#morgan-animations

Dr. Langdon Alger and I analyzed this piece together as well. We were initially confused by that word to the left, resembling the English word “mine”. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be used in and English context, suggested Dr. Alger. We contacted our linguist colleague, Dr. Gulay, to get her professional opinion and got quite interesting results. 

Flour! It all makes sense. What is flour used to create? Bread. And what is bread’s metonymic partner? Circuses. Bread and circuses: together, a phrase referring to superficial means of appeasement, dating back to the times of ancient Rome (as ‘panem et circenses’). The Roman satirical poet Juvenal (the source of the phrase) expressed his contempt towards the vanity of Roman politicians as well as the human desire for things that ultimately hurt us in his Satura X. Now, why does this matter? Back in the day, Roman politicians used cheap food and entertainment (ergo the phrase ‘bread and circuses’) to keep the vote of the poorer citizens of Rome. It worked well, too well, and became the most effective way to rise to power. Now, isn’t that what Stingy wants? To rise to power? He can get that power through the use of bread and circuses, maybe. 

This symbolism is further supported by the use of shading—the location of the “mine”, the flour, is to the left, where the light is coming in, representing the side of Stingy that is visible to the people, the “illuminated act”. But the right side is slightly obscured in shadow. The shadowy side is “behind” Stingy, opposite the side he is facing. While the “light” side of Stingy contains an unsubtle “mine”, the “dark” side contains no words at all, suggesting that Stingy has an ulterior motive that is yet to be spelled out to the ‘populus’, the people.