A search for “iwo jima flag parody” on Google images shows a gazillion examples: Time magazine, Simpsons, Terry Pratchett, GI Joe, many political cartoons…
But of course. Somone is always offended.
Ironically the first organization to cheapen that event was the U.S. military. They turned what began as an unscripted moment of hard-won victory into into a feel-good P.R. stunt, as dramatized in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers. The surviving soldiers from the photo were dragged around the country like props. (In the film they are even served ice cream sculptures of the scene that are tactlessly smothered in blood-like strawberry sauce.)
Interesting that in this case, it seems likely that the offended ones also vote Republican. Or somewhere on the right, from whence usually come demands that those who complain about offensive representations grow up, grow a pair, and get over it. I mean, just how different, if at all, are the complaints about this image from the “political correctness” so often wailed about by conservatives?
My father served in the South Pacific during WWII, and I think he would have been one of the first to order this T-Shirt! Some folks have no sense of humor.
Van Halen never had this problem
I think I get it., people died defending the freedom to be offensive and we withdraw a T-shirt because it celebrates that freedom by been (what some people may consider) offensive. O.K.
Actually, Under Armour withdrew the shirt because they realized that it was offending people and they chose not to intentionally sell something that people found offensive.
Just because we have the right to say and do things that others find offensive doesn’t mean we should feel obligated to.
Why? This makes no sense.
I haven’t gone diving into the relevant comment sections, but I wonder if there’s a racial element here too, with that famous WW II image being so iconic for, especially, white republican-leaning men. I would think that for such men, replacing the noble soldiers of the original image with seemingly black “thugs” would be especially offensive. I doubt that, as with FistfulOfDave’s Van Halen image, one with clearly white suburban kids putting up something similar (a tetherball pole?) would provoke such ire.
I thought Van Halen chose the image to be intentionally subversive and provocative? This is the same group who recorded “Hot for Teacher,” after all.
I suspect this is an attempt to create a Streisand effect over an otherwise unremarkable shirt.
Maybe, but if so, it doesn’t seem to have worked, since they pulled it.
I think they withdrew it because they didn’t want bad publicity and subsequent loss of sales. Apology makes it sound like they have no idea what they are doing and that their designs are just bullshit than actual creativity.
Maybe so. But again, I wonder if many of the same sorts of protesters of this “parody shirt” also objected to the album cover, given the whiteness of Van Halen. Though answering that question would take some research that I don’t have time to do.
It seems obvious that to continue to sell this shirt would be a statement that UA hates the military and wishes Hirohito had won the Pacific.
Underamor does market to the military. They may even be a military contractor. While the average grunt may lack… taste, his superiors can be oversensitive bluenoses.
So, yeah. marketing.
I think people didn’t worship the military in 1983 and that’s that.
