According to ABC News (2008), one of Indonesia’s top news weeklies has apologised about the cover of its latest issue which depicts former president Suharto and his children in a composition mimicking Leornado Da Vinci’s Last Supper.
Tempo featured a sketch of Suharto taking Jesus Christ’s place in the middle and surrounder by his children and thus it trigged anger from Christian community. Below are the two images of Suharto with his children and Leornado Da Vinci’s Last supper
Image of Suharto and his family
Image of Leornado Da Vinci's Last Supper
Walsh (2006), argued that the social and cultural context of readers forms a good understanding as to why the majority of Christians were offended by the image while the magazine itself claim no pun intended. Adding to an apology by tempo, Chief Editor Toriq Hadad said, “we had no intention of hurting Christians. We were only inspired by the composition of the Leornado painting, and not in the concept or context of the event of the holy bible.”
The controversy in this image is also linked to the concept of centre and margin as propsed by Kress and Leeuwen (2006). In Da Vinci’s painting, the central element is Jesus Christ while his apostles form the margins. In a remake of the painting by Tempos, the centre is Suharto while the margins are his daughters and sons. These similarities could not have been more obvious.
Furthermore, Christians were furious because it was against the Christians believes and customs. BBC (2008), states that “A religion is a set of tenets and practices” that is why it should not be a copied or criticize about cause it is a cultural believe to people.
In my opinion, this was a misunderstanding and difference of social and cultural context. It is true that Tempo has to be blamed of putting case sensitive images for they have to care about its readers like Putnis & Petelin (1996) stated. Even so, a quick thinking by Tempo to release an apology and did damage control so that nothing serious will happen and creating havoc among people. It can now be hoped that for future publications Tempo will take certain things into consideration first.
Reference List
BBC (2008) Indonesian Weekly apologies over Last Suharto Cover, viewed on 23 October, 2009 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm
BBC (2008) Religions & Ethics- Christianity, Viewed 8th November
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/christianethics/euthanasia_1.shtml
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006, Chapter 6: The meaning of composition Reading images, Reading images, Routledge, pp. 175- 214
Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.
Walsh, M 2006, 'The textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual, and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29. no. 1, pp. 24-37.
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