Iconoclasm: Clinton attack ad darkens Obama's image

DailyKOS published an article that's getting a little play today, alleging that the Clinton campaign published an attack ad that intentionally colorized Obama's skin to darker, reminiscent of TIME colorizing OJ back in the day.

Here's dailyKOS's image from the debate video on the left, and the ad video on the right.

So, I played with desaturation, which is what the Clinton campaign said that they used to alter the image -- just a standard video effect, they said.  Below is my image, trying to match the left and right sides.  It very neatly came to -33% lightness, -33% saturation.  Those controls are on the same filter control panel, but it sounds *so* much better to say "We just used saturation/desaturation" than "We took his face down 33% for saturation/lightness."

But here's the kicker -- look at the shirt on the left, and the shirt on the right.  Notice how dingy the white shirt gets with the saturation/lightness lowered?  This means to get the effect above, they had to *mask* either Obama's face or the shirt, frame by frame, to get the shirt to look right and the face to look dark.

To make this more clear -- each frame, because Obama was very animated and moving about in the frame, his shirt and tie would have had to be demarcated separately from the rest of the image, so that they would not get darkened and dimmed in color.

This is not a casual process, regardless of how the Clinton media folks may spin it.

So the question is, what is, or should be, the sensitivity of an ad agency, or a campaign, when it comes to skin tone?  Should this be treated as trivial, or should we consider that there might be an agenda behind taking Obama's skin tone down "-33%" dark?  Does this serve to make him seem, as some bloggers baldly assert "more menacing?"   And to whom?

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Shava Nerad, News and Opinion Correspondent:

Shava's column, Iconoclasm, published irregularly and frequently to Gather Essentials: News, is an examination of the provocative ideas emerging in media and world culture behind the news.  Her Iconoclasm columns are now listed as a mainstream news source in Google News.

Shava Nerad has been working on the Internet for over twenty-five years, at the boundaries of Internet and social issues. She is CEO of Indigenis, a consulting group working at the intersection of virtual worlds, social networking, and gaming communities, and recently left her position as development director of The Tor Project to work on a book tentatively titled Rules of Engagement -- healthy risk taking as a path to improving life, work, and society.

She lives in Somerville, MA with her teenage son, her fiance (a professional magician and fundraising coach), and a corgi/dachshund mutt named George.  Her wedding in Second Life was recently featured in Business Week, and even she finds this surreal.

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