The controversial began when a prominent news weekly in Indonesia published a picture of the last supper by changing Jesus and the disciples to Suharto,his wife and children. With this, it has caused a stir and uproar among the Christians, claiming this is an insult by portraying Suharto as Jesus. Suharto is a legacy in Indonesia. However, he was accused of corruption but was never brought to justice. Therefore, Christians in Indonesia found it insulting to compare someone who has been accused of corruption to Jesus.
According to Walsh(2006), a picture is able to convey many meanings, especially pictures without text. Readers are able to interpret according to their own understanding, hence creating controversial and misunderstandings.
While this Indonesian daily Tempo made a sketch about Suharto and comparing him to Jesus, they did not give the misinterpretation much of a thought. Therefore, this has breached ethical publishing when it has insulted the religion of others.
According to Lester (2003), there are also ethical issues surrounding cartoon strips just like how Tempo published the illustrated Suharto vs Last Supper. This is because it has political meaning in the picture which was supposed to be of religious significance.
Besides that, Gillespie & Toynbee (2006) also writes that sometimes text and the picture complement each other with meaning, such as the captions for a picture elaborates more. The theme for Suharto's picture was "After his legacy", comparing him to the legacy of Jesus Christ,which sparked this whole controversial.
Therefore, we must always be cautious when it comes to ethical publishing and take into consideration the diverse faiths that we have in this world.
(300 words)
Reference
1. Gillespie M & Toynbee J 2006, Analysing Media Texts, McGraw Hill Education, USA.
2. Lester P.M 2003, Visual Communication: Images with Messages, Third Edition, USA.
3. Walsh M. 2006, The textual Shift: Examining the reading process with print,visual and
multimodal text,Vol.29,No1,2006,pp.24-37
4. Suharto's Picture, Google Image, last viewed 13th June 2009,
5. The last Supper, Google Image, last viewed 13th June 2009,
No comments:
Post a Comment