I had already been considering an entry on the connection I had perceived between the 1993 Time cover featuring the computer-generated multicultural woman's face and the 2006 Time one that presented Barack Obama as if he were her relative. Then I saw this on the newsstand:

Now surely this wasn't an accident, the fact that this latest cover played off the presentation of the two I discussed in my previous entries this evening. Indeed, the split, not only down Obama's face, but also in the Time logo itself powerfully recalled the video for Michael Jackson's "Black or White" I mention in my entry on the 1993 cover.

It's intriguing, then to see that the seamless morphing of that cover, not to mention its implicit correlate in the 2006 one featuring Obama, has been replaced by a visually stark divide, even if the purpose of the story it sells is to discount the notion that race is playing a huge factor in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Here, the implication is not that the future will be neither black or white, but that it will force people to choose. For my part, I see that as a considerably more conservative point of view than the one indicated in the 1993 cover. What remains to be seen is whether voters tomorrow will see the world the way this cover suggests, in an explicitly high-contrast manner, or whether they will instead let their hearts direct their vision, discerning a world in which the content of one's character always trumps the color of one's skin.

Tags: media, politics, theory
Current Location: 85704