I'm trying to understand why certain icons are adopted by the mainstream and why their original meaning is of no relevance to the general audience that just likes the look of it.
To the bloodstained omen from Alan Moore's Watchmen:
Each of these faces has its origins in the fact that a human brain is designed to recognise familiar human faces in any place it can, so this simple arrangement of circles and lines can immediately be communicated somehow as a person. But each one stands for a different ideal, and a different generation.
The Watchmen smiley with its bloodstain is meant to resemble the metaphorical Doomsday Clock, with the blood acting as a hand on the clock being positioned to 5 to midnight, representing the looming nuclear threat prevalent in the book. This is to represent the paranoia of the post-nuclear western world, that felt that World War 3 could break out at any time while the world was trying to recover as a whole from WW2.
Conversely, the Nirvana smiley is a parody of the duality of capitalism; the smiley face can be found everywhere from children's picture books to the underside of mind altering pills. The fact that consumerism dictates that everything is everywhere for everyone means that integrity is lost, and anything can be taken and done with however the user chooses. Ironically, the Nirvana smiley has been consumed by this ideal, as in a world without Kurt Cobain the symbol has become little more than a H&M brand that's guaranteed to sell to 13-17 year old middle class teens who want to feel like they're rebelling. The context of the anarchic origins of the image have been lost, and there are people who think Nirvana is an actual clothing brand. I'm trying to understand in my essay the effect that this sort of cultural ignorance has on how we as a society not only produce, but consume art.
