When Decoding Goes Terribly Awry

Lost in Translation

I’m not sure if I should be laughing or crying about this http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1254327.php/Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force_stunt_brings_Boston_to_a_halt story I heard in the news today, but either was it illustrates Cartwright and Sturken’s idea of viewers making meaning beautifully. Essentially what happened is a woman in Boston saw something that she believed to be a bomb, and called the police to report a terrorist threat. What she failed to realize was that her “bomb” was really just one of the pieces of electronic art figures that Turner Broadcasting put around the city as part of a marketing campaign for their show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” This panicked phone call shut down the city of Boston for hours, created a widespread panic, and wound up costing thousands of dollars.

So why did this happen? I mean how in the world is an electronic sign of one of the characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force in any way menacing? Well, it all comes down to the viewer’s interpretation. As Practices of Looking says, the “factors that impact meaning…include age, class, gender, and regional and cultural identity…political and social events in their respective worlds…” This provides insight into at least two aspects of why this entire situation occurred.
First, the woman that reported the threat was a middle-aged woman on her way to work…probably not a regular viewer of the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program. Because of her age, class, identity, and experience she has a certain set of knowledge that she uses when decoding images and trying to decipher their meaning. In this case, the character depicted was not in her repertoire. Instead, she saw the wire and lighting as something that presented the potential of being a bomb. The signs had been up in various cities throughout the nation for days, so others walked right past them fearless. They were either oblivious to the facts the signs were there or happened to be familiar with the characters the signs were representing. In either case, what the image meant to the viewer was significantly influenced by their background.

Now, the second part of the Practices of Looking explanation indicates why the woman and all the other panicked citizens of Boston believed that what they saw was a bomb. Their interpretation of the image was based on the “political and social events in their respective worlds,” which at this point in time, is dominated by the “war on terror.” Because of this pervasive fear of terrorism, any unknown mechanical object with wiring was assumed to be a deadly weapon designed to be used in some grand terrorist scheme. It is this same attitude that allowed the fear and confusion to spread as rapidly and easily as it did. In our culture, where the threat of terrorism is constantly looming in the back of our minds, our interpretation is largely shaped by this fear.

This entire situation is terribly unfortunate for Turner Broadcasting and the advertising agency behind the campaign. I’m pretty sure terrorist threat wasn’t the message they were trying to convey, which highlights Sturken and Cartwright’s “Producers’ intended meanings,” quite well. They were aiming for humorous ad campaign designed to promote their show. Instead they got “terrorist threat.”

Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Producers failing to convey their intended meaning to the audience got Paramount Studios in trouble this spring when they placed MP3 players in newspaper stands to play the Mission Impossible theme song in anticipation of the release of Mission Impossible: III. A customer purchasing the LA Times thought the device looked like a bomb, so they called the police, who proceeded to neutralize the threat by blowing the stand up.

Why can this same sort of thing happen twice in such a limited time? Because of the way we have come to make meaning of things. Had this been ten years ago, the people that didn’t understand the images would probably have just kept walking, thinking they were some silly something or other. But after September 11th, anything unknown and electronic has immediately become a dangerous device. This really highlights the way the specific time, place, a current events influences the way we make meaning.

Now, on to the question that everybody is asking: how should Turner Broadcasting and those responsible for the ads be punished (if at all)? One interesting article said that they shouldn’t be reprimanded in any way. They believe that it is us, the viewer that needs punishment because of our paranoia and gullibility. All the advertisers that produced the Aqua Teen Hunger Force images were trying to do was increase the popularity of their show. They were going for a laugh, not a scare. It was us, the misguided viewer of the image that was responsible for the panic that ensued. That is a very interesting way to look at the whole situation. After all, is it their fault the meaning they wanted to convey was lost upon the viewer that had never seen the character before? If it is the viewers that make the meaning, then it was the viewer that created the scare, not the company.