Deconstructing Mr. Peanut: Signs of Times Square

Posted on October 20, 2004

Story and podcast
Mr. Peanut, with top hat, tails, white gloves and monocle, is a Broadway
kind-a-guy. His salty self first appeared on the Great White Way in
1942. Peanut stage a comeback in 1999 and now occupies a huge
billboard. Probably deservedly so as he is the official snack of
NASCAR.

Endearing old Mr. P., the Fred Astaire of legumes, offers me comfort
in this place in America where new, garish symbols scream loudest.
These glaring jumbotrons, this neon nouveau may be the rule in Tokyo,
but few other places in the US would tolerate this storm of lumens and
hype. Times Square has always been itself a symbol: GIs smooching with
their lovers at the end of WWII, urban sleaze through the 70s and 80s,
and beginning in the 90s… big media belting it out like Broadway stars:
“look at me now!” Disney and its ABC, MTV, FOX, ESPN gazing with
kinescope eyes on America’s square. Little kids screaming to dad, “I
wanna be on TV…waaaah!” Reuters stringing out its news sausage ticker
along a billboard while Conde Nast editors peer down from their tower
and sniff. Even little Air America, the liberal talk show network, has
a sign: “We need to talk,” it says. Aside from Conde Nast, not a lot
of media is really located here. Like NASDAQ, which commands a corner
of Times Square but really exists only in the abstract world of hard
drives, it is all hype and mirrors: propaganda with location,
location, location. More Times Square