The New $20 Bill

Well, I've been staring at the new twenty dollar bills that have been passing too quickly through my fingers these past several weeks, and I can't say I'm impressed. When they were touted in advance as our first multi-colored currency, I was really looking forward to it. After all, I've traveled all over the world and spent thousands of incredibly beautiful and richly hued pieces of paper. US currency always seemed very drab in comparison to the wonderful banknotes used elsewhere in the world (though that never prevented people all over the world from wanting to swap theirs for US greenbacks).

Imagine my disappointment when all our national graphic designers could come up with was this patchwork of sickly pastels so pale that the bills look washed out even when brand new.

But while the design of the new twenty is bankrupt when it comes to creative design, the more I look at them the more I feel they’ve been invested with all sorts of subliminal messages.

The main element of ‘color’ in the new bill seems to be the beige blob smearing across the center of the front. The first time I saw the bill, I thought it was an old bill that someone had spilled their coffee across, and I still suspect that was how the design originated in some sloppy office of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It’s also possible that the spilled coffee motif was meant to symbolize the workaholic American culture.

But it’s the placement of this color right across Andrew Jackson’s super-sized face that I find most striking. When I was a little boy, there was a crayon in my box of Crayolas that was that exact same color. Today I think it is called ‘Peach’ but back then it was called ‘Flesh’—this was the late 1950s and early 1960s, when crayon makers still considered it inappropriate for children to draw non-white people.

Maybe our currency designers just wanted to remind us that Andrew Jackson was a ‘flesh-colored’ guy. These Bush administration Republicans have a lot of nostalgia for those pre-Sixties days before consciousness was raised and culture was diversified, so it’s not surprising that they would prefer our currency to celebrate white people in power.

But while the new currency reflects the Bush administration yearning for the days when white people were unchallenged in running things, it seems to suggest a much gloomier view of the present and future. Take, for example, the color-shifting ink of the “20” in the lower right corner of the bill’s front. Depending on the way you hold it to the light, the number changes from a shining gold to dull brown and finally to black. That’s right: they’ve produced money that tarnishes before your very eyes. This is not the design of a government that feels optimistic about the direction our economy is heading.

But the weirdest visual of all is to be found on the back of the bill. The White House is surrounded by a swarm of tiny yellow $20s that make it look as if it is being besieged by bats or locusts. I know that the Bush administration has a lot of evangelical Christians among both its officials and its supporters—perhaps they are the inspiration for this apocalyptic vision. Or perhaps it is a subliminal exhortation to support the ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile program. After all, the White House appears to be shielded from the attacking legions of $20s by some sort of force-field bubble—labeled, I might add, “In God We Trust.”

Well, I’m not surprised that the Bush administration would retool even our currency to reflect its retrograde politics, fundamentalist Christian philosophy and bankrupt economic policies.