This is the best hack I've seen on Hacker News in months and it doesn't even involve a computer. Great job to everyone involved in pulling it off, even if the casual viewers didn't notice.
From the show's creator & executive producer: "We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air. However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.” [0]
If you ever needed proof of the adage that capitalism will co-opt even the most accurate and stinging criticism of it, here it is.
The show was criticized as being racist and so the show appropriated that message (by hiring the "street artists" and instructing them to "go rogue") in order to sell more of the show.
If the producers asked for graffiti, then they certainly got what they paid for. Graffiti has been used as a form of protest and criticism for as long as there has been both paint and walls.
The producers are doing just fine. artistic subversion of commercial considerations is a norm in the arts industry; if anything, this gives an otherwise shallow piece of ideological entertainment some unintended cultural depth.
I'd venture to say this was a pretty calculated move -- no doubt they might not get work with this production company anymore, but they'll surely have quite a few more jobs lined up now with their name out there like this. Also, those jobs might be on projects that more closely align with their political and artistic goals and visions.
I can't speak for the producers, but this would not offend me were I one of them. I'd be quite happy with it.
If I were a producer of the show I might go so far as to actually discuss this issue with the (graffiti) artists on camera, so long as they agreed to be reasonable and collegial about it.
One of the great opportunities for the producers is to shine a light on the show not being particularly racist, but that characters might be - a little.
Having said that, it sounds difficult.
I think the best example of this is The Americans, which stops just short of making the FBI look stupid while kind of raising its eyebrows at the then-prominent "evil empire" narratives. The ...constraints of Soviet political culture are also shown well.
But the craft level of "The Americans" is extremely high.
Now that I think about it, this is pretty much social engineering. One can imagine exploiting cultural ignorances and biases similarly as part of an electronic hack.
Wasn't there an old black-and-white movie set in Africa, where a Zulu warrior comes onscreen to tell the Chief something about the plot in subtitles? And what he says in Zulu is "I'm not being paid enough for being in this movie!"
Agreed, great story. Now we just need a copycat to get hired onto Blue Bloods and do the same thing. Add a 'is dumb' to that one too perhaps. A good place might be on a fridge magnet of a house the main guy usually barges into without regard.