Obama's Posters: Message in the Image By Peggy Shapiro

There is something unsettling and very familiar in the Obama poster campaign which has plastered his image over the country. The posters depict the same graphic closeup of the candidate with one block word either "Hope," "Change" or "Progress" at the bottom. I knew that I had seen this before, and then it came to me that this image appropriates the graphic style of totalitarian Soviet propaganda. It recalls the idealzed portraits and personality cult of the "Beloved Leader" such as Stalin and Lenin. The leader, face illuminated by a "holy" light, looks off to the horizon and sees the truth that is not available to his mere mortal followers, who must look up to his image.

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