You’re painting an excellent picture in your post, and I’m realizing that my response is focused more in the micro environment than the macro. What you’re saying is absolutely true and amply demonstrated in, say, certain areas of the English ‘countryside’, which appear naturally picturesque while being, in fact, precisely engineered to look that way, while simultaneously mitigating perceived deficiencies within particular lines of sight via placement of hardscape and softscape. Or wholly created environments, like NYC’s Central Park, once being a swamp that looked nothing like the end result. Granted, these are super-simplistic and easy examples of what you’re talking about.
My present situation demands a different focus on smaller environments tailored to more specific needs and this requires a different approach. But what you’re talking about is more in line with what my degree was focused on. Unfortunate, in some respects, that I am not participating in that at the moment, but it is what it is for now. : )
To address one item:
Point being, if you never, ever saw the viral clip and had the associations it triggers go off in your mind, it's difficult to recreate that same experience watching the same event without the editing choices made in creating the viral video.
If you read EA's bookend in the previous thread which I quoted a few posts back and linked to, the article he linked acknowledges that it really isn't about the kid it's about the things regarding Trump that it evokes. That article can't bring itself to acknowledge that putting the kid in the middle of it was a mistake, much like...well. But it's point is accurate in so far as it rightly states at the end of it all this is about the things we associate with Trump that the video evoked. He's a bully, he's contemptuous, he holds minorities in particular contempt, he's the embodiment of all kinds of privilege, etc., etc.
Agreed, on the bolded part. What makes me wonder is if most folks need - or depend too much on - what is described in the next line, about “putting the kid in the middle”. Hat Kid becomes the proxy for everything that Trump represents, to the folks who do not agree with Trump. This is an unfair burden on Hat Kid, who - in the midst of being saddled with that weight - is simultaneously stripped of some humanity and rendered as mere symbol. In fact, I’m (not) ironically doing the same by referring to Sandmann as Hat Kid.
This is why I wouldn’t be able to pass judgment on Sandmann (as a person, versus the action itself) based on headgear or this single incident alone. But what we think we saw becomes emblematic for what many see as ‘the problem’ when it might not have been any part of the problem at all, or at best the most minuscule example of it.
To the aspect of symbology, how does the public separate logo/slogan meant to convey a particular message or political sensibility from what that sensibility represents or incurs when the message becomes co-opted by an alternate perspective? This would seem to be a risk when depending on the logo/slogan to do the heavy lifting of speaking for us.
ETA: By the way, the next time you drive through Jacob Lake, be sure to treat yourself to a cookie or two from the little gift shop there. Especially the ginger snaps. You won’t regret it.
$250,000,000 for hurt feelings. Cry me a effing river.
