Miss America and Faces of the Dead

I think Wolf Vostell was really letting the media have it when he created Miss America. These two iconic representations in the piece were handed to us by the media. You can see that he has chosen two well-emphasized themes in modern media: the obsession with sex and violence. The unrealistic expectations of women and sexuality and how it is perpetuated by the media is symbolized by the picture of the fashion model. The candid photograph of the Vietnamese soldier being shot in the head by the Vietcong general, I think, is a testimony to the media’s tenacity to exploit something as atrocious as war. A lot like the pop-art during that time, it was a satirical interpretation of the familiar images floating around in the media. I have never seen anything like Faces of the Dead before but after seeing all of the faces of those who have fought for our well-being and lost their lives while doing so; I couldn’t imagine a better memorial to them. I like how all of the “tiles” or pictures of each soldier contributes to the one giant portrait of the soldier chosen, as if the designer was trying to say that one soldier alone is the make-up of all the others. It’s also important that some personal information of the soldiers was listed though I would have liked to see a small tidbit of a personal interests listed with the picture. I feel it would have made it even more powerful because the audience would have been able to identify with the soldiers on a personal level but perhaps that wasn’t entirely the goal. The analysis and timelines of all of the deaths are devastating.