This is a silly thing, a sort of geeky pet-peeve complaint. So take with a grain of salt. Anyway, I've had this poster sitting on my desk for the last couple weeks, it's a flyer for this film screening for a group called PDX Books to Prisoners. I was actually going to try to go to the screening, which is called Born In Flames. Maybe that's the name of a film, I'm not sure, but it looked interesting, despite the linguistic error that I am about to mention. But I didn't make it to the event, so I took down a copy of the poster afterward, because it bothered me so much and I wanted to be reminded to write about it
My gripe is this: The poster has 4 equations which, at least 3 of which are obviously false. It has the following lines:
INJUSTICE =
RADICALISM
REPRESSION =
ARMED STRUGGLE
PATRIARCHY =
FEMINIST ARMY
BORN IN FLAMES =
REVOLUTION
My problem with this is that they're misusing the equals sign, such that their statements end up saying exactly the opposite of what they mean. They mean to assert a set of causes and effects, it looks like. What they really mean by "=" is "leads to" or "results in." But in math "=" means "is the same as." It does not mean "causes." So their poster is really saying "Injustice IS Radicalism," Repression IS armed struggle, Patriarchy IS Feminist Army," etc, which of course is not true. I don't know exactly what Born in Flames is so I can't say whether the fourth equation is false or not, though it probably is.
Maybe I'm just too ingrained in a math/science background, but I was actually confused for a minute when i first read the poster. Huh, I thought, are they being ironic? oh! they mean "repression LEADS TO armed struggle!" okay!
It's a silly thing to complain about but these are the kinds of things I notice a lot. I wish people were more careful with their language and their graphic design. Language means things we often don't intend unless we are very aware.
Posted by steev at Diciembre 6, 2004 08:40 AM