Indonesian Weekly Apologises Over Last Supper Suharto Cover

This article is actually about one of Indonesia's top news weeklies called "TEMPO" in apologizing about the cover of its latest issue,which depicts former president Suharto and his children in a composition mimicking Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. The following picture is the cover of the imitation of the Last Supper but with Suharto and his children's face in it



Source: http://nick131086.blogspot.com
Suharto' Last Supper


Source: http://nick131086.blogspot.com
Jesus's Last Supper


There are a few reasons that they might want to do this;
- to create propaganda
- to promote more themselves
- to commemorate Suharto
- because they thinks that Suharto is a powerful man in their country


According to Kress and van Leeuwen, (2006, pp.35), he opine that semiotic landscape differs from society to society as it is influenced by social, cultural and individual interpretation. It also means that, different people has different cultural influential. In other words, different cultural has different interpretation from every visual. For example, the pictures above.



Based on the visual interpretation of the readers over the topic(Indonesian weekly apologies over last supper Suharto cover), it eventually caused an upset to many Christians believers about it tarnishes the meaning behind the original painting. The editors of “Tempo” should understand when an unsuitable visual is used, misinterpretation will happen. (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Soon after the magazine was published, the chief editor of “Tempo”, Toriq Hadad apologized to the Christians saying that “Tempo” had no intention of upsetting the Christians, for they were just inspired by the composition of the famous painting.


There was a similar incident also happened in Malaysia before. This involved a Tamil-language press, Makkal Ossai publishing a controversial of Jesus Christ Christ holding a cigarette and a can of beer on the other.

Source: www.tinyplanetblog.com

Although none of the image published were intentional, document designers, especially caricature artists should take into consideration the purpose, context and audience when designing a document. (Putnis & Petelin, 1996) The most important thing to consider is the cultural context as we would not like offending any of our audiences. As I said earlier, the cultural context is the most important thing that should consider, because different countries has different culture.



References

ABC News, 2008, Indonesian weekly apologies over Last Supper Suharto cover, viewed 18^th November 2009, available <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm


Jesus Christ All About (2008), Jesus and the Last Supper, Viewed 18th November,
http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/jesus-and-the-last-supper-faq.htm


Kress, G & Leeuwen, V 2006, Reading Images: visual communication, Routledge, New York.