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Decorative Flags come in may flavors: holiday, seasonal, "everyday," and custom. "Rocky Point" was designed by flag collector Pat Avers to symbolize what she and her husband have done with their retirement home. (Courtesy Festival Flags Unlimited) |
| The ahistorical iconography of decorative flags. They have about as much in common with the heraldic tradition as lawn gnomes do with English gardens. If a man's home is his castle, why is he hanging an image of a duck with galoshes in front of it? "Because life is a festive occasion!" explains Millie Jones, the owner of Festival Flags, a store and mail order business that makes and sells the colorful, often country kitsch--inspired banners that have put thousands of home flagpoles to permanent use. Her Richmond, Virginia, shop is the acknowledged ground zero of what the Wall Street Journal has called a "craze," and Jones is its most enthusiastic representative. In addition to the aforementioned waterproofed waterfowl--an "everyday" flag in the parlance of collectors--Jones sells flags bearing images pertinent to holidays (jack-o'-lanterns, bunnies, Santas), seasons (autumn leaves, a snow-covered tree), and events. "It's a Boy!" and "It's a Girl!" are best-sellers. These flags draw on a visual vocabulary that ranges from the vaguely historic ("Fleur de Lis") to the clearly suburban ("Duffer"). And they are telegraphic to the point of confusion: their stylized brightness can work against itself, dampening whatever meaning might lie beneath a flag's nylon surface. The coloring-book outlines of the pineapple flag, a customer favorite, only approximate its heritage as an ornate symbol of hospitality, though the loopy script and idealized martini glass of "Cheers" broadcast both its intended welcome and the kind of boozy 19th-hole gathering that might occasion it. Less explicit are the everyday flags that emerge from some indistinct American mythology: The "Gentleman Rabbit," the "Big Heart w/Border," the "Cardinal in Flight." Isolated from context, these icons are concrete yet frustratingly meaningless. "Real icons allow us to project meaning onto them," says Aaron Betsky, curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "These images are more equivalent to a McDonald's arch. They deflect relationships." It was the "It's a Boy!" flag Jones sewed in 1975--announcing her son's entrance into the world--that gave birth to the fad. Though she had flown a few flags in front of her home before, those attempts at ornamentation were not very successful. "People kept asking me why I had a pillowcase hanging from my house," she laughs. With the birth-announcement flag Jones hit a nerve. She started selling the flags, and history (along with more than 10,000 flags a year) was made. The trend has been propelled by collectors like Pat Avers, a Northern California woman who owns some 50 flags. At any given time, she's displaying six of them: a "house flag" with the address on it, one over the front door depicting the house itself, one over the tennis court ("which has a tennis ball on it, even though you know that's what's there"), and three on her deck, "which change according to what's going on." What's going on, Avers explains, might be reflected in any number of ways: besides holiday and seasonal flags, she's got a Noah's ark, a glass of lemonade, a lighthouse, and many others. Her favorite, though, is the flag she designed for her husband, with a log cabin, a quail, and a deer--symbols of their rural home. The importance Avers places on this particular flag suggests how the impersonal images used in mass-produced banners can become genuinely meaningful in a custom flag. Betsky is cautiously hopeful about the pride Avers and her fellow flag-wavers feel, however opaque the flags themselves might be. "These flags are public displays in an era when our houses are more and more about hiding," he says. But, he adds, flying a flag, which "used to be a very aggressive stance," has become more about "cats and flowers." There's some loyalty left in displaying one's colors, though. As the self-described "Betsy Ross of decorative flags," Millie Jones makes sure her flags are "strictly American-made. We don't have things shipped out to China or wherever like a lot of companies do." Pat Avers, the collector, and Karen Hauber, who runs a flag shop outside Philadelphia, echo Jones's nationalistic bent; neither would buy flags made outside the U.S. Ironically, Avers doesn't fly the Stars and Stripes on the Fourth of July ("Well, not just a plain American flag"), and at Hauber's shop American flags make up a rapidly diminishing percentage of sales. Not that the impulses to display national flags and decorative flags are opposed; rather, it's almost as if patriotism has become a subset of an allegiance that begins much closer to home. Despite their clip-art shallowness, decorative flags speak to people's need not just to mark their territory, but to announce their presence. "Technology has fragmented us to the point where everyone can become their own country," Betsky notes, though one wonders what kind of loyalty a sunbathing goldfish might inspire. Compared to the panoply of pennants selling briskly at Festival Flags, the offerings at the Flag Shop in Milpitas--located in The Great Mall of the Bay Area--hang limply. Of course, collectors like Avers would have difficulty finding anything for their collections here; decorative flags (if you can call a Miller High Life flag decorative) are outnumbered by a bewildering array of national flags, from Guyana to Ukraine. The Flag Shop's offerings seem out of touch with its environs, next to a food court where hybrid snacks (Sbarro's offers a "Philly Steak Stuffed Pizza," and Subway its "Chicken Taco Sub") rob shoppers of even a gastronomical geography to call their own. In this environment, as slick and uniform as the mall's concrete floor, community identity finds little purchase, and the perky nationalism of the Flag Shop seems more anachronistic than any booted duck or appliquéd pineapple. Ana Marie Cox is an editor at Mother Jones. She has never let her freak flag fly. |
Keywords:
flags, suburbs, decorative