Bizarre Sight of the Day

[forsyth]

Since I've moved to the South, there's occasional guys selling confederate battle flags out of RVs by the side of the road. Georgia only took the Confederate Battle Flag off their state flag a few years ago, after all.

The other week, I noticed one of them had a bunch of Confederate flags, and a flag of the Obama HOPE image. Which made me laugh, since I doubt there's much overlap between the audience for Confederate flags and Obama voters. Maybe they're trying to get into a wider audience. They do have the Confederate flag/pot leaf flags, after all.

Then yesterday, I saw one that took it a step farther. A flag, first half Obama, second half Confederate flag. I almost went back and bought one, just for the sheer bizarreness of it. But I didn't, 'cause I'm broke. I'm trying to figure out the audience for that, besides post-post-post-post ironic hipsters.

Comments

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

Hey, you moved down South? Where at, if I may ask?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Down near Savannah. Georgia Tech has a campus here, and Jen's folks live nearby.

Technically, y'know, Virginia was the capital of the South, though.

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

I live in South Carolina. In the upstate, not too far from Atlanta really. We should try to meet up sometime. thdrgngrl is in the area too, as is ryanohki, although the bear lives in the lower part of SC.

Virginia may have been the capitol, but folks down here regard South Carolina as the heart of the south. Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee...that's all considered to be Deep South, and the cultures there are pretty similar. Also, that Obama'federate flag sounds like a hoot. Non sequiter defined. If I where you, I'd go back and get it; it's part of the novelty of living in the south.

[strickland.livejournal.com]

I'm in Atlanta myself...

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I forgot about Drew.

Sorry dude. Knew there was someone I was leaving out. :/

[kabbalist-mzdm.livejournal.com]

Wait...what? That's just so wacky you can't be making it up. I'm kind of surprised that there isn't some kind of reality-warping field forming around those flags. There might, however, be an audience for the flags besides those that buy them for laughs: Georgia Democrats. Whether they're white, black, or other they are citizens of the state and may feel a certain amount of pride about that. I find it hard to forget that the classic Georgia flag was the Confederate flag (heck, I didn't know they'd changed it!), but maybe when you live with it for most of your life it's easier to forget that bit of information.

It's not quite the source of cognitive dissonance that the Geobama (Jo-bama) flag is, but a few years back I saw a US Army recruiting station that was also a karaoke station while I was walking across campus. What makes more sense than signing up to put your (macho) life on the line for your country and following it up with an off-key musical performance while your recruiting officer looks on?

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Mind if I metaquote this?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Go ahead. Though then I'll probably have plenty of people saying "PICS OR IT NEVER HAPPENED" and then I'll have to go buy one. Heh.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Done!

[truwest.livejournal.com]

Hi! here via metaquote. :-)

Actually another commenter made this point -- for some folks in the South, the old confederate flag is a sign of local pride -- like displaying the lone star flag in Texas (where I'm from). These people aren't meaning it in terms of slavery or keeping black people down -- it's a whitewashed historical symbol for them.

Yeah, it's a symbol with very mixed messages for different people, so it is problematic (rather like the swastika/armed cross, which has one meaning in parts of Asia and quite another meaning in Europe/US).

But just wanted to mention -- it's entirely possible for some people to have confederate flag imagery and obama imagery and see no contradiction.

And in fairness the US flag has exactly the same issue (that it connotes very different things to different people). Some non-american friends of mine have said they find it ironic how pleased the US is with itself all of a sudden, for having elected Obama -- as if the last 8 years and ~300-500k dead Iraqi civilians don't matter anymore.

also from metaquotes, but re:

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

...as if the last 8 years and ~300-500k dead Iraqi civilians don't matter anymore.

Unfortunately this is a product of our twitter/digg/"It's my money and I want it now!" media-hypnotized general population. The years and years of being bombarded with propaganda and internet memes that last for a month have dumbed down some of us to the point that we can't connect dots. The ones that do are branded as "Conspiracy Theorists" and are laughed off the stage.

/rant

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

yeah, too bad there weren't pics. That would be quite a sight for some Northerner rednecks and slavery apologists (I'm looking at you, fellow Hoosiers that will never read this!) who would B&M about Mr. President sharing flagspace with that symbol.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

No camera with me, but somebody else on metaquotes found one for sale online, apparently.

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

Google was my friend after I already posted a comment, but I didn't want to commentspam ya with another post just with the flag in it :)

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've heard the argument about the Confederate flag being a symbol of "Southern Heritage!" And the people who honestly believe that have certainly had it VERY whitewashed. It's the flag of states that committed treason and rebelled in defence of an economic system based around slavery.

As I recall about the swastika thing, the good luck swastika had the arms backwards from the Nazi one.

The Iraqi dead matter quite a lot. And it's not something we can fix right away, but at least it's something we're hopefully on the path to fixing now, since Bush is FINALLY gone.

[truwest.livejournal.com]

Actually there are some non-nazi swastikas that have arms going either way -- the arms in a certain direction aren't a guaranteed nazi signal (example here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika)

The exact same visual symbol can mean very different things to different audiences. That's what's so tricky.

The KKK wears white hoods, but so do people in certain traditionalist Christian rites. In some parts of the US, guns are a symbol of rural pride, self-sufficiency and the frontier tradition; in other areas, guns are a symbol of violence, urban gangs, and "ignorant hicks."

Yeah, I do believe that some symbols become so widely and publicly associated w/ horrible things that they should probably be abandoned -- the confederate flag and the swastika among them. It would be hard to find more negative associations than slavery, or the nazis/final solution etc. If you want something to show your regional pride, find another symbol.

but I've heard people make the opposite argument -- why should somebody have to give up something that's positive in meaning for them, just because some other people don't like it.

Yeah, most of us don't like confederate flags. But a lot of other people don't like goth clothes (I've had people tell me that goth clothes remind them of Columbine, and why would anybody dress that way). Some people think tattoos/piercings are "bad" symbols and they don't like/won't hire people who have them. In some places, wearing a christian cross is seen positively; in other places, negatively (ditto w/ other overt religious symbols) etc.

(and this doesn't even get into the power issues in the larger society -- symbols used by minority groups vs majority groups, economic power imbalances, ethnic differences, class differences etc. around symbols)

So imo it gets tricky when it comes to saying what symbols are unacceptable and to whom and should they be banned.

Anyhoo -- thanks for hosting this discussion on your journal! cool topic