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Created: September 21, 2003
Latest Update: September 21, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Speak Not to Me of Stick Figures

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, September 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

© New York Times. Drawing by Randall Enos.

© New York Times. Drawing by Randall Enos.

Sunday, September 22, 2003. The Power of Stick Figures: OK. Let's hear it for stick figures. Katie, was it you who bemoaned that you could do no more than stick figures? Well, behold what Randall Enos has done with stick figures for the New York Times Week in Review, on Sunday, September 21, 2003. They called it Golden Rules. I think I might have called it California Vision. Notice the stick figures walking across the street in the smaller version. But he puts a blurry line in front of them as shadows. See what a little discipline can teach you? Find all the shadows in Randall Enos' Golden Rules. Now, can you add shadows to your stick figures?

I like the sun glasses on top of the building, and that our vision goes all the way to Iraq. And see the Hummer on the hill, just before the palm tree with the tunnel cut through it. Nothing like mixing metaphors, hmm? The Sequoias and the Palm Trees. Aah, in California, they're all the same, one giant hyper-reality. And I love the Chateau In and Out on the sign in front of the three palm trees below the castle. Now is that a reference to drive thrus or to our stability or to the Magic Castle? And of course the Sunset Strip runs right into the Mississippi. I haven't figured out what the stick figures in Florida are doing. Probably tossing chads around on the beach, hmm?

Clearly, Fox News is taking most of the blame for our media. See the Fox truck with its tall antenna, right next to the Follywood sign. Speak to me not of the lowliness of stick figures. Speak to me of the power of images to communicate. jeanne

Later Sunday, September 21, 2003: Neither of the photos available on the Internet included the Arnold for Governor sign, down in the lower right corner. And both left out Randall Enos' delightful pictogram of the Hollywood Hills. You see just the start of it in the panoramic print, down at the lower left, dropping off the edge of the borg, like gravity.

The colors are wonderful on the Internet. The hardcopy newsprint didn't show them to nearly the best effect, but the NY Times offered a half-page print that was impressive.

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Discussion Questions

1. I have referred to this drawing as using stick figures. It does. But what tradition does it bring to mind? How does it feel?

   Consider our centuries-old tradition of map-making. Old maps are traditionally decorated as Randall Enos has decorated this drawing or painting. The maps were sprinkled with icons - tiny images that brought to mind characteristics of the world depicted.