Semiotics: Image abuse: Most sacred Christian symbol, the Cross, abused by

.
This blog-entry for Apr6,2k6 was moved from Page 3 to refWrite page 4 (Backpage), Jun19,2k6.
.
This semiotics analysis of the abuse of a central and key Christian symbol, the Cross, upon which the Lord Jesus Christ died, is a case of purposefully provocative offense of the Christian community, especially those of us interested in web-design. Web-design? Yes, the abusive use of the symbol of the Holy Cross, no matter how stylized and no matter how set aganst a background of neo-digital art with the imagery of electricity or lightening cracking around the Holy Cross, remains an infliction of semiotic pain upon Christians.

Semiote Analytics, by Anaximaximum

The inflictor is Vincent Flanders, who placed this image ironically and gratuitously on his website, Web Pages That Suck for no other reason than to attract readers' eyes for to a textual item, apparently composed by him, quite unrelated to the overwhelming religious import of the symbol which Flanders has chosen to deploy for his trivial and maudlin purpose in this particular case.

I'm not criticizing the art of the image. I've been trying to check out who the artist is to give him or her proper credit, and to praise the art produced. Instead, I'm criticizing the semiotic deployment of the sign of the Cross so as to play upon the feelings of readers who are not indifferent to its central religious import, whether they be well disposed to the image or ill disposed to it, whether they be (say) Christians whose feelings are immediately connected to the pain surrounding the cosmos-salvific message of this particular sign, or alternatively whether they be (say) among those particular kinds of atheists who take umbrage at everything Christian in our culture of North America and the entire civilization of the West–which is fairly explicit about the valuation-issues as these register in various segments of the total population.

Were we Westerners indifferent to the meaning of the symbol, it wouldn't catch our eyes. And with simultaneous worldwide spread of three factors–Christianity, antiChristianity, and personal computers–to persons affected by and sometimes devoted to web design, the trivializing of a core religious symbol of billions of people amounts to egregious religious insult. As Flanders has chosen to exploit the sign of the Cross, appropriating a most sacred symbol for his own antiChristian utility, it invariably serves to disappoint a huge portion of his viewers / readership by merely bringing us to an unrelated text, thus resulting in trivialization the enormously-symbolic sign. This move of Flanders is poo-poo semiotic contextualization, and betrays Flanders as irresponsible for all his self-advertizing as web-designer. Not!

As we approach Holy Week from Passover thru Good Friday to the Feast of the Resurrection on Esater Sunday, the passage thru Good Friday brings us to the moment emblazoned by this particular sign of the cross, so artfully composed to suggest symbolically the moment on Golgotha, where Jesus Christ was was crucificed, and in the enshrouding of three hours of darkness the lightening struck and numerous wonderous events took place. This is the dark moment where, as the Apostles' Creed puts it, "He descended into Hell."

Flanders flounders in his monomania of using anyone's most sacred symbols for attracting atttention to his trivial and puerile texts about web-design. Flanders fulfilled his stated purpose (bottom of page) perhaps more than he knew, when he says, "My goal is to help you design effective and aesthetically pleasing web pages. [He failed in the latter goal in choosing the wrong eye-catcher in the case of his abuse of the sign of the Cross during the the Three Hours of Darkness on Golgotha - A] My method is to show you bad design techniques so you'll realize what they are and not use them. [But he himself perpetrated one of the worst design techniques imaginable, all for the purpose of attracting attention to his paltry text.]

Time lapse and add-on revisiontext, entitled: 3. Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards, Usability, and tableless CSS. I'd like to get on track with what he says there, and someday I hope to do so, God willing. But in the meantime, I leave it to refWrite's Owlie Scowlie to take up the Web Standards stuff (which I too support in principle) when he's ready to do so in his own backpage series TechNotes (he says he's interested). - Anaximaximum

Back to refWrite's frontpage
Back to refWrite...page 2