Your Turn: Bruising Hillary

It’s not a good likeness, even allowing for the effect of the bruises. Not a trace of softness or vulnerability that I can see, which is a loaded idea in itself.
But my initial reaction didn’t even touch on domestic violence. Maybe that makes me odd or different, but here’s the thing: I spent over 7 years working in a battered women’s shelter, counseling, running a community support group, and doing trainings to target groups. And yet, the connection didn’t occur to me till I read your post below the picture. I don’t know how to feel about that.

Million Dollar Baby.

I agree, Riggsveda, that this image does not say “domestic violence”. That lack of vulnerability you note is a factor, this is more a mug shot than anything else. Her look says “I did it and I’m not sorry”.
BTW, from the bandage and shiner there’s a good chance her assailant is left-handed. While that rules out a significant portion of the population, McCain, Obama, and husband Bill are all lefties.

sans wrinkles
nor a misplaced feather
this smudged faced Phonex is ….

Looks like Gerri Ferraro and Chucky.

I wouldn’t have made the Chuckie connection without the linked photo. Gad, the resemblance (eyes, hairstyle, etc.) is uncanny.
If you cover half the picture and view the two sides of her face separately, each gives a different impression. The left side (Hillary left – viewer right) appears steely-eyed and defiant. Looking at just the right side (with the black eye), the suggestion of battered woman syndrome is much stronger.
Interesting that the blackened eye is open wider than the other one. Almost as if removing that band-aid might reveal that she is actually a Terminator.

Both “You should see the other guy” and “You want a piece of me?”
Incidentally, Hillary talking about the time she learned of MLK’s death (seen on The Daily Show tonight) looked really good, none of the wrinkles and sagging cheeks she tends to have. Maybe it was the lighting.

I think the cover is fucked up and outrageous

Who wears earrings to a fight?

Hey it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month Maybe Hillary got all beat up because she didn’t want to get f*#@ed!
Given our culture we always blame the victim.

I haven’t read the article, so I don’t know who in addition to Scarborough is blamed for doing the bruising. But I can’t help thinking of Roy Zimmerman’s song “The War on Terror,” where he makes an analogy to an old PopEye cartoon where PopEye hides inside Bluto’s shirt, popping his head out first here, then there. In trying to hit PopEye, Bluto beats himself up. Good analogy for the War on Terror, but also for Clinton’s beating herself up through a continuing series of outright lies (like the Bosnian sniper) and half-truths (like the hospital story). And if a right-hander punches herself in the face, she’s gonna hit the same spot as a left-handed opponent.

They gave her a man’s hairline and used her back hair fringe and shadows to make it look like a beard. Also kind of a protruding brow. Why did they go out of their way to make her look like a cold-eyed, nasty tough guy? She looks nothing that.

Rocky — the comparison Hillary herself prefers — is a far better analogy than domestic violence. The domestic violence framing implies that she is a victim, the passive target of the violence.
I think most people, even HRC supporters, would agree that she is an voluntary and even eager participant in the fight that has produced the depicted scars.
I also can’t help but remember this.

Beating on the Clintons has always been a mainstream media competitive bloodsport in the US. They hand out medals for it, do they not?
Really disgusting.
Hillary Clinton: Mad As Hell/Bitch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcdnlNZg2iM

First impression: This is not a nice person. It is a disturbing concoction.
Second impression: I saw the Chucky Cheese connection. In fact, if one glances quickly at it and looks away, Chucky is the impression.
These are not Hillary’s eyes. They are looking long and steady at a fixed target. Hillary’s eyes dart around. She tries to take in everything and focus on nothing. But then, really, these eyes, too, are focusing on nothing.
This is not the face of a battered woman. The “bruising Hillary” line is particularly ambiguous; if she is bruised, who is doing it? Or is she doing it to herself? Bruising, not bruised, implies that it is ongoing, still not over. It also implies that it ‘just happens,’ the bruises just appear and Hillary has nothing to do with the acquiring of them. Therefore, it must be “them.” That is, the “them” that Hillary keeps blaming for her declining popularity.
This is the face of a boxer, a fighter. She’s bloodied but still defiant, the perfect lipstick the only nod to femininity.

It seems to me a cowardly action!
Why is the front cover going against a candidate, while there are other issues that are more important and Village Voice does not have teeth to do it!
Why is there not a picture of the real villain?
The war in Iraq, torture, killings, return of damaged souls and coffins… as long as it goes on it should not be ignored and it should be attacked all the time!
Bruising H.Clinton is not going to make this go away!

The VOICE hardly ever has any substance.

Another aspect of this (and any 3-D graphic representation of a human) is that of the “Uncanny Valley” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley
Essentially, when something artificial tries to closely approximate a natural person, the creepier, scarier, and more artificial it seems. An abstracted cartoon figure, on the other hand, can invoke the suspension of disbelief far more easily.

This is a fascinating image, if also disturbing. I came here because of the Digby post on it and I thought I would drop a few lines.
1) The image is that of a fighter. The face looks angry, hostile, and profoundly unapologetic.
2) There is something in the shape of the face or the hair that makes this face look not quite like Hillary. She has a more mannish look than the actual Hillary. I can’t quite tell for sure but Hillary’s actual face may be a bit rounder, while this face looks more ovular. The overall effect is to make the viewer quite conscious that the face is not the actual likeness of Hillary Clinton, but rather an artist’s interpretation of a particular emotional state.
3) While the bruises and damage to the face are quite apparent, there is something in the computer rendering that makes even the bumps and bruises appear idealized. They have an airbrushed quality to them, giving the face an unnatural but nonetheless iconic quality.
Those are my thoughts. Cool blog!!!

Chucky, the Child’s Play horror doll, came to mind seeing the image. Boxing Helena came to mind reading the words.
Message received – evil Hillary should get out of the picture, ASAP.
Thanks for the inevitable nightmare.

“coding for violence against women”?
C’mon. Sometimes a cigar really is just a brown cylinder and sometimes Gender Studies really is just an easy couple of credits.
Why did they go out of their way to make her look like a cold-eyed, nasty tough guy?
Why not?

I actually thought it _was_ Chucky at first. Clinton as a monster doll possessed by a homicidal spirit?

I find this image HIGHLY offensive. To have come from the VV makes it even more evil. To be disseminated by a liberal blog like this one makes one believe that the blogger posting it hates Mrs. Clinton as much as the VV which published this on its cover. I sincerely hope that Mrs. Clinton ultimately prevails in this fiasco of a primary, because if the haters succeed in destroying her character, we are all doomed. Obambi is a cypher; McCain, a demented old man — both easily manipulated. Clinton is her own person and will NOT be manipulated, even by Bill, and has already proved she is for the people more than the corporations who are behind all of this outrageous crap.

If you squint it looks like Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps it’s homage to Dali?

Mostly agree that the image doesn’t show a victim, so much as a willing fighter, resigned. There’s no blood, or a bloodshot eye, fat lip, chipped tooth, anything that would indicate she got the worst of it. That band aid is the size you wear if you cut yourself shaving. Rocky looked much worse. It’s fairly androgynous as others have noted, and the beard/hair thing makes it more so.
The look is both dour & defiant, a bit of the underdog? Also looks dirty as much as bruised.
I haven’t read the accompanying piece, but I’ll note that for all of the supposed enmity with Scarborough, HRC went on his show recently and was cracking jokes about having him as her VP. He declined.

I just saw this picture on your ad over at Digby and almost left her blog because I was so repulsed. This looks like some of the obscene images I’ve seen on wingnut blogs and even some of big boyz fauxgressive blogs. I’m glad I stayed at Digby long enough to find out that your site deconstructs such images, but you might want to add more text to your ad to convey that. Otherwise, it looks like just another hit ad.

It looks more like Cokie Roberts to me.

Isn’t this what Rush Limbaugh was talking about? America won’t like seeing a woman (Hillary) aging in the White House? To be expected I suppose, but from the Village Voice, oh well. American triviality, endlessly reimaging itself.

Fellini 8.5 -
I immediately thought the same thing as you did – bad CG. I’m a senior artist with a game company, have done a great deal of head modeling, and this looks like a fairly amateurish attempt. Not a lot of similarity.
Of course, if it’s a painting, it doesn’t really change the accuracy of the likeness.

I think that the artist was trapped. If he/she made Hillary look like Hillary — that is, feminine, which in our society unfortunately codes as “weak and vulnerable” — he/she would make people think of domestic violence. But if he/she made her look like the “Rocky”-style fighter she has proclaimed herself, then “Oooh you made her look like an ugly guy you meanie!” comments start to pour in.
If I were the artist, I’d probably have instead taken Hillary’s “Rocky” meme and ran with a variant of the famous still of Rocky battered, but with the flag draped around his shoulders, to defuse the “you meanie!” attacks. But then again, the VV is probably getting tons of clicks based on the “Ha! Made ya look!” principle.
And as noted earlier, boxing motifs are a part of this campaign.

Oddly enough, I do see the domestic violence angle quite strongly… Hillary as a battered woman.
The media complex invites her in and beats her at the same time. They do that to all celebrities. It is our cultural need to break the famous on the wheel. Yet, Hillary often does this to herself… she has made bedfellows with the very same right wing media establishment that has punished her mercilessly for even trying to be a feminine icon.
I feel sympathy for Hillary when I see this image. It looks like the artist forsook realism, not out of chocie, but of a hesitancy and fear of making the image look too much like her… and has created a strange pinch-lipped china doll with wet hair.
The media tells us that it strives for truth and accuracy, but they only look for the most convenient truth model. This truth model has to keep us entertained and anxious. I hope, one day, someone will do a study of media as an extension of mass psychology… where reality television consists of public elimination and our consciousness feeds off of what we can get rid of versus what we can accept.

I think it is suggestive that her defiant stance blocks out the “Village Voice” masthead. It gives the impression that she is butting in, that she just won’t get out of the way for anybody.