Obama’s visit to the U of M’s campus was truly a historical event. It isn’t every day that a president stops by to chat and see the students at the U of M. His goal was to promote the Democratic Party and show his support for Mark Dayton, the Democratic nominee for Minnesota’s next governor. The media and press had a field day with his visit and represented him in every aspect of media, from print to television. The media today is seen in our culture as very liberal, and when you have the king of liberalism coming to town, obviously he’s going to get the attention and the media will represent him as a big hero…a model to look up to and revere. I personally don’t like Obama mainly because of his views on abortion…I’m the VP of the pro-life club here at the U of M so you can see why I don’t like him very much. In this sense, it makes me mad when the media represents him as this wonderful person and how everyone loves him. This is, however, a misinterpretation.
When looking at the picture above, we see that it represents a number of things. We see that it represents Obama endorsing Mark Dayton, and we also see that it represents all of the many U of M students in the background showing their support by cheering and holding ‘Dayton’ signs. The media is trying to relate to us that the young college students support both Obama and Dayton and that they will be voting Democratic in the next week come election time. It shows the rest of the world that the U of M is liberal, which it is, and that it supports the Democratic Party since soooo many U of M students showed up at the rally.
For me and many more people out there, Obama’s visit was something that didn’t appeal to us. This picture makes Republicans like me angry that our president doesn’t seem to like our candidate, Tom Emmer. The picture also makes me angry because all of the people in the background are my peers and for some of those people that dislike Obama, seeing this picture makes them think that ALL college students feel the same way about Obama (aka they adore him) and that ALL students are liberals. This just gives people like me who can’t stand Obama a bad representation…so in a sense, what the media sought out to accomplish, they truly did.
Their representation via a photograph transforms the representation of ALL college students into liberal people, when not all are liberal people. They also managed to show the world Obama’s “greatness.” The photo suppressed the conservative Republicans and every other party out there besides the Democrats, who were advanced both by the media AND the president. Representation is KEY in getting a message/statement across, and the media definitely played a role here with this picture.
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