The Irrational Enquirer — Now in 3D!

Note: If you have 3D glasses, with red on the left, and cyan on the right, this really does work.

This is my tribute to the tabloid, The National Enquirer, which I made for my digital print class. I have included an in-depth explanation of it, below, because a tremendous amount of thought went into it. Before getting into that, however, I would just like to say what I nightmare it was to produce. I had to print with litho plates, for the second time, and for the second time, it didn't work. The plate wouldn't pick up ink at all. It was really just a technical exercise, and I was expected only to do one layer lithography on top of a digital print. Even my digital prints went poorly, because of some strange printer problems. But the fact that I couldn't do the litho was worse. I was going to use that medium for all the red and yellow you see. 

Ultimately, I resorted to diluting the thick litho ink in mineral oil and painting it on. I had to use a magnifying glass, and a tiny brush. The process took about two hours per print, and there were nine in total. The end result was so good, however, that my professor and class had to ask where the litho part even was. That's right, I faked the precision of an inkjet printer. Of course I lied about that. It was the only good part of my presentation, because no one got the jokes, and no one understood why I wanted to create this in the first place. Well, it says below. So maybe if they had just listened! I just wanted to do a parody of the absurdity that is The National Inquirer. Anyway, each print measures 9"x12", and they were all completed February 25, 2014.

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If this looks familiar, it is because you are thinking of the infamous tabloid magazine, The National Enquirer. It’s a magazine, typically sold at supermarket checkout lines, that just screams scandal, and it looks just like this. 

I wanted to do something of a tribute to the magazine as a commentary on the human tendencies to exaggerate and to make hasty, often inaccurate judgments, based on emotion. I also wanted to comment on the nature of North-American news, and its fascination with celebrity and scandal. 

So I created this, the Irrational Enquirer. Basically, I took a number of my favourite images and stories from the internet (the realm of all that is good and true) and assembled them in a way that is reminiscent of the storyboard for an edition of the National Enquirer.

Starting at the top left, I used an image of rapper Gucci Mane, from his 2009 trial hearing. The story, that he responded ‘Bitch I Might Be,’ when asked if guilty, was an internet hoax, around the same time. It was a play on the refrain from his song, I Might Be. 

Inspired by that pun, I took advantage of one of ASAP Rocky’s songs, Fuckin’ Problem. The refrain goes, ‘I love bad bitches, that’s my fuckin’ problem, and yeah, I like to fuck, I got a fuckin’ problem.’ I decided to interpret that in terms of sex addiction, the way sensationalist journalists might. The inclusion of an exclusive interview is a rarity in the Enquirer, but it seems to promise some legitimacy.

Moving down, there is a flattering picture of Miley Cyrus, from her MTV award performance, last year. While the performance caused a little stir in the mainstream media, it was the spark for some of the funniest parodies I have ever seen on 4chan — a notorious internet forum. There were a few threads dedicated to Miley’s wild performance, whence this comes. Scrolling down, I came across the larger image, but it was followed my progressive enlargements.* The tremendous number of replies indicated something golden, and by the third picture, the face of Carlton could be seen. The excitement climaxed with an giant image of his smirking face, photoshopped onto her knee. It’s absurd, and that’s why it was funny, that, and the collective hype. One has to understand that Carlton is a classic 4chan meme. Carlton, as a meme, usually represents the smug humour of knowing something the other doesn’t. However, on the cover of my magazine, this bizarre fusion of iconography comes to suggest the sort of equally strange obsession that we have with celebrity health. The National Enquirer is notorious for making predictions on celebrity life spans, and then profiling there entire dying process. 

Finally, below Miley, is another play on a 4chan meme. I wanted to comment on our tendency to be much better at identifying white faces than any other kind. You can test yourself on this, with Implicit Association Test. Anyway, when Nelson Mandella died, 4chan, ever tasteful, was flooded with fake memorial pictures of Morgan Freeman, reading RIP Nelson Mandella ... as if the poster couldn’t tell the difference between the two iconic figures. Although it is impossible to confirm, I believe that the joke may have originated from Freeman’s portrayal of Mandella in the film Invictus. At any rate, I thought the misinformed feature was befitting of the libellous tabloid.

The main feature is one most closely linked to the kind of story featured. It is grainy, paparazzi photo of Shaun Huff with a nearly empty bottle of Bacardi. Mr. Huffington, Jr., as his real name implies, is the heir to the Huffington fortune — as in the Huffington Post. He apparently escaped from rehab, and is up to his usual antics. That’s not true, actually. Huff is a character my brother and I invented from the expression ‘Sure enough (sho’ nuff.)’ I figured he would be a good candidate for the sort of familial drama with which these sorts of tabloids are obsessed. The decision to make it a true stereoscopic image came from the belief that it would be a fittingly absurd addition to the already overwhelming cover. Everything is bright, and bold, and capitalized; it dresses up, and compensates for what is, in reality, weak journalism and meaningless stories. But damn, is it ever funny.