Photo Credit: Jason Reed/Reuters
This picture reminds me of one of those famous credit card commercials:
The scene: A food bank in Anywhere, USA
Roll Camera: The President, with a sour expression, stands before the camera.
Voice Over: The melodious baritone voice of the announcer comes in.
- Oxxford hand-tailored suit: $2,000 - $14,000
- Haircut: $30 - $60
- Bush's Best Beans: $1.59
- Cost of the War in Iraq: $200 million a day
The Irony of a Presidential Photo-Op: Priceless
Is the president really mugging for the camera with a can of beans? Could the visual metaphor be any more perfect at this time of year?
As Americans prepare to gobble up more than 1.6 billion pounds of turkey, 1 billion pounds of pumpkin, and more than 800,000 tons of beans this Thanksgiving, the photo-op signifies what appears to be another surreal moment for the Bush presidency.
While, Bush symbolically pardoned the White House turkey this week while more than 35 million Americans, including 12.6 million children, will experience hunger. Further, more than 38 million Americans will be eligible to receive Food Stamps. In 2006, The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that requests for emergency food assistance increase by 7 percent across the country.
There is a significant different between how images denote and connote meaning. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggests, pictures are encoded with symbolic meaning. But it is ultimately up to the viewer to "unpack" or decode what the symbols mean. Much of this decoding is determined by context, convention, as well as the disposition of the viewer. Ultimately, the ability to make sense of a picture becomes contingent upon how that picture resonates in every day life for the viewer. For me, the expression "full of beans" comes to mind. Originally, "full of beans" originally meant to be full of energy and high spirits, but over time the phrase has come to represent something more akin to someone who is being less than genuine or honest -- basically someone who is "full of it."
Ultimately, any analysis of this sort probably won't amount a "hill of beans."
Nevertheless, pictures should provoke thoughts, and in turn, hopefully, thoughts will lead to action.