Confederacy of a Dunce - Images of Success

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

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I grew up in a fairly conservative church -- conservative enough that (at least for a while) there was a wall display of Jack Chick cartoon tracts. These tracts come in quite an impressive range including all sorts of tough guy themes, some that have very specific religious targets, as well as some timely issues.

Their bread and butter, however, is "This is Your Life", which tells the tale of a successful man struck down in the prime of life, and has been translated into more than 100 different languages. To me it's most interesting to see the different depictions of "success", depending upon the language. The standard image of success features a Corvette, a cardigan/turtleneck combo, a cold drink, a pipe, and a TV showing some sort of hostage drama:

EDIT NOTE: I guess I cross-linked to Chick's images and they don't approve, since now my images are broken. As it would be a little sneaky to download their copyrighted images and post them myself for the purpose of ridicule, I'll just leave my comments here, although they don't make much sense without the accompanying images. Sorry

This image is used (with translated text) for many languages including Albanian, Esperanto, Euskara, Luxembourgian and a host of others (including, strangely, Inuit). However, other cultures get different images of success:

Waray-Waray success

In Waray-Waray (a Phillippine language) success is family and drink;

Vietnamese success

The Vietnamese guy (like other east Asians, although his face may be slightly altered) may not have a family but he's got a serious car;

African success

In Swahili (and most other African languages) it's all about romance (and the lady gets the drink);

Arabic success

The Arabic (and Farsi) guy gets the English Corvette, costume and the same TV show, but not a pipe (or a razor);

Bengali success

In Bengali (and other languages of India), it's enjoying drinks and canapes with another couple;

Fijian success

But you can't beat Fiji (or Tahiti): chilling out on a deserted island with a lady, a bottle, and a nice Hawaiian shirt.

They have one thing in common, though: they all get chopped down by Death, having only time to utter something akin to the English "Whaaa?"
: In the prime of life (SHQIP)