The Tempo magazine frontpage picture
(Source: www.daylife.com)
The article created many controversies, mainly by the depiction of the picture itself. The people (especially Christians) interpreted the picture as a form of mockery to the real picture. As mentioned by Kress and Van Leeuwen (1998), this is reminiscent to the element of the "given and new". "Given" is basically what the reader already knows or is familiar with, whereas, "New" is something that is unknown to the reader and is the important point of the message that must be taken into account. The Christian community showed understanding of the last supper (the Given), as the last meal that Jesus Christ had before his death. However, when Suharto passed away, Tempo made a cartoon of him (the New) depicting his legacy, using the same elements and ideology of the original last supper picture.
From what I can understand from this matter (apart from the "given and new" elements), is that the people managed to understand the definition of the picture without needing to see the texts. According to Walsh (2006), people are capable of interpreting the meaning of the picture in various ways. The community immediately understood by studying the picture and came up with their own ideology. For example, the attempt by the Tempo was to only discuss the legacy of the Ex-president, in his years of ruling in Indonesia. The picture was merely there as to show that his legacy will never be forgotten, and was not related to any biblical event. However, the Christian community mistook it and presumed that the magazine was implying that depiction as blasphemous. This also shows that different people have different views on how a message is portrayed. Michael (2007), cited Haynes in a conference, stating that "what exactly is considered blasphemy can vary between religious groups and people.".
In my opinion, this article is indeed controversial. Although Tempo claimed not to have incorporated anything biblical in the photo, or was merely an inspiration to Da Vinci's last supper, it still touched on religious issues which is considered by many as a sensitive issue. The magazine could and should have found other creative ways to portray their message, rather on touching anything that is related to religion.
Reference:
AFP, 2008, Indonesia weekly apologises over Last Supper Suharto, abc News.com, viewed 16th June 2009 <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm>
Kress,G & van Leeuwen, T (2006), The Meaning of Composition, Reading Images, Blackwell, Oxford
Walsh, M (2006), Textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.
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