a graphic design tragedy

Prompt: select a material object and do an assessment of it’s cultural significance.

I was interested in selecting an object that is both ubiquitous and mundane. An object intrenched enough that it was capable of being read in various ways. I select a brown paper bag.

Firstly, the denotative function of a brown bag is that  it holds things. Originally for groceries, then adopted to other sizes for other uses, but still a vessel to transport other objects is its basic function.

What connotative description and implied meanings does a paper bag have? From a personal perspective alone, brown paper bags have multiple connotative functions. The first is the same as the denotative, I think of it as a vessel to carry things, like my lunch. I have memories of my mother using it to hyper ventilate into when she had a migraine. A third connotation is puppets, through out my childhood paper bags were as the foundation for myriad puppet projects. Yet another function is drawing/art classes, we always at some point drew a paper bag, because of crinkles and wrinkles and endless shadows. So within my personal experience I have three connotations that are unrelated to its original function.

Are there social practices that establish meaning?

The bag was used as a tool for racism or more specifically colorism.  The brown paper bag was used as a test of sorts in the early to middle part of the 20th century. It determined if a Black person was sufficiently white enough to participate in a given activity, usual a social function of some sort. If any individual was darker than the back they were turned away,

The brown paper bag more recently has become to mean green or environmentally friendly in contrast to plastic bags. Paper is seen as renewable and recyclable compared to the apparent permanence of plastic. The advent of the reusable bag movement makes the choice moot and renders both wasteful. It is interesting that the disposable paper bag got its genesis replacing reusable vessels.

There are other connotations I would like to touch on.

The idea of the bag as a symbol of anonymity. Wearing a bag on your head means you don’t want to be know but in a very public way. It is often used as a kind of protest. The paper bag as a marker of alcoholism. Drinking liquor from a brown paper bag on the street is a practice to avoid open container laws.

For each more light hearted connotation there seems to be another more serious or even disturbing one. The final two I’ve considered are on the lighter side. The colloquialism of he or she not being able to act/fight/find their way out of a paper bag and finally the flaming poop paper bag on the porch prank.

There is a multitude of meaning that I might like to explore through the lens of another project if possible.