Tempos' Last Supper blunder...

The Christian community in Indonesia can be forgiven for never wanting to buy a copy of Tempos magazine again. Apparently one of its bright ideas backfired and left Christians fuming. The issue in question is the magazine's depiction of former president Suharto and his children in an image mimicking Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper painting. The edition was published in February 2008 as a tribute to Suharto, who had died recently.

The reaction from Tempos was one of shock as they claimed that it was never their intention to make a mockery of the Last Supper or to offend anyone in any way. Tempos' chief editor, Toriq Hadad claimed that they were only inspired by the painting but never in the concept or context of the event mentioned in the Bible (ABC 2008). This apparent misjudgement of the context for which Suharto's composition was created can hence be attributed to the social and cultural factors that influence readers' interpretation of texts, as argued by Walsh (2006).

Below is the said image which appeared in Tempos magazine, followed by the actual Last Supper painting:

mimic of Last Supper

(Source: asiaone.com)

Da Vinci's Last Supper
(Source: morethings.com)

Walsh's argument on the social and cultural context of readers forms a good understanding as to why the majority of Christians were offended by the image while the magazine itself swore innocence. To some of us, the image may have seemed harmless, perhaps even meaningless. But to those familiar with the story of Jesus and Da Vinci's painting, the similarity could not have been more obvious, hence the controversy.

The controversy in this image is also linked to the concept of centre and margin proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006 p. 194). In Da Vinci's painting, the central element is obviously Jesus while his apostles form the margins. In the depiction by Tempos, the centre is Suharto while the margins are his children. Therefore, it seemed almost as if the magazine was trying to liken Suharto with Jesus, and that is when Christians alike probably cried: blasphemy!!.

In my opinion, this was a classic case of differences in a social and cultural context. One should not be so harsh as to blame Tempos for what was clearly a misunderstanding, although I do believe that publishers need to be sensitive to their audiences, and this is echoed by Putnis and Petelin (1996). The magazine's decision to issue an apology for its depiction was probaly the correct step, but hopefully unnecessary for future publications if they take the said factors into consideration.

References:

ABC 6 February 2008, 'Indonesian weekly apologises over Last Supper Suharto cover'.
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, New York.

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Walsh, M 2006, 'The textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual, and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29. no. 1, pp. 24-37.