page_title: Barack Obama "Hope" poster
section_title: Parodies and imitations
hierarchical_section_title: Barack Obama "Hope" poster / Parodies and imitations
caption_attribution_description: English: Honest Gil Fulbright SOLD Poster
context_page_description: The Barack Obama "Hope" poster is an image of Barack Obama designed by artist Shepard Fairey, which was widely described as iconic and came to represent his 2008 presidential campaign. It consists of a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and blue, with the word "progress", "hope" or "change" below.
  The design was created in one day and printed first as a street poster. It was then more widely distributed—both as a digital image and other paraphernalia—during the 2008 election season, initially independent of, but with the approval from, the official Obama campaign. The image became one of the most widely recognized symbols of Obama's campaign message, spawning many variations and imitations, including some commissioned by the Obama campaign. This led The Guardian's Laura Barton to proclaim that the image "acquired the kind of instant recognition of Jim Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara poster, and is surely set to grace T-shirts, coffee mugs and the walls of student bedrooms in the years to come."
context_section_description: As the campaign progressed, many parodies and imitations of Fairey's design appeared.  For example, one anti-Obama version replaced the word "hope" with "hype", while parody posters featuring opponents Sarah Palin and John McCain had the word "nope".  In January 2009 Paste magazine launched a site allowing users to create their own versions of the poster.  More than 10,000 images were uploaded to the site in its first two weeks.
  Mad magazine parodied the "hope" poster with an "Alfred E. Neuman for President!" poster. Alfred was on the poster, and the word "hope" was replaced with "hopeless". Anti-Gaddafi protesters in Chicago, in solidarity with the 2011 Libyan civil war, have co-opted the image.
  Dynamite Comics released a four-part crossover with Obama and Ash Williams of their Army of Darkness comics and the Evil Dead films. One of the issues covers had a picture of Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell in the films) in the style of the "Hope" poster with the bottom text reading "Hope?"
  Fairey was also commissioned to create a number of works in the same style. He produced two other versions, based on different photographs, officially on behalf of the Obama campaign, and another to serve as the cover of the Person of the Year issue of Time.  He also created a portrait of comedian Stephen Colbert in the same style, which appeared in an issue of Entertainment Weekly honoring Colbert's television show The Colbert Report.
  Firas Alkhateeb, the student who designed the controversial Obama "Joker" image, cited Fairey as being his greatest influence.  Alkhateeb described the "Joker" image as a corrective to Fairey's glowing portrayal of Obama. Fairey has both criticized and praised the "Joker" poster, stating "The artwork is great in that it gets a point across really quickly", but "I don't agree with the political content of the poster".
  Conservative satire site The People's Cube made visual and verbal punning images, such as "Chaos" with an image of Rush Limbaugh ("Operation Chaos"), "Shrugged" with an image of Ayn Rand (for her novel Atlas Shrugged) and "Marxism" with an image of Groucho Marx.
  The September 2009 issue of The Advocate, America's oldest-continuing LGBT publication, featured a cover image similar to Fairey's design.  The blue and red coloring was replaced with pink and purple, but instead of "hope", the caption was "nope?".  Jon Barrett, the magazine's editor-in-chief, said the cover expressed the frustration among some Democratic members of the LGBT community.
  
  The poster has also been parodied in popular culture. In the Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity," a similar poster of President Richard Nixon can be seen, with the slogan "DESPAIR". In the 2010 movie Megamind, a version of the poster can be seen using Megamind's visage and the caption "NO YOU CAN'T", parodying Obama's campaign slogan "Yes we can". Disney's animated series Phineas and Ferb has two episodes, "Nerds of a Feather" and "She's the Mayor", both with Obama's poster parodied with Candace's face. American heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch has released a version with their mascot and the words "WAR", referring to their album War Is The Answer.  In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark receives a similar poster of the Iron Man armor and hangs it in his Malibu garage, much to the displeasure of his assistant and love interest Pepper Potts. The 4th season of BoJack Horseman features Mr. Peanutbutter's version of the poster as he's running for governor.
caption: Honest Gil Fulbright SOLD Poster
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