Semiotics Of Slippage

A certain slippage has taken place in both the form and content of this drawing, the shooting of a child, on a sea-cliff. The canoe has slipped out of the excited young boy’s shorts. The ejaculation of smoke (puff?) clearly signifies the canoe’s deflation and expulsion from the said boy’s shorts – the ‘real’ gunfire (for gun read, enemy penis): penis enemy - colonialist impotence in the face native firepower. The gun – instrument of penetration - his held in a rock-steady hand. The boy holds on to the rock with a steady hand. The sea-canoe – carrier of seamen - is impotent; the boy is about to be holed. But this is only half of a bigger picture.

To be continued...

Honky Tonky Spotty Dotty

So who’s survived and what’s been lost, and who and what has been gained in the slippage - from photograph to image - between Honky Tonk Party 1 and Honky Tonk Party 3? For a start the pianist’s shirt’s gone: it drew too much attention to the noses pointing at it. If you traced the black triangles on the pianist’s shirt, and then slipped any of the triangle-tracings over the nose of the pianist - or that of his admirer (right of piano) - they would be a perfect fit, a perfect match. Nose covers on an album cover, under the disguise of a loud shirt.

And why not trace? Look at the cross between Hank Marvin (of the Shadows) and Michael Caine (in the Ipcress File) - a shadowy spy? Hank and his girlfriend survived almost intact, they must have been traced. But notice she’s changed her top, and he’s borrowed the yellow jacket from the headless man obscured behind the smoking woman, on the left in Honky Tonk Party 1.

Let’s stay with profile of the smoking woman behind the pianist’s head, because it too has been traced, duplicated, and transferred to the plates on the wall in Honky Tonk 3. 

And finally, take another look at Hanky Caine’s girl. The shirt she’s wearing in Honky 1 has been used for the pub carpet on the cover of Honky 3. And if you care to count the dots on the shirt and dots on the carpet– spot the spots on both - you’ll find a numerical parity there too. The floor is 146 dots dirty and the shirt’s 142 spots spotty. But if you add the 4 spots on the shirt – on her right elbow reflected in the bar (next to the pint glasses), the amount of spots on the shirt equals the amount of spots of dirt on the carpet.