Be careful what you wish for. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was an earnest neophyte feminist at Vassar, earnestly debating the meanings of feminism, sexism, and choice, I used to wish, earnestly, that we would have a political campaign that actually discussed these issues. And this year I finally got one. Sort of. Only the disingenuousness of the conversation we’re actually having is something that I, in my actual ingenuousness then, could never have envisioned. But democracy being what it is, and Republicans being what they are, it’s turned into something very twisted, indeed.
Who knew that French theory-hating Republicans would be such adept poststructuralists? Floating signifiers are everywhere.
by Sarah Churchwell.
I stumbled upon this terrific article by Sarah Churchwell while perusing MyDD, one of the largest progressive Democratic activist blogs on the internets. It’s also “cross-posted” over at the orange giant, Daily Kos.
I was pleasantly surprised when reading her name attached to this cross-posted blog post. Sarah Churchwell is one of our neighbors from the University of East Anglia’s School for American Studies. Her fascinating book, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, was an early inspiration for my research on popular media constructions of Al Gore.
From reading the comments, Sarah is a “newbie” in the blogosphere. But this article has gone “viral” and has potentially been read by several hundred thousand readers already. Not bad for what appears to be her first blog post? Go read the rest of the article (the original post) at the Motley Moose where she’s active in the comment thread.
Newsweek has an interview with the creators of this hilarious parody worth checking out. I’ve seen this three times now and it keeps on laughing. In order for satire to work as satire, it must address the absurdities of what is being satirized. In the New Yorker cover, which the editors claim was meant to satirize right-wing media and pundits, there is no point of reference that suggests as much. Notice here what’s in Clinton’s “box of tricks.” Brilliant. The portrayal of McCain’s overt militarism is really funny, as it’s also not far from the truth. And Obama singing about change while jumping rainbows on a unicorn? Priceless.
This morning I read a fantastic article, Update: Michelle Obama as Racial Rorschach Test over at Open Left. About a month or so ago Open Left, a fairly influential progressive community blog, began a “guest blogger” program. Stemming from the overt sexist and misogynistic portrayals of Hillary Clinton during the primary, the mostly White, male, writers at Open Left made a decision to reach out to the broader progressive blogosphere, initially feminist bloggers. You can find the terrific guest blog series here.
In a Cold War context, “jazz was a natural” in the arsenal of cultural diplomacy. So concludes Fred Kaplan a piece in the New York Times on the Jazz Ambassadors Program of the mid 50s. Possibly because jazz during the years when the program was launched, was not only a purely homegrown art form, but also a regular mass culture export.
So, it is interesting that when Kaplan asks what would be today’s “secret sonic weapon” the answer seems to still be jazz.
Present day’s version of the Jazz Ambassadors Program is called Rhythm Road and although it does offer what is referred to as “urban” music (not sure whether this is supposed to be an inclusive term, or just a euphemism), the main focus of the program is still jazz. It is however not with the stars of yesterday or even today, the groups are all fairly unknown. Not that this would make much difference in terms of impact, as the great names of jazz today hardly receives the world press attention of big rock, pop or even “urban” names.
Recently we at The Atlantic Community have been honored by a bit of attention from the excellent photo journalism and public culture blog No Caption Needed. NCN is run by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites who authored one of the only sustained books charting the emergent field of cultural iconology, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture and Liberal Democracy. Hariman is a professor in the Dept. of Communication Studies at Northwestern U.; Lucaites is a professor of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana U. Together they have created an indispensable volume for anyone interested in the functions and construction of iconic images in the public sphere. Here is a reproduction of the table of contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
2 PUBLIC CULTURE, ICONS, AND ICONOCLASTS
3 THE BORDERS OF THE GENRE Migrant Mother and the Times Square Kiss
4 PERFORMING CIVIC IDENTITY Flag Raisings at Iwo Jima and Ground Zero
5 DISSENT AND EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT Kent State
6 TRAUMA AND PUBLIC MEMORY Accidental Napalm
7 LIBERAL REPRESENTATION AND GLOBAL ORDER Tiananmen Square
8 RITUALIZING MODERNITY’S GAMBLE The Hindenburg and Challenger Explosions
9 CONCLUSION Visual Democracy
The blog version of NCN constantly challenges us with new images from a wide range of fields (political culture, for instance the uses and abuses of the US flag; pop culture; sports; cultural geography etc.) The two authors post regularly Monday to Thursday most weeks, and on many weekends the put other, often humorous stuff up, such as their on-going collection of ’sight gags’.
I guess The Atlantic Community is stepping into similar territory with our many recent posts on political iconography in connection with the Presidential election campaign, and also with our research into the function of historically specific icons, such as my work on icons of transgression. Indeed, we are happy to link to NCN in our blog roll, and honored that they have included us in theirs.
I looked at some of the images from this montage in this post here if you’re interested. One of the things that seems pretty apparent across the US political landscape, is that Democrats are actively reclaiming historical and cultural narratives and effectively appropriating them into their political campaigns.
Today is Memorial Day in the US. Doubtful there was any “coverage” by our local media here. But given the recent importance we’ve been placing on visual analysis, iconic studies, and semiotics I thought this image, featured today on the mainpage of John McCain’s campaign website, might be interesting to toss around.
I’ve recently been re-reading Robert Hariman’s and John Louis Lucaites’ exceptional book, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture and Liberal Democracy.
Hariman and Lucaites argue that the flag raising image creates three simultaneous civic narratives based on three deeply embedded ideological traditions within America’s political and cultural history. I’m pulling this from memory so please correct me if I don’t get it exactly right.
1. civic republicanism
2. egalitarianism
3. nationalism
From the photo above, its obvious that the man holding the flag is none other than John McCain. Given that John McCain’s campaign has embraced militaristic and nationalistic themes for his campaign an image like this is not unique for McCain on its first read.
However, I couldn’t help seeing this image in relation to the iconic Iwo Jima photo. There’s McCain, standing atop a barren hilltop amongst an eerily similar barren landscape like that depicted in the Iwo Jima.
What do you think? Is McCain relying on the cultural memory of the Iwo Jima image here?
If so, does the image meet any of the three qualities listed above? For Hariman and Lucaites the Iwo Jima worked and continues to work because it simultaneously embodies all three of those traits which can be read by different and competing identities within the body politic. For me, any expression of egalitarianism or popular liberal democracy is removed from the context in the McCain photo. Its even difficult to read a civic republican virtue into the visual narrative. I’m left with a libertarian ultra-individualistic patriotism as the sole narrative. Perhaps the creators thought a lone McCain would strengthen the “maverick” meme. I don’t know, I think this image fails terribly in comparison to the original, if that is what it was based upon.
A few months ago I posted an article, Postmodern Presidential Branding, which highlighted Obama’s “O” logo in particular, as a example of open ended visual narrative, easily recreated and reproduced. Here’s exhibit 3,569. I was never a Dead Head (though I dated one) but I’ve been a Grateful Dead fan for as long as I’ve been choosing what I listen to. The Dead Head community has always actively recreated and reproduced the Grateful Dead image which makes this image all the more interesting as it merges two open-ended narrative icons. The employment of Obama’s campaign slogan,”fired up and ready to go” was also not lost on this gentle commentator. This flew under my radar at the time but here are some photos of the band from the “Dead Heads for Obama” GOTV event.
Here’s Bob Weir endorsing Obama which links to both Mickey Hart’s and Phil Lesh’s endorsement. Why didn’t this get as much press coverage as John Edwards’ recent endorsement? Anyhow, there’s also video from the concert which you can scroll through but I thought the quality was so poor I’ve posted the song bellow instead.
In my little neck of the woods here in Denmark, after three glorious weeks of sunshine we received a little box of rain this morning. Dead Heads were doing “viral marketing” long before Time Magazine named “YOU”, person of the year, but this “user generated” video is pretty sweet. Happy Monday.
After last week’s ABC Democratic primary debate, the Bag posted a great series of TV frames as a visual recap to the debate. In my earlier post I wrote;
This is by far the most succinct summary of last night’s debacle of a debate TV show hosted produced by ABC News Disney Entertainment. This captures the essence of what is, “the postmodern condition” of US politics.
I selected this image as the most telling frame of the set.
Tuesday was Earth Day btw, but most wouldn’t have known if not for Google’s always clever way of “holiday theming” their logo. Al Gore has recently launched a $300 Continue Reading »
America Adrift, formerly The Atlantic Community, is a collaborative weblog and community for research, analysis and commentary on American society and culture. Read More
After last week’s ABC Democratic primary debate, the Bag posted a great series of TV frames as a visual recap to the debate. In my earlier post I wrote;
