Images have power. Propaganda and marketing are based on the power of the image and the thoughts and feelings that the image conveys. A photo op pulled off well can make a politician’s career. A photo op done badly will torpedo it.
Michael Dukakis riding around in a tank destroyed his presidential run. So is the power of imagery.
When I was a teenager a street artist named Robbie Conal put up grotesque pictures around Los Angeles of Ronald Reagan and his cabinet members like James Watt and Ed Meese.
These images had power over the long term and many street posters by Conal, other artists, a left-wing media and academia all worked in aggregate to change West LA which was Reagan’s home district to the left-wing bastion of “people’s republics” communities it is today. I am not asserting that Conal alone had this affect, but in interviews from the mid-eighties, Conal clearly stated that it was his goal to change public perception and public opinion with his art.
That brings us full circle with what’s happening today. Patrick Courrielche’s pieces here on BH blew the lid off of the Obama administration’s support of NEA grants to leftist artists who would harness art, image systems and ideas into political action and power to move the President’s agenda forward. I found this support in action today at the corner of Sunset and Mandaville Canyon in Brentwood California. Yes, this is the same Brentwood made famous by an ex-NFL player and his decapitated ex-wife.
It is an image of the “Monopoly Guy” demanding health care. I have seen this poster at some other locations in West LA too and this artist, who signs his art “Alec,” if that’s his real name, has done some other pictures of “Monopoly Guy” grousing about the economy. This one is at a shopping center in Malibu.
It will be interesting to find out if Alec received NEA funding for these efforts. The first problem I see if he has gotten money from the NEA is that he is committing vandalism by posting graffiti on public property and to rub salt in the wound, doing it on the public dime. He would also be receiving taxpayer money to influence electoral issues. It may be OK to use public money to support art for the public good (I don’t think so, but some do) but the public good is art in a museum or in a public square that is commissioned and approved by the community. It should also support good, high quality art, not graffiti or cheap posters.
The most insidious thing about this graffiti vandalism is that it works. It does influence elections, public perceptions and the zeitgeist of popular culture. When a lie is repeated enough it becomes true in people’s minds. The political left understands this and utilizes these techniques. To adequately compete, those of us on the right must learn to be versed in Alinsky, Soviet propaganda and Machiavelli so we can fight for these ideas in the trenches of popular culture. It is not easy, though. When you have reason, it is hard to fight emotion because emotion lends itself so easily to image systems and simplistic ideas and phrases like “War is not the answer,” “Bush lied, people died,” and “No blood for oil,” etc.
Perhaps we on the right need to use the “Monopoly Guy” image and marry it to a phrase like “No taxation without competent representation”? You know what, I kind of like that one!
The bottom line is that image has power. We had better learn to fight this new form of political warfare with the weapons our opponents have mastered. Like gasoline, matches and empty glass bottles, the raw material for these weapons are cheap and accessible. The battlefield has changed, we must adapt or we will lose.