There is a famous scene in Forrest Gump. One day the eponymous character, played by Tom Hanks, goes for a run – and doesn’t stop. For more than three years he jogs across America, attracting acolytes who keep pace behind him. When a truck drenches Forrest with mud, a fan hands him a yellow T-shirt to mop his face.
After Forrest returns it, the man discovers that the mud has imprinted the cloth with a simple design: a schematic smiley face, consisting of two narrow oval eyes and a beaming grin with dimple-like creases at either end, contained within a circle. It’s a “Eureka!” moment: the man recognises the potential of the design at once, and we understand that he will start flogging similar mass-produced merchandise.
Forrest, of course, is a fictional character. But the man with the yellow T-shirt is an amalgamation of two real-life brothers from Philadelphia who are credited with turning the smiley face into a global fad.
Whatever its origins, the smiley has now been a prominent part of Western visual culture for half a century. Perhaps the secret of its success is its simplicity. What it stands for can be easily moulded by its context.
“The smiley face has gone through the same evolution as the baby-boomer generation,” says the American journalist Joan Gage, who is researching a book on the subject. “In the Sixties, he symbolised happiness, innocence and the American dream. By the Seventies, he was taken over by LSD and drug culture. Then there was the emergence of Watchmen. And now contemporary artists like Banksy have adopted the smiley face as a symbol of evil. I think they’re commenting on modern society: they’re rejecting the America of the Sixties. It’s a political statement.”
Read the full article @ The Telegraph 3/2/12
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