even less
This is one of those mind-bending images that china throws at you once in a while.
The more you think about it, the more complicated and strange it gets. The over-elaboration of the fence and signage is typical of the "more is more" idea that is rampant in Shanghai right now--of the semantic overloading of many verbal and visual associations within a single message. You often see advertisements that attempt to fuse the associations of "expensive car," "milk," "gold," and "rampant nature" into a single image in order to sell moisturizing lotion.
However, the message itself carries a sort of extreme and cryptic minimalism, like some kind of hanging confucian rejoinder. This is one of those head-scratchers where you can't but wonder if it's a self-conscious joke, or something that just failed to translate in the most brilliant possible way.
And how perfect is it that china's smallest dog decided to make an appearance at precisely this moment to illustrate the point?
* joshua, 9/04/2003 06:42:23 AM
