propaganda – Pike & Hurricane

A Stark Case of Propaganda

Merle Emrich — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 16:00:20 +0000

When we think of propaganda, we often think of posters urging the nation’s citizens to join the war efforts, or we picture it as a manipulating instrument of totalitarian regimes. But what if propaganda is James Bond’s oldest gadget? What if it is a glitch in Iron Man’s suit?

The lights flicker, then die, and the curtains open. The darkness of the screen is illuminated by the headlights of a car. The image is blurred by falling snow but slowly a dark figure emerges. He waves and the car stops. Two men get out. “Are you the guys from Washington?”, they are asked. They begin to walk away from the car, discussing a huge object that has been discovered in the ice. Once they have reached the site and cut a hole in the surface of the buried object it is ready to be explored from the inside. The blue-tinged light of torches flashes over snow and metal. Then one of the explorers’ torch light falls on something else. He kneels down, wipes away the snow and the frost. And there, under a layer of ice, wearing stars and stripes lies what – or rather who – is described by some, such as director Luc Besson, as a perfect example of modern US propaganda.

It’s A One-Way Street

But before we unleash the argument of whether the pop culture we so love is propaganda, let’s clarify what propaganda is. Usually, the term ‘propaganda’ evokes images of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime, such as the Third Reich, the USSR or North Korea, manipulating its people. Yet, this association is like a film trailer that shows you all the best scenes leaves you with a sensation of disappointment as you walk out of the cinema. It is not entirely wrong, but neither does it show the whole picture. While totalitarianism is, more often than not, accompanied by propaganda, it is by no means a necessary requirement for the use of propagandistic strategies.

Propaganda, in a nutshell, is biased or misleading, if not entirely false, information that is systematically spread to promote a political doctrine, aim or world view. Whether it comes in the form of posters, propaganda films, fake news or memes, propaganda is often aimed at leading the audience into a one-way street of information, or towards one particular opinion that is produced and reproduced again and again through creating a ‘funnel of information’.

How Bowie Brought Down the Berlin Wall

New York Times columnist David Brooks expressed his conviction that art can bring about social and political change through ‘deep spiritual and emotional understanding’, and that the world can be changed ‘by changing people’s hearts and imaginations’. And surely, anybody who ever felt inspired or moved by a novel or a film will agree that pop culture can have a mimetic effect on its audience, and that it is therefore plausible that our entertainment media can provide fertile ground for propaganda of varying subtlety. Yet, while almost everything we do is in some way political or has an effect on politics, not all of our actions are based on political intentions. It is true, there are political elements to the stories of Star Wars, Captain America and the like. But are they a form of propaganda, or is it merely entertainment that borrows from political reality? Well, we will get to that later.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate pop culture’s propagandistic merit and political impact is by pressing rewind to rewatch the Cold War. The Cold War was without doubt an ideological conflict. Due to its nature it seeped into almost every aspect of life, including books, film and music, enabling culture to be used as an ideological instrument. Sergei Eisenstein’s films burst with Communist propaganda, while Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels propagate anti-Communist ideology and the films, according to novelist and former spy John le Carré, promote Capitalist ‘consumer goods ethic’, and portray the comfort and prosperity of the West in contrast to the debt-infested Soviet Union.

During the 1950s and the 1960s the CIA sponsored artists such as Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning to showcase Capitalism’s freedom and creativity, and the BBC’s adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four was applauded by a number of MPs as a commendable effort of bringing ‘home to the British people the logical and soul-drenching consequences of the surrender of their freedom’. Meanwhile, Whitehall convinced the BBC not to broadcast The War Game, a film about the aftermath of a nuclear attack that showed scenes of British soldiers burning corpses and people clashing with the police during food riots.

Towards the end of the Cold War Western pop culture, and in particular British music had become a symbol of freedom, fun, self-expression and modernity. One event that illustrates this, is a concert that took place in West Berlin in 1987. During a three-day rock festival David Bowie played on a stage right next to the Berlin Wall. Rumor has it that some of the speakers were deliberately turned towards East Berlin. If this is true, we do not know, yet, what we do know, is that during an interview in 2003 Bowie remembered that there ‘were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. (…) And we could hear them cheering and chanting from the other side’. In the middle of the concert he addressed the people in East Berlin, saying : ‘We send our best wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall’ which was followed by ‘Heroes’, the birthplace of which was the divided Berlin. Meanwhile, many of the East Berliners had begun to chant ‘The Wall must fall!’. It was the first of many riots of a heightened level of intensity and led to more than 200 arrests.

A Marvel-ous Example of Propaganda

Let’s leave the past in the past, and resume our story. Not long ago director Luc Besson criticised the Marvel and DC franchise of being US propaganda. He depicted Captain America as a tool to show the US’s supremacy and greatness. And while Besson’s assessment was met with a thunder of criticism of Asgardian proportion, it is undeniable that the origin of Captain America resides in the propagandistic endeavour to bolster US support and morale during World War Two. And this is only the prequel to the debate if Marvel and DC are the mouthpiece of propaganda.

It is not uncommon for the Pentagon to support pro-military blockbusters. The opportunity to rent military equipment is given on the condition that the Pentagon approves of the film script, or even has influence over it. Naturally, the films receiving the Pentagon’s support portray the military in a positive light. Among these are all Iron Man films, about which Air Force captain Christian Hodge said that upon release the ‘Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars’. The Avengers, on the other hand, were considered too silly to be eligible for the privilege to rent equipment from the army, in addition to the Pentagon not approving of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Yet, both in the production but in the story of Iron Man itself we can find content that makes it difficult to dismiss offhand the claim that there is propaganda within the Marvel and DC universe. Not only do we find the creation of an enemy image – in the 1960s Vietnamese Communists, nowadays Middle Eastern terrorists but a fascinatingly consistent reversal of actions that creates a contrast between fiction and reality.

On screen we can watch Tony Stark being captured by members of an Islamist organisation who try to force him to build weapons for them. Tony Stark, however builds an armour suit that allows him to escape and return to the US where he perfects the suit and teams up with the military to beat the evil that threatens the US’s freedom and security. Yet, it was actually the US military that captured al-Qaeda and Taliban members in Afghanistan and exposed them to ‘harsh interrogation techniques’.

Iron Man. That’s kind of catchy.

While the prequel to the discussion about propaganda in the Marvel and DC franchise is still in the making, and the debate continues whether our beloved and admired superheroes are mouthpieces of propaganda or mere innocent pop culture, we cannot dismiss the linkage between pop culture and politics. No matter if pop culture borrows from political reality, acts as social and political criticism, or is (mis)used as propaganda: whether it functions as mimesis and catharsis, or purely is entertainment, we cannot refute its usefulness in passing on propagandistic doctrines, as well as in making moral claims and holding a mirror up to nature. And just as we perhaps should carefully evaluate what we call propaganda, we should approach the entertainment served to us with a sharp and critical mind.

By Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Propaganda, DocChewbacca (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

IRON MAN… or is it?, Chris Blakely (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Iron Man 2 Trailer 2 – 00242, Daniel Sempértegui (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Captain America, Sara Zizza (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

L’Odéon, Alexandre Chassignon (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Propaganda by Body Image

Yaroslav Mikhaylov — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:05:25 +0000

Political photos are usually a fairly boring subject, but modern internet trends and ubiquitous high-definition cameras have given us some very peculiar images – intentional or not – of some of today’s top political leaders. Some are caught shirtless at the back of a wedding and others are caught with their hands around a mysterious glowing orb, while another merely looks knowingly at packages of chicken. However, all of those images have one thing in common: they are designed to shape public perception of the subject. No matter how weird or peculiar, they try to make their subjects look good. Here are some successful and some unsuccessful attempts at propaganda by body image.

Politicians using images of themselves for political purposes is hardly a new phenomenon. Kings and political leaders as far back as the middle ages had portraits of themselves painted that exaggerated certain traits and concealed others in order to elicit a certain kind of feeling in their subjects. When one thinks of England’s Henry VIII, it is almost certainly Hans Holbein’s painting that comes to mind. In it, a well-dressed and muscled Henry is standing tall, a master of his domain practically daring the viewer to challenge him. The painting would make a great representation of Henry, if it wasn’t completely made up. Henry had just suffered an injury that left him physically weakened and, as a result, was losing strength and gaining weight. He had also lost control of the northern part of the country to a tax rebellion, making his defiant and in-control posture in the painting a complete farce. In short, the portrait was a brazen attempt at propaganda: “I’m still tough; let me show you!”. However, given that it is the image that we remember Henry VIII by 500 years later, one can say it was a quite successful attempt at passing a lie off as reality.

Being able to read their patrons and predict how they wanted to be portrayed was a key skill for medieval and early modern painters. Rembrandt van Rijn is considered to be one of the great Dutch masters, but even his legacy was not immune to the whims of the political leaders he was depicting. One of his most famous paintings is The Night Watch, depicting a group of Dutch upper class men engaging in their civic duty to defend the Dutch Republic. Like Holbein’s painting, it was also a lie: as the town’s mayor, Frans Banninck Cocq – the man in the center of the painting – would have almost certainly never seen actual combat. It was a success however, in no small part because it depicted the subjects exactly as they saw themselves. However, his most ambitious work was the giant 25 square meter painting of the revolt of the Batavians – the germanic people who lived in what is now The Netherlands during Roman times. The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, named after the leader of the Batavians, was met with far from the same acclaim as The Night Watch. Instead of depicting the Batavians, with whom the Dutch aristocracy identified, as civilized modern Europeans, he painted them as historically-correct rugged barbarians, led by a warlord Civilis. Instead of hanging the painting in the Amsterdam city hall, for which it was commissioned, it was returned to Rembrandt, who had to cut it down to a much smaller size before he managed to sell it for a small portion of its worth. While the two paintings were probably not intended as propaganda pieces, their different fates still show that powerful individuals are very aware of how they are depicted and strive to maintain an image that shows them in a good light.

When it comes to propaganda images, few are as bizarre and peculiar as those of North Korea’s ruling Kim family. While they do their share of autocratic speeches in front of mass rallies or military parades, it is the North Korean media’s steady flow of pictures of their leaders looking at things that stands out as the most peculiar. All of the images follow roughly the same format: Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un, surrounded by government and military officials hanging on to every word, looking at something comically mundane. From food to industrial machinery, there is practically nothing the Kims have not literally taken a look at. While it may seem like a strange form of propaganda to Western eyes, this ritual actually has great significance to the North Korean regime. One of the duties of North Korea’s leader is to observe various activities – mundane or otherwise – and suggest how they can be improved. The practice is referred to as on-the-spot guidance, and represents both the Kims’ vast knowledge and their ceaseless quest to improve North Korea. While its effect on the actual productivity of North Korea is debatable, it is nonetheless a brilliant, if perplexing, propaganda effort.

The reigning king of absurd propaganda photos is, however, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Based on the official photos released by his staff, the president of Russia is the most interesting man in the world. He has done everything in the past two decades, from horseback riding and wrestling with tigers to piloting submarines and leading a biker gang, making one wonder when the arguably most powerful man in the world has time for the actual business of governing. The idea behind those propaganda shots, however, is easy to understand: Putin is a strong and powerful man, projecting an image of a strong and powerful Russia abroad. The unspoken corollary – that he is too strong to be opposed – is likewise an effective message in a country fond of revolutions. However, as Putin has aged – he is turning 65 this year – his displays of machismo have increasingly began bordering on ridiculous. It is very difficult to imagine him outscoring Olympic hockey players, for example, without seeing the whole thing as an exaggerated photo-opp. Nonetheless, Putin continues to be very popular both in Russia and abroad, making the mighty sexagenarian act a successful propaganda coup.

Putin’s shirtless world leader’s club has recently been joined by an unexpected new arrival – Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Yet while Putin’s photos depict him engaging in exciting and extraordinary activities, Trudeau is often not even the center of attention in his photos. Many of his most popular photos are of him in the background or joining ordinary Canadians in activities such as hiking or surfing. Even when he is pictured with other celebrities or world leaders, it is their reactions – usually very positive – to Trudeau that draw the eye. It is all, of course, much more likely to be a well-organized propaganda strategy than a series of lucky coincidences, but it nonetheless tells us a lot about how Trudeau sees himself – as a youthful and captivating frontman for Canada’s inclusive, welcoming and engaged society. Considering the collective Internet excitement every time a new photo of Trudeau pops up, the unorthodox strategy seems to be working quite well.

While some of the strange PR strategies seen in this article worked out well, it is important to keep your audience in mind, which is something that the US President Donald Trump’s team clearly did not when a photo emerged of him clutching a glowing orb together with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Meant to symbolize the opening of a Middle Eastern anti-terrorism surveillance center, the image of three men holding a globe in their hands may have served as an effective message in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, neither of which can be classified as a democracy. In the US and Europe however, the image was immediately met with ridicule, comparing Trump and his fellows to comic book villains. The story of the Orb should serve as a cautionary tale that a propaganda photo that goes viral is not always bound to be successful.

Oscar Wilde said that “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” For politicians in today’s 24-hour news cycle, that adage continues to hold true. Thanks to the ubiquity of access to digital media, even in closed-off countries like North Korea, politicians have to compete with cats, ponies and Harambe the Gorilla for the public’s attention. With the internet’s natural attraction to the surreal and the peculiar, it is no surprise that some of the most well-known politicians in the world are those with weird and unusual media strategies. While shirtless Justin Trudeau is unlikely to enter the canon of world art the same way Hans Holbein’s Henry VIII did, the two are both part of the same ancient artistic tradition.

By Yaroslav Mikhaylov

Photo credit

Cover Photo: Amanda Lucidon, Official White House Photo, official government work

Image 1: Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger 1497/8, Public Domain via Google Art Project

Image 2: Rembrandt van Rijn, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Image 3: Rembrandt van Rijn, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Image 4: Korean Central News Agency via kimjongillookingatthings, official government work

Image 5: Office of the President of the Russian Federation, official government work

Image 6: GoToVan, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

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