Soldiers and Suits

A couple of days before I started gathering images for my post on the geo-political nuances of the housing market, we noticed a building in West Oakland covered with stenciled images of business men and soldiers. The business men carried brief cases, the soldiers had a shilouette that was distinctly modern. I understood this to be a comment on the location of lethality and agency in our culture. I even felt vaguely guilty about appreciating it. It seemed anti-corporate in a way that wasn't —on some level— ironic.


A counter example might be the comic strip Get Your War On. To some extent, Get Your War On capitalizes on a technique popularized in Red Meat. Each strip relies on stereotypically representative characters, who say unexpected things.

In the absence of spirited dialog, juxtaposed images of business men in suits and soldiers in fatigues can only transcend their status as stereotypical representations through sheer repetition and our very specific socio-political context.

Something about the mural also reminded me of figures we'd seen at a war protest. A group of performance artists were walking through the crowds of people heading up Market Street in San Francisco. Dressed in suits and covered in fake blood. They were acting the part of television reporters - present, commenting, but not participating.


The visual register of the mural was evoked directly by a New York Times article entitled Death Wears a Crisp Black Suit (Requires Times Select). The article makes the point that one thing war might be good for is "making artists directly address political issues of their day."


Of course the iconography of privilege and the iconography of war have been closely associated for thousands of years. Suits have long since displaced more elaborate indicators of political power. These depictions though seem to have more to do with a very specific notion of enfranchisement than than they do privilege.