April 2006 | Eyesore
Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.
Okay, Help me out here, because this just surpasses ordinary understanding. Why is it necessary for the sign to depict a photographic image of the building right behind it? What could possibly be the reasoning here? Are signmakers nowadays too inept to paint pictures of animals -- like a fox and hound? Was this done simply because it could be done -- because the signmaker had acquired some new equipment for making photographic transfers? But most perplexing, what does this say about the American mind generally? Have we become utterly lost in self-referential thinking? I honestly don't get it.
I invite explanations from readers, the most astute of which I will publish below.
Readers' Comments
. . .if anything this could be used for the B&B guest who tends to drink on the heavy side. Just line up the house on the sign with the one in the background....you are home! Ever been drunk in a new town?
--Eric in Eugene, Oregon
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Does the photo on the sign include a sign with a photo of the house that includes a sign with a photo of...?
--tbuzek@rogers.com
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. . . .If one were to find a website for this B&B, I suspect the same picture/painting on the sign would be featured on the website's homepage. We all know the phrase "AS SEEN ON TV." Since the web is the new TV, "just like it
looks on the website" provides a similar comfort and familiarity dividend to the potential guest that makes them feel like they're not taking a chance when they book a room, just like you're not taking a risk when you book the Holiday Inn or dine at Outback. I think that the culture of danger we see portrayed in our media, particularly TV
news, with its nonstop rotation of terrorism updates, shark attacks, natural disasters, and kidnapped/missing women and children stories, has raised our collective blood pressure and pushed our society's approach to new experiences closer to risk management than exploration. With all this stuff going on, many Americans just want to get what they're expecting and rule out as much uncertainty as possible. Any reference points, however absurd, that can tap into this undercurrent in the
American psyche, may in fact be good for business.
--Patrick McDonough -- Carrboro, NC
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you have to imagine that there is very little walk up traffic since it is a hotel. People already have reservations and are thus hooked. That same picture may have appeared on their website and brochure. The picture on the sign will ressurrect the positive feelings formed by the ads.
--Chris Smith
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Perhaps the sign is meant to serve as a reminder to future visitors of what the building used to look like before the inevitable hideous new additions were built.
--twentydollarghost@hotmail.com
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Blame Madison Avenue, Television, and the petro-chemical octopus whose grip we enjoy.
--mjt
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What I find even more strange is that, if you look closely at the picture, the photographer felt it important to include a picture of the sign in front of the house on the picture on the sign of the house in the picture. All that is further required to complete the fiasco is a small printed sign with "You are here" attached, and an arrow pointing to the area just in front of the picture of the sign on the, uh......you get the idea.
--Todd Sainsbury
Red Deer, Alberta
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While most of us are several generations removed from European feudal societies, its still drilled in our heads; what do we want? The same english manor home as the aristocrat boob who kicked our sharecropping great-great grandfather off his land for "tax evasion." To the point: insecurity, as modern psychology tells us, frequently manifests itself in narcisism, hence the photo of the faux manor home to lend it an heir of authenticity: "Look at me, I am a yuppee inheritor/buyer of an authentic/imitation manor home that I have loving restored to a quaint B&B - look there is a painting of the lovely home to prove it!"
--jdwarch@yahoo.com
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The sign appears to include, in its picture of the site, an image of the sign. I think the sign painter is into Chaos Theory and imagines that the work is fractal, infinitely reproduced as an image within the same image within
the same image, and so on. Kinda like the infinite selves you see when you stand between two parallel mirrors in a barbershop.
--Gary Brooks, Syracuse, NY
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Just as the typical emperor puts his picture on currency and signs around his kingdom, narcissism runs rampant here in the US. Here the image must be repeated about the same size as a medium sized TV screen because streetscapes are a foreign concept to most of the walmart nation.
H. J. BOSWORTH, JR. above sea level - in NEW ORLEANS, LA
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A possible rational is that the sign photo provides an idealized image via photographic lensing effects. Because of this, the photo image is actually more impressive / attractive than the presence provided by the actual building, even though you still recognize it as the same ‘manor’. This serves to create an almost subliminal, but powerful, suggestion to the mind, and thus ‘enhances’ the visitor’s perception of the ‘manor’ and site. This psychological manipulation, of course, works best on those who are not accustomed to critical scrutiny of reality as they encounter it, but who just go breezily on their way absorbing everything as it is “portrayed” to them.
-- bigbrojoey@yahoo.com
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When did attention to architecture go into the toilet? About the time of the advent of television, which became our new visual stimulation.
Pete DeCamp