'Arbitrage' and Iconoclasm. Or 'How to read (too much into) a movie poster.'

At first, this poster for the upcoming film Arbitrage is quite striking, if standard. It’s Richard Gere, and he isn’t grinning or sharing poster-space with a brunette, so we can safely assume this isn’t a rom-com. He’s playing it serious.

This top image is separated from the lower half of the poster (depicting the aftermath of a car-crash, which, we can presume, is both actual and metaphorical) by what seems to be a whited-out silhouette of a cityscape. That most famous and iconic (at least in the Western World) of cityscapes – New York.

Even without having heard about the film, or seeing a handy summary or trailer, we can guess that this is either going to involve lawyers or stockbrokers/bankers. That is, shady dealings. Gere is in a tux in the top half, and the car he’s totalled in the lower half looks as though it was pretty expensive. He is certainly not of the 99%.  

So far, so topical.

Decent, but still pretty standard-looking.

Then, we notice something else about that dividing section. It triggers a memory of something. Well, two things.

The first is a Simpsons episode, ‘Lisa the Iconoclast’, involving the fraudulent past of Jebediah Springfield, founder of the town in which the show is set.

The second is one of the cultural artefacts that inspired that. The unfinished portrait of one of America’s ‘Founding Fathers’, George Washington. One of the first, and still most notable, of America’s ‘elite’.

Suddenly, this poster begins to ask questions, rather than simply doling out answers and telling us how we should see this film because it’s totally awesome and there’s probably some cool stuff in it and also Richard Gere doesn’t do any smiling. It makes us wonder why it has chosen to make this reference.

Is Gere’s character powerful enough to hold near-Presidential levels of influence?

Is he unfinished?

Is he coming apart?

Is his city?

Or, in repurposing the unfinished original into this very clearly structured, polished reproduction/homage, is the suggestion that this is how, in the time since the country’s official post-revolution formation, that blank space has been filled in?

Leaving a rich [white] man – practically a Marley-esque spectre – carefully, though precariously, removed from the wreckage he surveys?

Notice how the dividing line appears to be retreating upwards.

Notice how much more you can get out of a thoughtfully-constructed poster than you can from a trailer that seeks to condense ninety minutes into just two and a half.