Hank Kalet

Think of Beyonce‘s  “Formation” video — or her performance off the song at the Super Bowl. The song by itself — as Kel & Mel Reviews pointed out — is far from the broad proclamation of black or southern black pride that the video is. Lyrically, as he points out, the song is pretty tame. But when paired with the images from New Orleans, for instance, the meaning grows deeper.

This is partly what John Berger is explaining here (from Ways of Seeing):

This competition of images, words and informational elements creates new meanings.

About 10 years ago, a British health agency issued this poster as part of a series targeting the problems with binge drinking:

I wrote about this a couple of years ago and have used this poster in some classes to discuss how words and images work together, creating new meaning and obscuring the meaning of the individual parts.

In this case, let’s break the above poster into its individual components — image and words.

What does the image show? This seems pretty obvious — it is a woman in distress, likely after a sexual assault. She is in pain, crying — and she is alone. This may be accurate — the rapist has left the scene — but it also makes her the focus of the image.

By itself, we can read the image as one designed to create empathy or even outrage at what has been done to her.

But — and here is my point — this image is not being presented by itself. It is inexorably linked to the legend imposed upon it, an legend expressed in passive voice and with the authority that the use of statistics brings.

Let’s break down the legend: “One in three reported rapes happens when the victim has been drinking.” First, as I said, it is written in the passive voice. The passive voice — which can be a useful tool in writing — removes agency. The subject — the actor or doer in the sentence — is the rapes. The action — the verb, here the unfortunate “happens” — is connected to the subject. Stripped to its core, this sentence says “rape happens,” an echo of the throw-your-hands-in-the-air expression “shit happens,” which makes it sound as though the action is something that occur as a matter of course without it being tied to a specific source.

Consider, as well, the prepositional phrase that serves as the sentence’s object “when the victim has been drinking”: Here we have agency — the victim is doing something, is taking action and, in doing so, it implies the victim has some responsibility for the action in the sentence.

Combine these written elements with the image of the distraught woman and the agency in the poster is shifted from rapist to victim. Remember, the only person present in this poster is the woman. The only action tied to a subject here is the drinking. So. while the intent of the message may have been to warn women of the dangers that are out there and to ask them to consider their vulnerabilities, it ends up placing the blame on the victim.

This conclusion, if my earlier experience with this debate is any indication, may generate significant disagreement. That is OK. I think it is important to debate what makes this poster fail or possibly what makes it effective. I also want to make clear that there is nothing wrong with warning women to be careful, to take precautions, to understand what may make them more vulnerable.

My argument here is that the creators of the poster may not have been conscious of how the elements can work together to create new meanings, and that we have to be cognizant of how this works. I also want to make clear that this failed poster offers a way for us to look at storytelling and to ask ourselves how we can bring together genres to create something greater than the individual elements might offer.

I’ll have more to say about this as I work through some of the new hybrid forms. Stay tuned.

This is a serious request, an attempt to reach beyond the partisan nature of our politics to get at the philosophical underpinnings of what conservatives believe.

If you answer, I’d ask you to remain positive: Tell me what you believe, rather than why the people you disagree with are wrong. And avoid mentioning the names of candidate or current or past elected officials.

Give me five points that sum up your beliefs — either in the comments here, on Facebook, or via Twitter. I’ll try to sum up your responses in a future post and expand the question to cover the full spectrum.

Thanks all.

John Berger, in Ways of Seeing, offers this:

He goes on to say that “the past is not for living in,” but instead a set of what I’ll call “actionable intelligence” — information meant to inform our outlooks. It is necessary, he says, that we see it clearly so that we can “situate ourselves in history.”

The problem, he says, is that “a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes.” An art criticism that erases context, that sanitizes and “explain(s) away what might otherwise be evident,” Berger says, obscures reality and invites us to mythologize. It is “mystification” — and it distorts our view of the world, leaving us vulnerable to the lies and propaganda’s  distortions.

Berger’s analysis offers a window into the 2016 election, which has been one of the more myth-based in recent memory. The use of the phrases “taking America back” and “make America great again” — by both sides (see my Progressive Populist column from a few months ago — plays on a mythical American past of equality, economic justice, and moral certitude, based on a distorted history that excludes large swathes of the American population. America’s greatness, in this narrative, is the greatness of military prowess and industrial might, a narrative tied to a very narrow window starting with World War II and ending during the 1960s, one that consigns the struggles of African Americans and other disenfranchised groups to footnote status.

The Trump phenomenon, which is the defining story of the 2016 race is based on class and race resentment, a sense that something has been taken away and given to others who are less deserving. It is a false narrative, a myth, that grants dispossessed (mostly) whites a target for their resentment. Trump’s backers are situating themselves within the myth, which distorts their vision of the past and prevents them from pointing their anger at the real culprits for their current state.

Whatever gains were made by (mostly) white, (mostly) male workers during the middle of the 20th Century were made because the labor movement had gained traction. Business — and government — seeking peace at a time of relative prosperity — agreed to a truce and let (mostly male and white) workers have a seat at the table. But this truce was built on a foundation of segregation. Roosevelt’s New Deal needed the votes of Southern Jim Crow Democrats to make it through Congress, meaning many of its provisions were designed not to apply to African Americans. Up north, as Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in his important “The Case for Reparations,” a variety of laws and business practices conspired to keep prosperity from flowing beyond white neighborhoods.

An American history that does not acknowledge these wounds is not an honest history and does not allow us to situate ourselves properly. A myopic American history, therefore, is a mystified American history that leaves those who see the past with these blinders vulnerable to snake oil salesmen like Trump.
  

Mitt Romney has entered the 2016 presidential contest. Not as a candidate — though that may have been the subtext of his aggressively anti-Trump announcement yesterday.

Romney held a press conference yesterday at which he denounced the Donald in sometimes  direct — and accurate — language. 

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press. 

This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.
Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. 

He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

NBC described the speech as a turning point, but that gives the former presidential candidate too much credit. While his speech indicates growing disenchantment among the party establishment, the rebellion remains small.

On the surface, Romney’s comments seem an antidote to the crassness of the Trump campaign. Trump is a bully, a demagogue and a con man, and it is good that someone of Romney’s stature called him out.

But as The New York Times reminds us, Romney waited to denounce Trump until “after Mr. Trump’s commanding electoral victories in seven states on Tuesday” — which have made a Trump nomination the most likely outcome this year — and “may make it (I.e., a functional challenge to Trump) futile.”

The Times also offered this reminder of Romney’s own complicity in this moment of Trump: “Mr. Romney eagerly sought and publicized his endorsement by Mr. Trump in 2012, even as Mr. Trump heckled and harassed Mr. Obama with accusations that he was not born in the United States.”

Romney’s attack was disingenuous in numerous other ways. Accusing Trump of being a con artist, Romney conveniently ignores his own chameleon-like ways as a malleable political shapeshifter who blows with the political winds. And Romney holds up Reagan as his paragon of conservatism, virtue and honor, citing a 1964 Reagan speech in which the future president called the impending election a stark choice between liberty and government control.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. 

Reagan’s “statement of principles,” however, was based on an invented dichotomy, a massive straw man that relied on a mischaracterization of Lyndon Johnson’s plans — a positing of a false choice between freedom and communism that was never in play. Reagan was, in many ways, a huckster like Trump, with a mean streak rivaling Ted Cruz. His grandfatherly image notwithstanding, he knew how to stick in the knife and turn. Reagan’s appeal was built on the fear white voters felt toward the changes in demographics and the new-found freedoms of African-Americans. He relied on coded race language designed to fan the flames if anger and to make it clear that he knew who the bad guys were. (See the language he used in his attacks on public housing and welfare, or his decision to launch his 1980 presidential bid in Philadelphia, Miss.)

The history of the modern conservative movement, more broadly, is a history of reaction to race, of the manipulation of white (and mostly Christian) fear and anger, and of selfishness dressed up in the language of property rights. There are many principled conservatives out there, to be sure, and debating their ideas about the size and roll of government is necessary. But much of the dialogue has centered on fear of the other — a fear far too many politicians are willing to stoke and exploit.

Romney was guilty of this in 2012 with his self-deportation nonsense and his argument that people only voted for Obama for the free stuff. Romney spoke in code — just as everyone on the 2016 GOP candidates (save one) has been doing. The lone exception, Trump, has shed the code and has opted for full-on demagoguery.

So, while there are policy differences among the remaining three front-runners — Trump is a protectionist on trade, for instance — the differences are actually not that big. And while Trump has been the most direct in his racism and xenophobia, all three have made suspicion of the other a central plank in their arguments.

Romney’s speech ultimately does little to address any of this and is likely to be nothing more than a footnote down the road. The reality is that Trump’s money and willingness to offer blunt attacks are welcome by the GOP establishment — but only if the Donald is acting as a surrogate, giving the party a measure of plausible deniability and distance. His campaign — and its success with a large segment of GOP voters has unmasked the modern, national Republican Party for what is — and that’s what makes him unwanted.