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.
