“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, said Freud, or Marx (Groucho that is). If you say this quote you are also saying sometimes it’s not a cigar, it’s a symbol representing a penis. That is what complex looking is all about, seeing what is there and seeing what might be behind what is there; maybe an intent, a joke, or a hidden agenda.
For example, there is a hand gesture that I recently learned has not one, but two meanings. It’s your index finger touching your thumb to make a circle. It means everything is A-OK and until this year that is all I ever knew it to mean. But I’ve been told it also means white supremacy. I am not sure of the history behind it becoming a symbol of that but it is now something that can be interpreted to mean that, especially if it’s displayed upside down.
Sometimes it isn’t visual, it’s verbal. A politician says ‘Nationalism’ and it doesn’t JUST mean having pride in one’s country. It also means they want to preserve the existing power structure that they feel is threatened by outsiders. Which outsiders? Well, according to our current President, those outsiders are not Norwegians. They are Mexicans, South Americans, people from ‘shithole’ countries in Africa and Muslims from countries in the Middle East. They are the outsiders that are threatening our nation, not the good white people of Europe.
It behooves us to always LOOK clearly at what is going on underneath the obvious.
Drawings and commentary © 2019 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by Ad Reinhardt, American artist, 1913-1967