Interview on “May the Odds be Ever in your Favor” painting

So why did you choose the Hunger Games as a theme?

Well, I saw the movie and loved it.  It has such a beautiful brutality of reality and surreal future imbedded together.  The symbology in the film is extremely well done.  You have outstanding costumes showing immense gaudy wealth contrasted by poverty.


Why did you choose this scene in the film?

Up to this point as a viewer to the movie, you think this movie is only about the dreary poverty of the future.  Once Effie enters the stage, you are literally shell-shocked by the utter extravagance of the Capital vs. the Districts.  At this moment, you see how cruel the Capital is.  Additionally, the microphone from the thirties and the construct of society is similar to a real autocracy. hungergames

How important is the 3-finger salute to the film?

Well, the whole true reality is spoken by a simple gesture that the Capital cannot hide or manipulate.  This simple hand gesture becomes the symbol of the growing rebellion in the Districts as people realize they can be more than slaves.  They can choose to rebel despite over-whelming odds.  In the future as the symbology of the film wears out, there is a possibility this will be falsely mentioned as Nazi salute, but it is what it is.

Is this why you choose the title “May the Odds be Ever in your Favor”?

Yes, the title was hard to pick.  I thought of picking “give me liberty or give me death”, but I thought that was a bit obvious.  I like the idea of the mix of fiction and today’s symbols.



So what are the symbols in the background?

I have many of the slogans of the Obama administration as the film came out during that time and there was a lot of thick campaigning bordering on propaganda.  I have MLK included as there were many references as well as logos of crushed railroads and failed green energy companies that Obama favored in his rule, Fiskar for example.  I also had symbols of global corporate rule such as Coca-cola, which is also a reference back to another painting of mine. Coke. It’s the Real Thing.

The theme and labelling of Obama as a socialist and big government plays right into the same theme of the Hunger Games in that an obnoxious all-knowing government assumes it knows best how to allocate resources, save companies, how its citizens spend money, increasing taxes and regulate guns.  Other plays on the propaganda are from Shephard Fairey and derivatives of the message of Hope. ObeyGiant



Why have an Osama bin Laden poster in the background?

Well, OBL was killed on Obama’s watch, so I have to credit that as well play on the meaning of that kill in the “War on Terror”.  I think that now that the foreign enemy has been beat abroad there is a danger of moving that war to US itself.  You see the beefing up of local police that now they have full machine guns to patrol its citizenry as just seen at Boston.  Other symbols include references to the Black Panthers, who were hunted down by the US government in the 1960s as a terrorist group as well. Of course, there is the Bill Ayers connection to Obama in his political youth as well. Ayers was part of another terrorist group the Weather Underground.

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