Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

[Nordic]

These damn billboards are ALL over town right now, so I find myself sitting in traffic staring at them.

I'm trying to figure out the iconography behind this.

The fingers. Are those supposed to metaphorically represent the skyline of New York? Buildings? What about the two eyes hovering over the city like that?

Why did they choose this image, and so carefully manipulate it?

There's something going on in that image, it was very meticulously done.

Or are the fingers supposed to be teeth? Like a mouthful of teeth, big fangs, like a gateway, turning the kid into something of a skull, you know, a witness to death?

The whole image looks really fake, like "fake on purpose", painted on. What's that about? And the eyes look dead, for the same reason.

It's really bugging me, this one.

[Iamwhomiam]

^^^ "I'm trying to figure out the iconography behind this."

Eyes wide open?

[JackRiddler]

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Yes, I've also thought there is something fake about that design, but have had trouble identifying it. You see it around a lot, it's not Batman level but a pretty well funded campaign.

The straightforward beef is this: By putting it through the perspective of an innocent child, the story is rendered simple, mythic and unassailable. On principle, it's not the use of the historic events and images of real-life death and horror, or the propagation of the official story (as an unquestioned background reality, no doubt) but the framing through a wounded-child protagonist that is the most exploitative part of the concept, at least on paper. What kind of mean person would reject this child's story?!

.

[barracuda]

[Nordic]

that's good, Cuda. Also just realized it could be this:



Speak no evil.

Don't tell the truth about this. It will upset the children. We owe it to them to stick with the myth. You know, like Santa Clause. Makes their childhood happier that way.

[wetland]

IMO, Tom Hanks is an utter tool who has obviously inked some sort of Faustian deal.

He is executive producer of the "Beyond All Boundaries" installation that is the centerpiece of the New Orleans World War II Museum "experience." It is one of the most disturbingly expert blurrings of Hollywood fantasy and historical interpretation I have ever encountered. I will never forget the first ads that appeared on New Orleans TV for "BOB" featuring Hanks. He must have repeated the words "I am proud to serve" [as a museum board member, as executive producer, etc] at least 10 times in 30 seconds.

He only does it once here:

[Nordic]

Yes he has become the official spokesperson for "The Good War", the very concept of which is propaganda, and a myth.

[barracuda]

The whole image looks really fake, like "fake on purpose", painted on. What's that about? And the eyes look dead, for the same reason.

It almost looks to have been photoshopped to within a hair's breadth of the uncanny valley. And I'm sure there's a rather famous painting or two centered upon that pose, but at the moment I'm at a loss to find them.

[IanEye]

Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.

"God sees everything," repeated Wilson.

"That’s an advertisement," Michaelis assured him.

[Luther Blissett]

If anyone can find the illustrator's, or at least the agency's, name, I can do some snooping around.

[Avalon]

My first thought of a resemblance was, like Barracuda, the Home Alone poster.

Has anyone seen it to place the gesture he's making in context?

Looking at it more closely, I'm finding the boy's pupils contracted to an extent that bothers me.

[MacCruiskeen]

The whole image looks really fake, like "fake on purpose", painted on. What's that about? And the eyes look dead, for the same reason.

It almost looks to have been photoshopped to within a hair's breadth of the uncanny valley.

Yes, but no more so than any other face on any other Hollywood movie poster. They all look like that.

And I'm sure there's a rather famous painting or two centered upon that pose, but at the moment I'm at a loss to find them.

Well, hands-to-the-mouth and hands-to-the-cheeks are two different things, but since you posted this:

...there is this:



I'm not sure why any graphic designer -- or any spook agency -- would want to invoke Munch in this specific context. We could speculate, though (and who am I to refrain?):

9/11 as nameless existential horror = 9/11 as an event beyond all rational comprehension, an event that reduces us all (therefore) to empty-eyed horrified children, orphaned in the universe and, like, totally nonplussed. Luckily, Daddy, who loved us, has left a Key behind. This Key reveals, or rather confirms, what we knew all along: that Daddy loved us and was slaughtered by incomprehensible aliens. But we acquire this hard-won wisdom only after we have we have taken on the burden of endless, painstaking, independent research - in other words, visited every fourth apartment in New York City. As a result, we grow up, i.e., we abandon all hope and accept the inevitable.

Admittedly, this is all wank. But then, so was the book. (I won't be watching the film.)

[Luther Blissett]

I'm really not sure about the similarities between te Extremely Loud and Incredibly Cloying "silence" gesture compared to the Culkin Scream - they aren't that close and are almost opposites. In looking at the poster for this film I really do feel like it is more illustration than photo but I can't imagine what the visual language is trying to tell us about the film to get us into the theater - silence, sadness, drugginess, tearfulness, cheesy postmodern black velvet illustration style?

[Nordic]

The whole image looks really fake, like "fake on purpose", painted on. What's that about? And the eyes look dead, for the same reason.

It almost looks to have been photoshopped to within a hair's breadth of the uncanny valley.

Yes, but no more so than any other face on any other Hollywood movie poster. They all look like that.

Actually I disagree. This one is particularly fake-looking. (These giant billboards surround me, where I live, I can see about four of them from my son's bedrooms, over the tops of our neighboring houses. )

I saw the billboard before I knew anything about the movie. They struck me as kind of cheap-looking. My first thought was "what cheap-ass movie rented a bunch of billboards?" Then I saw it had Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock and I realized it was some big-ass hollywood movie and wondered why the billboard art looked so badly done.

Well, it was a deliberate choice on their part.

The finger placement is still bugging me. The crossed pinky-fingers. What's that all about?

Any secret handshakes that have crossed pinky fingers?


The Grand Hailing Sign of Distress


http://www.ephesians5-11.org/handshakes.htm

[JackRiddler]

The finger placement is still bugging me. The crossed pinky-fingers. What's that all about?

Any secret handshakes that have crossed pinky fingers?

The Grand Hailing Sign of Distress


http://www.ephesians5-11.org/handshakes.htm

Respectfully, this is pushing way past my credulity. Put your hands to your face like that and see if you avoid the pinkies touching (meaning that one will be on top of the other). Also, I can't imagine why you'd associate it with a graphic of a guy holding his hands over his head, palms outward.

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