CREATIVITY ON BUMPER STICKER

BY: Fransiskus Borgias M. (EFBE@fransisbm)

Bumper sticker is a sticker you stuck on your car or even motorcar. In terms of contents there are a lot of stickers. We can even make a certain category of those stickers based on the contents of those stickers.

There are joking-stickers: for example, “Don’t follow me, I am lost too.”

There are also stickers that show up your social-strata or social background: for example, “We are the big family of Green Berets.” Or another example: “We are the big family of army force.”

There are also religious-stickers: for example: “Islam is my way of Life.” Or “Islam saves you.” And there are also Christian stickers: “Jesus inside” (to imitate the Intel Inside’s style). Or, “Listen, Jesus is calling.”

There are also economic-stickers, which try to show up your economic status, or even explicitly to show up your wealth or precious properties. For example: “My other car is Volvo or Jaguar.” Or just say, “I have still three cars in my garage.” Whether is it true or not, we cannot cross-checked it at all. But that is not the case of this report.

And further there are also stickers that try to give the reader a certain advices or warning. For example: “Do not kiss my ass (meaning, Do not strike my car from behind). It is a warning, but also a joke because he personified the rear area of his car with his own ass or bottom.

There are also ecological stickers: Stop global warming. Or Try to live a life of triple R: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

There are still a lot of categories of stickers with thousands of messages.

But recently I saw a certain degrees of creativity as well. I call it the creativity of dropping the letters from a previously available propaganda or advertisement.

For example: There is a certain social-body in Jakarta to promote and endorse young people (especially) not to take drugs in their life.

Their sticker usually says: Say No to drugs. Or Avoid drugs or you will die. They also usually try to endorse the reader to search in the internet more information on their activity. They said, if you want to know much more information on us and our movement, and our services, please kindly visit us on www.kapanlagi.com.

It is this phrase that I want to comment on. I saw at least two kinds of plesetan based on this phrase. Firstly, they drop letter C of Com, so that we read instead, kapanlagi om? It is a multi-interpretable phrase of course. Secondly, they drop letter K, and leter N of Kapan, and so that we read instead, apa lagi om? It is also multi interpretable phrase.

I can only say for the moment, what creativity! It is creativity, displayed on our public space, which do not a space of neutrality anymore. It is already full of messages. Hopefully those messages should be influenced by the message of for the benefit of human being in general.

Bandung, 12 January, 2009

Computerized and rewritten (also edited) on 12 January 2009.