Why not just say movie posters from Ghana? What is connection between these and the concept of African, I wonder?
Anyway, I'm Ghanaian, and you can AMA. There's a lot of such art, many on walls of the erstwhile movie houses. Most of them are very realistic and collectible, but I guess only the garish ones command attention and so are easier to make into a story.
As a kid I once watched an artist paint one of these on a wall in a few hours, was very cool.
Look up deadly prey gallery, the website hosting the picture. They commission some OG artists & some new artists to make new posters specifically in this style. It's legit. This one is signed by Nana Agyq.
Definitely not AI, but if these are new commissions it's not unreasonable to suspect an element of self-parody, playing up the aspects of the originals that amuse people.
You don't have to take my word for it. Instead of suspecting, please read up on deadly prey gallery, as I had suggested.
They go on tour with the posters and some movies. To hear them talk about it and reading through their book, it's obvious that they treat this seriously.
These are wonderful. They're so full of character. But I must imagine a "screening" on a TV would be a terrible experience to watch. I guess if you had never been to a full movie theater, you'd never know what you were missing out on.
In Czechoslovakia ~ 1988, video players were rather expensive and complicated to acquire, so we as kids watched movies from cassettes together as well, at the homes of the few who were rich enough to afford them.
One of those parents was a truck driver who was able to cross the Iron Curtain and always smuggled something interesting back.
My best movie experiences were probably watching hard to acquire bootlegs in the pre-digital age. The barriers were just so much higher, half the excitement was just getting a crappy copy.
No comments here about the odd non-standard "say yes to say no" sliders for data collection and selling? I've only seen this a few times in privacy settings windows but enough times that I'm now wary of just assuming that gray means opt-out.
Not sure what you’re seeing, but I’ve seen that particular window several times (and no sliders). Very easy to “Disagree” or “Reject All”.
Anyway, those are usually avoided in comments unless they are particularly egregious, because as per the guidelines:
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
The text claims "Always at least one exploding head" and the number of exploding heads in the 20 posters shown is zero. It lists a number of "favourites from the genre" not one of which is actually shown. The text, as you might surmise from the previous two points, has the definite scent of LLMs about it.
The net effect of this is that, while I can look at the pictures and admire them (if that's the word) I have no idea whether I can trust anything in the actual text, since any given claim might just be an LLM confabulation.
(Which is too bad, since on the face of it it seems quite interesting, and probably many of the things the LLM has generated are in fact true.)
Agreed, and "definite scent" is underselling it. I didn't even attempt any deep analysis; I just skimmed a bit and found this bit and noped right out:
> The posters were typically painted on used flour sacks, sewn together and primed for colour. These weren’t just any flour sacks either — they were durable, easy to roll up, and ready for reuse.
> And the designs? Let’s just say they didn’t rely too heavily on accuracy.
I thought the writing was banal but fine. The stars of the show are the images, not the text. Assuming it's largely LLM written, this seems like a good use of that technology.
The text adds some pieces of information you wouldn't get from the images alone: they were painted on flour sacks, used at mobile cinemas, now exhibited at galleries in the West, etc. And it provides citations and artists' names for those who want to learn more.
The art criticism is unsophisticated, the images don't completely match the descriptions, and some of the facts might well be hallucinated or at least taken out of context. But you got that with traditional media and human writers/editors too.
For what it's worth, I'd guess there is a real author, whose command of the English language is worse than ChatGPT, though his personality is more interesting, and who asked the LLM to rewrite his work in the right style for the website.
> For what it's worth, I'd guess there is a real author, whose command of the English language is worse than ChatGPT, and who asked the LLM to rewrite his work in the right style for the website.
Sure. But if the author doesn't notice the nonsense that the LLM is introducing, it harms as well as helping.
"Primed for colour" is a strangely uninteresting thing to be saying about the sacks. If this requires any non-trivial effort, it would make more sense to describe the process. If the author actually wanted to talk about that, chances are the LLM removed useful information.
And putting aside that "These weren’t just any flour sacks either — they were durable, easy to roll up, and ready for reuse." is three "classic LLM tropes" in a row ("not just any"; a gratuitous emdash where any dash at all only becomes necessary because of that introduction; an ascending tricolon), it's just a bizarre thing to say. First off, if the sacks were sewn together to make a larger banner, then it doesn't make sense to talk about rolling up the individual sacks. Second, the phrasing suggests something exceptional, but these are all totally ordinary and trivial properties of pretty much any sort of flour sack. Many different materials are used, but all of them would be "easy to roll up" when empty, and making them durable and reusable is just common sense in that environment. The artists were clearly just using a fairly obvious material they had at hand, so this sudden bit of marketing-speak is entirely out of place. Third, the features highlighted all have to do with the sacks, but not with either each other nor the banners. In particular, a sack being "ready for reuse" is ready for reuse as a sack, not for its material being repurposed for something completely different (we typically call that "recycling", not "reuse").
The bit about "the designs" may well even be true, but it's a complete non-sequitur here, a point that doesn't really merit deeper explanation.
The writing isn't just "banal" but nonsensical in context, veering off into free-association. There's more potentially being hallucinated here than just the "facts". Never mind the accuracy or truth of what's written; this sort of thing makes it hard to accept that the prose even reflects the author's intent.
> The text adds some pieces of information you wouldn't get from the images alone
But this is exactly where being AI-written bothers me! I don't really mind the style (the LLMs have learned to write a particular way because 1. people write that way and 2. other people like it) and I don't have the "boooo stochastic parrot plagiarism machines booooooooo" sense of disgust at AI that some people have, but I do know that when LLMs write things those things are ... not always true.
(Of course when people write things they aren't always true either, but the LLMs get things wrong more than humans do.)
Which means that when the article tells me something interesting -- flour sacks! mobile cinemas! exhibited in galleries! -- I can't trust it. And that, for me, is the main damage that outsourcing your writing to an LLM does: it destroys trust.
The worst part of this is how it has this kind of buzzfeed-like style of semi-tongue-in-cheek-but-still-politically-correct aesthetics. Is this what regression to the mean is in the future of AI writing? Are we doomed to read buzzfeed everywhere now?
And six of the seven links in the “sources” are dead. For an article published last year. I searched them in the Internet Archive and didn’t find a single match. And we’re talking CNN, BBC, The Guardian, amongst others.
This is intriguing! Reminds me of an old movie theatre in Taiwan that still uses hand-painted posters, until the theatre closed down earlier this year.
And Africa is more than twice the size of Europe, it is fair to complain that they don’t just put Ghana in the title. It is not that the title is unacceptable but it is just wrong and weird
Maybe the English-speaking world. I think most people couldn't place Canada on a map. More people than Ghana or any African country, certainly, but that's because it's more famous. GDP is more correlated to this than population or landmass.
I'm not justifying anything. I also think it's more polite to say "Ghana" rather than "Africa". I just don't agree with the arguments.
Canada is the second-largest country in the world, so if you know that it's in the north and, um, not Russia, you stand a pretty good chance at picking it out. (Doubly so if you just know it's in the Americas.)
Now, if you asked the same about Pakistan or Nigeria (#5 and #6 in terms of population, but far smaller and with far shorter sea borders), I'd bet that far fewer people would be able to pinpoint those with the same accuracy (whether in the English-speaking world or not).
I am fairly certain that most people in the non-English speaking world will also be able to place Canada on the map - I'd assume the French know exactly where Canada is. But I digress; it's not about placing a country on a map. It's more about we know that Canada is a separate country, and it has an identity distinct from other countries in its continent.
This goes beyond mere politeness; that you used this word is a bit suggestive. Refusing to acknowledge an identity is far more than just a lack of politeness.
I can appreciate where you're coming from in general, but this article isn't that. All Headlines suck, by their nature they have to cater to the lowest common denominator in who they assume their audience is, so we're using the headline to place an unfamiliar country in a continent that is familiar enough, at least in name.
> this site is my attempt at creating something that’s dedicated to discovering the hidden gems of the online realm (whether they be in the form of academic discourse, cutting-edge technology, cultural commentary, or artistic expression) and sharing them with care and consideration.
How is treating a country in the second largest continent in the world - which contains more than 50 countries, most of which have very distinct cultures - as representative of that continent showing care and consideration? Ghana is not an unfamiliar country, and most people, at the very least, know it's in Africa. If I confused Mexico with Canada, or Germany with Albania, I'd be treated as a dimwit, but somehow it's totally fine if I don't know the difference between Ghana and Kenya.
I agree with the parent comment; this "unfamiliar country" business needs to stop.
This is spot on. The real reasons the headline is "Africa" and not "Ghana" are:
- To sensationalize the story by positioning it as a another manifestation of a supposed "African" nature/character.
- The idea that African countries by themselves are too insignificant to seek/need to know about, but an entire continents? OK, maybe. Many people are comfortable in ignorance, real or feigned.
Putting Ghana on the title would have been just fine. I'm Ghanaian btw.
How exactly is that clickbait? You might not like it, but that doesn't make it clickbait. That's like saying it's clickbait to say Europe in a headline instead of Austria.
A tour guide for the U.S. definitely implies that you are going to see a variety of places in the U.S. That's implied by the word "tour" which means something roughly akin to "a journey through several different places".
This is merely an example where the writer of the headline believes that the average reader may not be familiar with the country of Ghana. If the demographics include Americans, I'd have to guess they were spot on. (I'm American, I know how Americans are.)
Would it really be similarly offensive if a headline referred to something happening in "South America" when actually it happened in Guyana? Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra? None of these headlines are inaccurate. They're just not specific.
I can obviously see why this is frustrating but to me it's a complete misunderstanding to blame the person writing the headline.
> Would it really be similarly offensive if a headline referred to something happening in "South America" when actually it happened in Guyana?
Yes. It's like saying that the art and culture in Georgetown is very similar to the art and culture in Santiago. Especially when you claim to be an arts-and-culture website. Would a Texan like being stereotyped by a tourist who thinks all of America is just like New York City?
> Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra?
What many people here are trying to point out is that the chances of seeing such a line about a European country (even a relatively unknown one) is waaaay less than the chances of seeing such a line about African/South American countries.
> Yes. It's like saying that the art and culture in Georgetown is very similar to the art and culture in Santiago. Especially when you claim to be an arts-and-culture website. Would a Texan like being stereotyped by a tourist who thinks all of America is just like New York City?
That does happen, and I don't think very many people consider it grossly offensive, the vast majority of people would probably find it mildly amusing at worst. (It is not lost on me that people feel this way partly because American culture is well-known around the world, so people are less defensive of it.)
On the other hand though, I don't think that the headline being less specific means that the article is making generalizations about Africa. The article itself is pretty immediately clear on that matter.
if they're so bad they're good ... they're actually just good. probably because they capture something increasingly rare: the human and personal touch of an artist who's not straight jacketed by "safe mode" marketing, editorial norms, analytics, blah blah blah
Yes, they're amazingly good given they didn't have copies of the original posters, Internet access to get reference images, or even VCRs at home to play the movies themselves.
The clickbait title is about "Africa" and "bad", but it's specifically about Ghana and awesome.
Why not just say movie posters from Ghana? What is connection between these and the concept of African, I wonder?
Anyway, I'm Ghanaian, and you can AMA. There's a lot of such art, many on walls of the erstwhile movie houses. Most of them are very realistic and collectible, but I guess only the garish ones command attention and so are easier to make into a story.
As a kid I once watched an artist paint one of these on a wall in a few hours, was very cool.
Are there any Ghana-made movies or shows you would recommend?
Contemporary:
- Beasts of No Nation (film, shot in Ghana, starring Idris Elba, on Netflix)
- Gold Coast Lounge (afro-noir Black/White film, on Netflix/Amazon)
- Burial of Kojo (movie, on Netflix)
- Azali (movie, on Netflix)
Classic:
- Deadly voyage (1996 TV film starring Omar Epps, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQiaTWT_YYI)
- Heritage Africa (movie, 1989, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg4UrYJKA_Y)
- Love brewed in an African pot (movie, 1980, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRze5uaNpVw)
- Things we do for love (early 2000s TV series, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1sQd4BV0lI)
There's a weird way of engaging with cinema from a few African countries that requires wrapping yourself in irony before you enjoy them.
There are some Ghanaian movies trending right now on streaming. And part of the marketing is that Ghana produces way more per capita than Nigeria.
Are you talking about movies per capita or general production per capita?
I’m sure it’s movies.
How could they leave out the classic Paddington one?
https://deadly-prey-gallery.myshopify.com/cdn/shop/files/D18...
I smiled at this, then immediately wondered if it was a knowing parody, then immediately wondered if was AI generated and got sad.
Look up deadly prey gallery, the website hosting the picture. They commission some OG artists & some new artists to make new posters specifically in this style. It's legit. This one is signed by Nana Agyq.
Definitely not AI, but if these are new commissions it's not unreasonable to suspect an element of self-parody, playing up the aspects of the originals that amuse people.
You don't have to take my word for it. Instead of suspecting, please read up on deadly prey gallery, as I had suggested.
They go on tour with the posters and some movies. To hear them talk about it and reading through their book, it's obvious that they treat this seriously.
I looked, a lot of these are definitely ironic, including almost certainly the paddington one. Oh well, enjoyable link regardless.
I had the exact same human experience.
These are wonderful. They're so full of character. But I must imagine a "screening" on a TV would be a terrible experience to watch. I guess if you had never been to a full movie theater, you'd never know what you were missing out on.
It’s a much more communal experience. Less screen, sure, but a lot more audience participation
I grew up with VHS tapes on CRT screens. It was totally fine, I watched more movies back then than I do today.
Yea, also often the movies were cams from people that recorded in the theater so you can see the audience walking around etc.
Quality hardly matters when the real treasure was getting the movie in the first place.
In Czechoslovakia ~ 1988, video players were rather expensive and complicated to acquire, so we as kids watched movies from cassettes together as well, at the homes of the few who were rich enough to afford them.
One of those parents was a truck driver who was able to cross the Iron Curtain and always smuggled something interesting back.
My best movie experiences were probably watching hard to acquire bootlegs in the pre-digital age. The barriers were just so much higher, half the excitement was just getting a crappy copy.
I had Star Wars in VHS, with the most ridiculously awful Spanish subtitles you can imagine. I wish I still had it, or had some pictures at least :_)
In my language we call it "insitné umenie" (or naive art), it usually means self-taught. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Insitne+umenie&FORM=HDR...
Some other artists in this genre: Henri Rousseau (France), Niko Pirosmani (Gruzia), Edward Hicks (USA)
More paintings by Pirsomani AKA Pirsomanashvili
https://www.wikiart.org/en/niko-pirosmani/all-works#!#filter...
Tons of life in these.
The jursssick one looks sick https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d5cc5f_1dadcd401b9e43c083...
All of the ones with Arnold are actually good.
I was just about to comment the same. The Terminator 1 poster is really good!
Yea that would be awesome framed and on my living room wall.
Umm, scroll further down until you come to "Terminator 2" :)
No comments here about the odd non-standard "say yes to say no" sliders for data collection and selling? I've only seen this a few times in privacy settings windows but enough times that I'm now wary of just assuming that gray means opt-out.
Not sure what you’re seeing, but I’ve seen that particular window several times (and no sliders). Very easy to “Disagree” or “Reject All”.
Anyway, those are usually avoided in comments unless they are particularly egregious, because as per the guidelines:
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Got it! Thanks!
The robinhood one is fantastic.
That and the Terminator 1 one[0] are genuinely great IMO.
[0] https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d5cc5f_5c451a5882264776a4...
Yeah that one hooked me as well
The Robinhood one is a direct copy of one of the original movie posters. The others are a lot more interesting, imo.
The text claims "Always at least one exploding head" and the number of exploding heads in the 20 posters shown is zero. It lists a number of "favourites from the genre" not one of which is actually shown. The text, as you might surmise from the previous two points, has the definite scent of LLMs about it.
The net effect of this is that, while I can look at the pictures and admire them (if that's the word) I have no idea whether I can trust anything in the actual text, since any given claim might just be an LLM confabulation.
(Which is too bad, since on the face of it it seems quite interesting, and probably many of the things the LLM has generated are in fact true.)
Less of this, please.
Agreed, and "definite scent" is underselling it. I didn't even attempt any deep analysis; I just skimmed a bit and found this bit and noped right out:
> The posters were typically painted on used flour sacks, sewn together and primed for colour. These weren’t just any flour sacks either — they were durable, easy to roll up, and ready for reuse.
> And the designs? Let’s just say they didn’t rely too heavily on accuracy.
LLM writing tropes that are so bad, they're good.
I thought the writing was banal but fine. The stars of the show are the images, not the text. Assuming it's largely LLM written, this seems like a good use of that technology.
The text adds some pieces of information you wouldn't get from the images alone: they were painted on flour sacks, used at mobile cinemas, now exhibited at galleries in the West, etc. And it provides citations and artists' names for those who want to learn more.
The art criticism is unsophisticated, the images don't completely match the descriptions, and some of the facts might well be hallucinated or at least taken out of context. But you got that with traditional media and human writers/editors too.
For what it's worth, I'd guess there is a real author, whose command of the English language is worse than ChatGPT, though his personality is more interesting, and who asked the LLM to rewrite his work in the right style for the website.
> For what it's worth, I'd guess there is a real author, whose command of the English language is worse than ChatGPT, and who asked the LLM to rewrite his work in the right style for the website.
Sure. But if the author doesn't notice the nonsense that the LLM is introducing, it harms as well as helping.
"Primed for colour" is a strangely uninteresting thing to be saying about the sacks. If this requires any non-trivial effort, it would make more sense to describe the process. If the author actually wanted to talk about that, chances are the LLM removed useful information.
And putting aside that "These weren’t just any flour sacks either — they were durable, easy to roll up, and ready for reuse." is three "classic LLM tropes" in a row ("not just any"; a gratuitous emdash where any dash at all only becomes necessary because of that introduction; an ascending tricolon), it's just a bizarre thing to say. First off, if the sacks were sewn together to make a larger banner, then it doesn't make sense to talk about rolling up the individual sacks. Second, the phrasing suggests something exceptional, but these are all totally ordinary and trivial properties of pretty much any sort of flour sack. Many different materials are used, but all of them would be "easy to roll up" when empty, and making them durable and reusable is just common sense in that environment. The artists were clearly just using a fairly obvious material they had at hand, so this sudden bit of marketing-speak is entirely out of place. Third, the features highlighted all have to do with the sacks, but not with either each other nor the banners. In particular, a sack being "ready for reuse" is ready for reuse as a sack, not for its material being repurposed for something completely different (we typically call that "recycling", not "reuse").
The bit about "the designs" may well even be true, but it's a complete non-sequitur here, a point that doesn't really merit deeper explanation.
The writing isn't just "banal" but nonsensical in context, veering off into free-association. There's more potentially being hallucinated here than just the "facts". Never mind the accuracy or truth of what's written; this sort of thing makes it hard to accept that the prose even reflects the author's intent.
> The text adds some pieces of information you wouldn't get from the images alone
But this is exactly where being AI-written bothers me! I don't really mind the style (the LLMs have learned to write a particular way because 1. people write that way and 2. other people like it) and I don't have the "boooo stochastic parrot plagiarism machines booooooooo" sense of disgust at AI that some people have, but I do know that when LLMs write things those things are ... not always true.
(Of course when people write things they aren't always true either, but the LLMs get things wrong more than humans do.)
Which means that when the article tells me something interesting -- flour sacks! mobile cinemas! exhibited in galleries! -- I can't trust it. And that, for me, is the main damage that outsourcing your writing to an LLM does: it destroys trust.
The worst part of this is how it has this kind of buzzfeed-like style of semi-tongue-in-cheek-but-still-politically-correct aesthetics. Is this what regression to the mean is in the future of AI writing? Are we doomed to read buzzfeed everywhere now?
And six of the seven links in the “sources” are dead. For an article published last year. I searched them in the Internet Archive and didn’t find a single match. And we’re talking CNN, BBC, The Guardian, amongst others.
This is really disappointing. Did any of these things actually exist?
> Did any of these things actually exist?
The single live link suggests that they do.
https://deadlypreygallery.com
Yeah it’s sadly obvious this is llm-generated
The art style reminds me of Joan Cornella [0] who draws comics with dark, self-deprecating humor.
[0]: https://x.com/sirjoancornella
This is intriguing! Reminds me of an old movie theatre in Taiwan that still uses hand-painted posters, until the theatre closed down earlier this year.
A BBC article on it: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181107-the-last-film-po...
Amazing images, shitty lazy meaningless AI text.
bonus: soviet star wars posters: https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/collecting/star-wars-poste...
(the bbc seem to have lost the body of their original article)
They look like perfect illustrations for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Looks like MOBA needs to add a new wing: https://museumofbadart.org
Is some ways, that poster for "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is more violent than the actual film.
A shop near me sells these and they are amazing. Lots more on the instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/losone_african_arts/
The Sister Act one is the greatest thing I've ever seen
The Kevin Costner Robin Hood one is really well done though
Ghana, not Africa.
When will Westerners stop treating Africa as a monoculture.
The article says it's from Ghana in the second sentence and other places throughout. Is that not enough?
To be fair, it would be rather odd to use Asia in the title only for the article to refer more oe less exclusively to China or Vietnam.
Good comparison, thanks, helps put it into perspective.
Either of these better titles or no?
“…from Ghana, Africa…”
“…from Africa’s Ghana…”
(China, Asia & Asia’s China don’t really fit so probably not?)
Or how about just “from Ghana”?
My guess is the editor is banking on people not knowing where Ghana is. Hence the "Africa".
The Asia comparison would work better if instead of talking about China we were talking about Laos.
Really? I don't think that's the real reason why.
Definitely not. Ghana, Africa is phrased as though Ghana were a city in the country of Africa.
True, although Asia is also nearly twice the size of Africa, which might have something to do with that.
And Africa is more than twice the size of Europe, it is fair to complain that they don’t just put Ghana in the title. It is not that the title is unacceptable but it is just wrong and weird
Africa's GDP is also 1/10th of Europe's...
And Canada's population is 1/20th that of Europe, yet we all know where that is.
No need to cherry-pick some random metric and try and justify a point that's not worth justifying.
Maybe the English-speaking world. I think most people couldn't place Canada on a map. More people than Ghana or any African country, certainly, but that's because it's more famous. GDP is more correlated to this than population or landmass.
I'm not justifying anything. I also think it's more polite to say "Ghana" rather than "Africa". I just don't agree with the arguments.
Canada is the second-largest country in the world, so if you know that it's in the north and, um, not Russia, you stand a pretty good chance at picking it out. (Doubly so if you just know it's in the Americas.)
Now, if you asked the same about Pakistan or Nigeria (#5 and #6 in terms of population, but far smaller and with far shorter sea borders), I'd bet that far fewer people would be able to pinpoint those with the same accuracy (whether in the English-speaking world or not).
> if you know that it's in the north and, um, not Russia
You still need to know that it's the second-largest country in the world though
I am fairly certain that most people in the non-English speaking world will also be able to place Canada on the map - I'd assume the French know exactly where Canada is. But I digress; it's not about placing a country on a map. It's more about we know that Canada is a separate country, and it has an identity distinct from other countries in its continent.
This goes beyond mere politeness; that you used this word is a bit suggestive. Refusing to acknowledge an identity is far more than just a lack of politeness.
Do not use the Mercator for area comparison. You are off by 15 million square kilometers.
Asia is only ~50% larger than Africa.
You only see that after the click.
I expected different posters for the same movie from different African countries.
Imagine buying a cook book of European cuisine only listing UK dishes.
I can appreciate where you're coming from in general, but this article isn't that. All Headlines suck, by their nature they have to cater to the lowest common denominator in who they assume their audience is, so we're using the headline to place an unfamiliar country in a continent that is familiar enough, at least in name.
That's not an excuse.
A sample from the website's About page:
> this site is my attempt at creating something that’s dedicated to discovering the hidden gems of the online realm (whether they be in the form of academic discourse, cutting-edge technology, cultural commentary, or artistic expression) and sharing them with care and consideration.
How is treating a country in the second largest continent in the world - which contains more than 50 countries, most of which have very distinct cultures - as representative of that continent showing care and consideration? Ghana is not an unfamiliar country, and most people, at the very least, know it's in Africa. If I confused Mexico with Canada, or Germany with Albania, I'd be treated as a dimwit, but somehow it's totally fine if I don't know the difference between Ghana and Kenya.
I agree with the parent comment; this "unfamiliar country" business needs to stop.
This is spot on. The real reasons the headline is "Africa" and not "Ghana" are:
- To sensationalize the story by positioning it as a another manifestation of a supposed "African" nature/character.
- The idea that African countries by themselves are too insignificant to seek/need to know about, but an entire continents? OK, maybe. Many people are comfortable in ignorance, real or feigned.
Putting Ghana on the title would have been just fine. I'm Ghanaian btw.
That is not an acceptable reason for clickbait.
It's not clickbait. The article provides exactly what it says.
The only debatable part is that it's not all of Africa. But otherwise it's a very accurate description of the whole article.
Clickbait is "You won't believe the art that came out of this continent!" or "Look at the wild things artists did to attract an audience!".
> So Bad, They’re Good
Are you claiming that's not clickbait?
How exactly is that clickbait? You might not like it, but that doesn't make it clickbait. That's like saying it's clickbait to say Europe in a headline instead of Austria.
If you claim to show the art of a continent but only show art from one country it’s misleading.
Like a tour guide for the US and you only list places in Texas.
A tour guide for the U.S. definitely implies that you are going to see a variety of places in the U.S. That's implied by the word "tour" which means something roughly akin to "a journey through several different places".
This is merely an example where the writer of the headline believes that the average reader may not be familiar with the country of Ghana. If the demographics include Americans, I'd have to guess they were spot on. (I'm American, I know how Americans are.)
Would it really be similarly offensive if a headline referred to something happening in "South America" when actually it happened in Guyana? Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra? None of these headlines are inaccurate. They're just not specific.
I can obviously see why this is frustrating but to me it's a complete misunderstanding to blame the person writing the headline.
> Would it really be similarly offensive if a headline referred to something happening in "South America" when actually it happened in Guyana?
Yes. It's like saying that the art and culture in Georgetown is very similar to the art and culture in Santiago. Especially when you claim to be an arts-and-culture website. Would a Texan like being stereotyped by a tourist who thinks all of America is just like New York City?
> Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra?
What many people here are trying to point out is that the chances of seeing such a line about a European country (even a relatively unknown one) is waaaay less than the chances of seeing such a line about African/South American countries.
> Yes. It's like saying that the art and culture in Georgetown is very similar to the art and culture in Santiago. Especially when you claim to be an arts-and-culture website. Would a Texan like being stereotyped by a tourist who thinks all of America is just like New York City?
That does happen, and I don't think very many people consider it grossly offensive, the vast majority of people would probably find it mildly amusing at worst. (It is not lost on me that people feel this way partly because American culture is well-known around the world, so people are less defensive of it.)
On the other hand though, I don't think that the headline being less specific means that the article is making generalizations about Africa. The article itself is pretty immediately clear on that matter.
A lot of people say America as if it was a country and not a whole continent or two.
And Canadians tend to get upset if you refer to them as an American, though technically they are.
Wait till you hear about Asian people!
Looks like the US box art for Mega Man 1.
I like this movie poster art. I think it conceptually reflects what you will see in the movie. It also looks genuine and authentic.
if they're so bad they're good ... they're actually just good. probably because they capture something increasingly rare: the human and personal touch of an artist who's not straight jacketed by "safe mode" marketing, editorial norms, analytics, blah blah blah
Yes, they're amazingly good given they didn't have copies of the original posters, Internet access to get reference images, or even VCRs at home to play the movies themselves.
The clickbait title is about "Africa" and "bad", but it's specifically about Ghana and awesome.