT is subtly trying to say that its subjects - Ed Begeley, Ukrainian political activists - are themselves using imagery to manipulate us?