who's left?
Jan. 4th, 2024 04:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA few years ago I got into a strange argument with Mike Glyer. Mike published a photo of four men sitting in a row (actors in character in A Clockwork Orange), and identified one of them as on the "far left."
I pointed out in comments that this was potentially ambiguous. The one sitting furthest to the left in the row was not the one whose head was furthest to the left, because the one sitting second was leaning forwards. So which are you going by, body or head?
Mike replied heatedly that there was no ambiguity, that it was obviously the head, that no sensible person would think otherwise, and that it was pedantic even to raise the question.
But I still thought there was ambiguity there. The problem has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. What I needed was a well-known and often-cited picture with the same ambiguity to it, to see how the people in it are cited. And I've found one.
This is a drawing by "Spy" (Leslie Ward) of the members of a ginger group in the 1880s UK Parliament known as the "Fourth Party". The one standing on the left is the group's leader, Lord Randolph Churchill (now best remembered as the father of Sir Winston Churchill1). Sitting relaxed on the right is John Gorst (later Sir John).
But what interests us is the two in the middle. The one leaning back with his legs thrust out and his head against the backboard is, as you'll recognize if you've seen any other renderings of him, Arthur Balfour (many years later, as Foreign Secretary, promulgator of the Balfour Declaration). And the one sitting upright with his hand on a book is Sir Henry Drummond Wolff.
So which of them is further left, Balfour or Wolff?
Some reproducers of this drawing, like the National Portrait Gallery and Winston Churchill's biography of his father, agree with Mike and give Wolff first in a left-to-right listing of the four, because his head is further to the left.
But some don't, and list Balfour first, because he's sitting to the left.
Wikipedia goes by the bodies.
So does a 1915 print (look at the caption), and the sales catalog that lists it.
Notice that these give no indication of what basis they're choosing the ordering by. The ones that go by bodies are just as certain that that's the obvious way to list them as the ones that go by heads are.
It's ambiguous, OK? It's ambiguous.
1. A fate that would have surprised him considerably: during his lifetime – he died when Winston was 20 – he never thought his son would amount to much.
I pointed out in comments that this was potentially ambiguous. The one sitting furthest to the left in the row was not the one whose head was furthest to the left, because the one sitting second was leaning forwards. So which are you going by, body or head?
Mike replied heatedly that there was no ambiguity, that it was obviously the head, that no sensible person would think otherwise, and that it was pedantic even to raise the question.
But I still thought there was ambiguity there. The problem has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. What I needed was a well-known and often-cited picture with the same ambiguity to it, to see how the people in it are cited. And I've found one.
This is a drawing by "Spy" (Leslie Ward) of the members of a ginger group in the 1880s UK Parliament known as the "Fourth Party". The one standing on the left is the group's leader, Lord Randolph Churchill (now best remembered as the father of Sir Winston Churchill1). Sitting relaxed on the right is John Gorst (later Sir John).
But what interests us is the two in the middle. The one leaning back with his legs thrust out and his head against the backboard is, as you'll recognize if you've seen any other renderings of him, Arthur Balfour (many years later, as Foreign Secretary, promulgator of the Balfour Declaration). And the one sitting upright with his hand on a book is Sir Henry Drummond Wolff.
So which of them is further left, Balfour or Wolff?
Some reproducers of this drawing, like the National Portrait Gallery and Winston Churchill's biography of his father, agree with Mike and give Wolff first in a left-to-right listing of the four, because his head is further to the left.
But some don't, and list Balfour first, because he's sitting to the left.
Wikipedia goes by the bodies.
So does a 1915 print (look at the caption), and the sales catalog that lists it.
Notice that these give no indication of what basis they're choosing the ordering by. The ones that go by bodies are just as certain that that's the obvious way to list them as the ones that go by heads are.
It's ambiguous, OK? It's ambiguous.
1. A fate that would have surprised him considerably: during his lifetime – he died when Winston was 20 – he never thought his son would amount to much.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-04 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-04 05:21 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, from the point of view of the gentlemen depicted, Gorst is on the left, and there is no ambiguity about the order in which they are sitting. They are on a bench, which is very much linear.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-05 10:11 am (UTC)And if this was real life and you asked them "Which one of you was sitting furthest to the left" then you'd get an answer from *their* left, which would be different again. And I think that if you asked me "Who is sitting furthest to the left" then I might well answer that way by default!
So, absolutely ambiguous, in multiple ways.