The radiance of the king..and other fun stuff!

Caricatures and other forms of animation are popular in American pop culture but it wasn't until we did the reading for class this week that I saw how our pop culture influenced African art.  The Radiance of the King talked a lot about the 2008 elections and mentioned a lot of illustrations with Obama and McCain that illustrated the varying perspectives of African peoples on American politics. I honestly did not know how much that election influenced the rest of the world. I mean it was one thing for our country to elect a black president but the influence that it had on the rest of the world, Africa specifically speaking, was remarkable.

Many of the illustrations that we looked at showed Obama as a immortal being overcoming all sorts of obstacles.  He was depicted as a superhero and other supernatural beings that gave the notion that he was a miracle from God almost.  The article suggested that this may had been because the African idea of what an angel should look like was a lighter skinned individual. This can be accredited to Christian missionaries and their work in Ghana, but Obama's "cafe au lait" skin color was mentioned as having influenced the artists' choice to depict him as angel.

Many of the illustration were almost like literal translations of how Obama and McCain were being described. I found this to be very interesting. In American culture when we do a similar thing, like say create a witty cartoon about a couple of politicians, we interpret the animation as being something sarcastic or to have been done in a joking manner. However, for Ghanaians these animations are taking much more literally. It may just be our sarcastic American sense of humor that finds these animations to be comical but in reality they were made to be taken seriously. This really helped to point out the modern cultural differences between America and Ghana.

I really enjoyed reading this article and looking at some of the other illustrations done in Ghana. The culture gap may be somewhat broad in terms of what we each consider to be funny or serious but in the end we both see the relevance that these events have to our societies. I would love to find out what Ghanaians think about other aspects of our culture, like Jersey Shore.  Americans (for the most part) do not take this group of people seriously and we make our own jokes about them. One would have to wonder if they find our sense of humor just completely bizarre.  I have a difficult time myself understanding the appeal in watching a bunch of orange drunks fist pump in the club but to each their own I suppose.