www.mediaite.com: The American Conservative Union, the organization behind the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), engaged in a bitter feud with the company behind its controversial main stage, which was accused of evoking Nazi symbolism.
6 comments:
I am glad this is a chaotic mess I am not involved in. This seems like an absolute disaster on every front. Everyone seems to be horribly aware that they messed up and no one wants to take the blame. Although ultimately, I think the designer of the stage should take the blame, I don’t think anyone should be pointing fingers here. Although maybe it was completely unintentional, taking ownership of something you designed, even if it is bad, is absolutely curtail to your reputation. If you try to distance yourself from any work you do. You should own every piece of work you make even if it was a mistake. The rest of this story just seems like drama that honestly no one really cares about. When it is all said and done, everyone involved should have at least a little bit of blame placed on them. Very very very sad.
I have seen photos of the CPAC stage compared to the Nazi symbol as well as other articles related to this controversy. I have mixed opinions on the controversy myself. I agree with Jacob above in saying that the designer of the stage should take responsibility for the design, to begin with. However, the article did state that CPAC was presented with several design options and chose the one that resembled the Nazi symbol. I understand the explanation that the stage needed to accommodate CDC guidelines regarding social distancing, but I would think that a political party that has so often in recent months been compared to Nazi Germany in social media would try their hardest to separate themselves from that accusation as much as possible. It’s not hard to do some research on the internet. This being said, I think that CPAC should also take some responsibility for the stage design. That does not, however, excuse the fact that a stage resembling a controversial Nazi symbol should not have been part of the designs to choose from at the beginning of the design process.
This situation just seems so out there and ridiculous. The fact that a nazi symbol was a basis of a design could frankly only happen in America and only in America would people then choose to defend the design. I think honest mistakes can definitely happen when you are designing something however when you are then called out for your design it is important that you take responsibility and accountability. I find it hilarious that through the various people who saw the design not a single person caught the fact that it looked like a nazi symbol especially since the Conservative party has been compared to nazis pretty frequently these past 4 years. I think the designer needs to take accountability but so does the CPAC as they did approve a nazi symbol design. Instead of saying these are "rumors" and "conspiracies" they should just own up to the design and apologize for any hurt that was caused. This just showed me why you should not only be well educated in symbols as a designer but also show your design to a wide variety of people and perspectives to see if the design could represent something negative.
Even though it was not its own intention, I think the design team should be held accountable for this kind of incidence. I am personally very sensitive about these issues because Koreans have similar sentiments towards Japan’s rising sun flag (the one they had during WWII and the colonization), as it contains literally quite same meaning to the Nazi’s Swastika symbolism. If they knew they were designing the stage for CPAC, which would evidently be shown to so many groups of people in the public, design team should have been more conscious about the potential meanings that the stage could pose with various other cultural elements. Frankly it almost felt like nonsense to me that the resemblance was not caught by anyone throughout the designing and installing process because it was obvious to me when I first looked at the stage even before I began to read the actual content of the article.
Whether it was created with the hate symbol in mind or not, and I truly hope it was not on purpose, someone still needs to take accountability for this. Actually not just someone, I think everyone involved had some hand in the design. They had multiple designs to choose from and the ability to change anything. Design Foundry does have some blame because they produced the original sketch, but it was also signed off on by the CPAC. In my opinion, they are all digging themselves into a bigger hole because they won’t own up to it. It looks so much worse to try and shift the blame back and forth. Then when someone finally does issue an apology, it is not going to seem genuine at all. They are so afraid of ruining their reputations that they don’t even realize they are making it so much worse for themselves.
I'm sorry, but I am honestly tired of grown adults acting like children in the news. The fact that this company, which signed off on and funded the construction of this stage, turned around and threatened defamation and legal action against the company that designed it is just childish. There's no other word for it. Of course, the designer should have done deeper research into what the stage design might be taken as or shared a resemblance to. I doubt there was an intention behind making the design similar to a Nazi symbol, especially since this design was only one of several options, but the designer and their company should at least take some of the blame. However, like I said before, ACU are the ones that selected that design, approved it, and funded its construction. Instead of taking their portion of the blame, they just got outraged that "liberals" were giving them bad media attention and took the low road. This is just one example of a deepening resistance to owning up to one's mistake in popular culture, and another instance of people that have a substantial following making it seem like this type of response is appropriate.
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