Respect Authority

When street culture inevitably becomes mainstream culture, what will be the new underground scene? Gardening, perhaps. Or more likely, reading. Something really uncool, that’s for sure.

By now everyone has seen Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama poster (pictured right), which he created before Super Tuesday as an independent promotion for the rising presidential hopeful (get it?!?!). Its popularity grew faster than even Obama’s, and soon the poster was everywhere.

From street wear and street culture blogs, where Fairey’s work is more typically featured, to mainstream political blogs, and of course, slathered on random buildings across New York’s East Village, the image was almost as pervasive as the general consensus amongst rational human beings that George W. Bush really needed to go the fuck back to his home on Planet of the Apes and stop ruining ours.

Naturally, Obama’s campaign, in its tide-turning understanding of modern marketing, picked up on the poster’s viral success and contacted Fairey to produce two more posters for official use, this time bearing the slogans “Vote” and “Change.” Fairey’s portrait went on to be used on the cover of TIME Magazine’s 2008 Person of the Year issue, and in fact, Fairey was even included as one of GQ’s people of the year. Lucky fuck. Literally no other time in history would this have been possible; for somebody’s work, that would largely be considered vandalism and a form of graffiti by the scowling majority, to not only be positively recognized but then actually utilized by a fucking presidential campaign… well, change really must have come to America. Read More ›