ambiguity about their meaning
Over on plasticbag.org, Englishman Tom Coates critiques the design of American state flags. As a non-designer, I probably value different things in flag design. I’ve always thought the Arizona flag was quite striking, perhaps the best flag in our great nation, but Coates says, “I’m sort of puzzled by it - it’s kind of weirdly evocative, but there’s something very wrong about that star in the middle,” adding that it’s “muddy and confusing.” I have a vivid memory of when I was nine or ten when I was finishing a road race, when my mother pointed to another woman’s running shorts and remarked on the design. “It’s the Arizona flag,” I explained. I thought it was a cool design, but my appreciation may have been bound up in a bit of pubescent scopophilia.
I’d wished Oklahoma had a flag suited to a running short design, but unlike other southwestern states like New Mexico and Texas, Oklahoma’s flag is a bit to complex to make sense on someone’s behind. I also wish Coates had shared some comments on Oklahoma’s flag, which has a few too many ideas for its own good.
Working from long-forgotten Oklahoma history lessons, I’ll point out that the center shield represents a buffalo-skin shield, the branches represent peace (presumably the peace that came from Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, which forceably relocated southeastern nations into the wasteland of Oklahoma) and a traditional peace pipe. It’s a little complex for me, and a little too complex for schoolchildren trying to replicate it art class. On the other hand, the original state flag has a nice economy of iconography.
Now that’s a flag that would look good on running shorts. A while back, I looked around for a T-shirt that had the original flag design, since I like the spare design and it’s political message. The founders of the state intentionally used a red field to express their socialist ideals and the “46″ indicates that Oklahoma was the forty-sixth state to join the union. I found one outfit offering a red flag t-shirt, but the back of the shirt reads “Okies don’t quit.” Not only do I find “okie” an offensive slur, but I certainly don’t want to wear something that says “okie” in Austin. Maybe some day they’ll come out with a more subtle shirt for leftist Oklahomans.
Coates makes some more interesting observations about American state flags, and you should read the article. A reader may interested to know that Coates has deemed Colorado’s flag the worst of the bunch, saying:
There’s also an alarming lack of meaning to the thing. The blue apparently represents ’sky’; the white, ’snowcapped mountains’; the red, ‘earth’ and the yellow represents the sun. If it wasn’t for the ‘C’, therefore, this flag could cheerfully be used to represent pretty much any country in the entire world. In fact, to me it looks more like a bad corporate logo - perhaps for Carolco or something - than a State flag. Bad form, Colorado. Very disappointing
I’ve long thought there was something a little off about the Colorado flag, but I don’t think I would be as harsh as Coates. I’d give Coloradans credit for trying something a little more different than plopping the state seal on a flag or trying to integrate another flag into the flag like Mississippi or Hawaii. And, besides, it would work on a pair of running shorts.
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