©

No sooner had I finished posting last week that I realized I wasn't discussing who or what an author is (or was). I was discussing who or what I wanted an author to be. Only trouble is:

I've run out of vocabulary for it - at least, in the sense that an author is the creator of a strictly literary property.

I've had a chance to glance at some posts. There's a running theme I've noticed that seems to put the stability of copyright into question. I watched a special yesterday on OvationTV (superb programming about music and the arts and all sorts of goodies; if you haven't before, I suggest you check it out) about Ron English, who is a pop painter/illustrator/guerilla billboard artist, specializing in pastiche and parody of the melange of pop culture iconography accumulated over the better part of the last century. As you'll see when you click on the link above, his style is very decadent, grotesque and subversive. Much of his agenda is comprised of attacking the hypocrisy of the technicolor, "kid-friendly" marketing campaigns of some of the world's largest conglomerates: Camel, KOOL cigarettes, McDonald's, Disney, the Church (*snicker*). He takes all of these ingredients, adds the most recognizable figures of pop culture (Marylin Monroe, Andy Warhol, Marvel superheroes, Charlie Brown and Peanuts, KISS, Jesus), and places them all within the contexts of some of the most famous modern paintings and paint styles (Picasso's "Guernica," Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Warhol's Factory prints, neo-classicism, 16th and 17th century European portraiture, abstract expressionism, Buddhist mandalas) to create a disturbingly hallucinatory and hypnotic array of bold faux-iconography.

The ones that strike me as the queerest are his images of children: highly saturated, high-contrast, deliriously colorful canvasses of children in various poses, wearing different costumes replete with face paint (clowns, KISS members, superheroes/heroines, cartoon characters). This all doesn't seem so striking (even after you accept the sinister sneers on their faces) until you realize that they're all smoking. Be warned that this effect is quite unsettling. Be even more warned that, according to the OvationTV special, he uses his own children as models for these images (and I was starting to wonder why all of the faces strangely resembled one another).

I won't get into a discussion about the possible exploitation of his kin for the betterment of his own career, but I did want to elaborate upon the context in which he paints these essentially anti-smoking images. If you click on the link that says Billboards, you will find a decent archive of all of his guerilla billboard advertising (I say "decent" because there would be no realistic way to recover those lost, destroyed, or confiscated by police and/or disgruntled citizens). The TV special followed English, along with a crew known as the (B)illboard (L)iberation (F)ront, as they defaced existing billboard advertisements with their own subservise, and illegal, art. This art, if you check it out, is political and social commentary, all done very professionally. It is very graphic (in the sense of simple, direct, and eye-catching), very bold, and almost always very clever.

The reason I bring up the billboards is that the source of their inspiration for Ron English was the contempt and disgust with which he met the marketing campaign that Camel cigarettes used to target children in the '80s: Joe Camel. He was moved to paint some of his own faux-advertisements, pushing the limits of hyperbole as well as taste, and the result was his now-famous motif of smoking children. In effect, Camel cigarettes eventually discontinued their campaign, and you can see for yourself why: the images are quite shocking.

But after all this nonsense, after championing the neo-folk-heroism of this creative and inspired, if not necessarily inventive, artist (see There is nothing new under the sun), I must say I uttered a chuckle when I first went to his website. A large banner at the head of the website proclaims the title, "POPAGANDA: the life and crimes of Ron English." But what strikes me as ironic is the familiar copyright symbol (registered trademark) adorning the logo. Furthermore, right-clicking on any given image does not prompt the familiar command list we expect to find on most websites nowadays. All that comes up is a litte dialog box exclaiming, "all images ©2008 Ron English. all rights reserved."

Ron English has become a Registered Trademark.

To echo a statement that's been made in class: "You can only fight for so long..."

-M.C.