O beautiful
In literature, politics, even pop culture, one letter can mean a lot. This week, it's obvious.
The recent prevalence of the letter O can be seen in (clockwise from top right) Barack Obama's campaign logo, a Pepsi ad, an Obama supporter's tie, and Opray Winfrey's magazine.
"O for a muse of fire," the Chorus declaims at the start of "Henry V." It's Shakespeare's happiest history play (unless you're French) and celebrates a youthful, inspiring national leader. Note that the line's emphasis falls on "fire."
Imagine a slightly different play. It, too, celebrates a youthful, inspiring national leader, except this play's not history. Like "Henry V" it's also, at least until Tuesday, quite happy - unless you're Republican. Call the play "Barack I." It starts the same way Shakespeare's does, only the emphasis comes, of course, on the very first syllable: "O."
You already know what the poster looks like.
O is the letter of the hour, at once symbol and summons, badge of allegiance and design element. It's all things to all men (all women, too): open and opaque, old and original, opinionated and objective, organic and opportunistic, outstanding and overdone, ordinary and ostentatious, oratorical and oracular. It's so straightforward as to be inscrutable.
Time named the Nov. 17 New Yorker, with Bob Staake's illustration of the "o" in the magazine's name hanging over the Lincoln Memorial like a full moon, as cover of the year. (The New Yorker's selling framed copies for $125 small, and $195 large.) The cover, Time suggests, "doesn't do a victory dance. Rather, it whispers . . . 'Everything's okay now - we have our country.' "
Okay? O-kay.
Having neither visible beginning nor end, O is constant and self-contained. Its more specific associations are potent. O is the symbol for oxygen. It's the magazine of Oprah Winfrey (fervent Obama backer and fellow Chicagoan). It's one of the most elaborate Cirque du Soleil productions.
It also has a numerical near-twin, zero, and the two can seem as indistinguishable at times as Sarah Palin and Tina Fey. That indistinguishability is a reminder of the letter's symbolic limitations. One voter's O is another's 0. The letter is as much absence as presence, no less likely to be uttered as lamentation as delight.
Will the circle be unbroken? It was O-rings that undid the space shuttle Challenger. A fuzzy red O was the logo for
The mystique of the Obama O began with the campaign logo. Combining understatement and assertion, it's visual sloganeering at its most economically eloquent.
The logo is instantly recognizable - and, even more important, instantly readable - without requiring the inclusion of a name or date. (Some versions, of course, incorporate either or both.)
The elements are simplicity itself. The colors are the standard patriotic trio: red, white, blue - with a subtle difference. The blue is sky blue, evoking a sense of promise as well as a pleasing sense of variation (innovation?). That paler shade also indicates that the white semi-circle in the middle symbolizes the sun.
Another flag allusion is the set of curved stripes that cover the lower half of the circle. Are they plowed fields or roads? Both have pleasing associations. If the stripes are roads, the direction has to be forward - since we read from left to right, the eye inevitably travels in that direction across the logo, too. Unfortunately, there's no comparable way to indicate the path of the sun. Presumably, it's rising. If one were so inclined it could be read as setting, though.
That ambiguity is one of the design's few weaknesses. Another, which can just as well be seen as a strength, is its vaguely feminine quality: all curves, no sharp edges. Is it too much to also read a bit of the Tao in the design? The logo does have a faintly New Age feel. Call it Uncle Sam Mystical.
What may be the logo's most inspired touch is the absence of stars. Their inherent busyness would clutter the simplicity of the design. Their hard angles would also mar the consistent roundedness (well-roundedness?) of the logo. The elimination of stars might even be interpreted as a policy pun: no stars = egalitarianism.
Both of the nearest visual kin to the logo supply positive resonances. One is the Royal Air Force roundel, which conjures up heroism and strength. The other is the Pepsi logo, with its message of youth, energy, and, yes, refreshment. The fact that neither symbol resembles the Obama logo too closely enhances the impression of novelty the campaign design conveys. Pepsi, knowing a bandwagon when it sees one, has rolled out a new ad campaign that piggybacks on this mutual O-ness.
This isn't the first time a letter has taken on a political/cultural life of its own. O's usually come with X's, and that's the case here. A quarter century after his murder, Malcolm X became a cultural phenomenon. Caps and T-shirts sporting X in the early '90s were even more ubiquitous than Malcolm's image itself; and X, a very different proposition from O both visually and metaphorically, became the letter of that equally different cultural hour.
X is a rotated cross, an intersection, a digging in ("X marks the spot"), an unlettered person's signature, the making of a mark. Its angularity is confrontational, yet X is also the classic indicator of anonymity.
The contrast with O - no sharp edges; a void; a blank space waiting to be filled in (as on a ballot?) - is obvious. Yet X and O, as any tic-tac-toe player knows, are an inevitable, even necessary, pairing. They're counterparts. And so it is with Malcolm and Obama, a startling combination of similarities and oppositions: the separatist activist who became a Muslim vs. the assimilationist politician who had a Muslim father. Conversely, just as slender, intense, light-skinned Malcolm was a gifted orator and writer, so is Obama all those things as well.
There's another parallel between the two letters: Both took off toward the end of a Bush presidency.
George W. Bush has been a letter man, too. Unlike Obama's and Malcolm's, his letter has two syllables, dubya. The clunkier sound is indicative of a more muddled cultural significance generally. W signifies a win, but such triumphalism doesn't quite gibe with W., the fashion magazine, let alone the dimwit thrust of "W." the Bush biopic.
Malcolm was the subject of one of those, too. Its title was his full name. There's an even bigger difference between the two: The director of "Malcolm X." greatly admired his subject. You certainly can't say that about Bush and the director of "W.," Oliver Stone.
O for a muse of fire, yes, but W for a muse of ire.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
