Hi folks. I’ve been invited to join the other posters here, and I’ll put up things which occur to me from time to time. To start the ball rolling, here’s an image I think has some pretty interesting meanings:
(Image sourced from here.)
Discuss.
L
Kiwipolitico
Someone tell me what the hell is in the picture, and then maybe I will! Are those boats?
StephenR: Yes. And oil rigs, as I make it out.
L
Should’ve said it’ll certainly be interesting to see what else you can come up with on analysing propaganda. Sounds like a pretty unique sort of niche in the blogosphere.
At the risk of seeming even more unhinged that I usually do:
I get a picture of a pacman scooting across the screen munching his way through the detritus of human consumption. It evokes a rather sad picture of how we treat our planet, actually.
BTW, good luck to you Lew.
I’m struggling with the construction of “propaganda”. What makes this propaganda as opposed to an individual’s artistic expression?
BLiP,
It’s meant as a bit of fun and a lateral-thinking experiment – like a sort of Rorschach. But you’ve entered into the spirit of it.
Anita,
A very (very) loose interpretation of propaganda, viz, something which has complex encoded political-symbolic messages.
What stood out to me was that it is:
* a moon shaped like an Islamic crescent
* eating oil rigs and (war?)ships
* on a red sky
* with a curvy “Eastern” sort of font
Sure, it might not intentionally be a propaganda image – I know nothing about its origin, and it’s part of a pac-man meme tradition – but it nevertheless has some meaning, if you care to look for it.
L
Very good to see you blogging for Kiwipolitico. In fact since kiwipolitico was started its quickly become my second most read leftish (though you’re moderate) blog.
Sure is.
randian
“A spectre is haunting the western economies — the spectre of communism.”
Jihadi
“IZ N UR oilfields killn all UR doodz”
Neo-
conservativeJacobite“IZ N UR gulf eatn all UR birth ritz”
Neo-marxist anti-globalist
The structure of late capitalism is built on the contradiction that in order to maintain the consumption on which the economy depends, the state must maintain an imperialistic control over the natural resources of the developing world. An enterprise that it both cannot afford to undertake, and cannot afford to forego. Capitalism sacrifices it’s future to the war god Mars, here shown in his pacman aspect, essentially eating itself.
deep green
Gaia Rampant on a field of red.
GC: And sensible. Don’t forget sensible :)
L
Lew – Congratulations on making the cut. I do enjoy discussing things with you.
The pac man also crosses over with mantras so you have a nice cross of modernity and antiquity
PB:
But it’s eating from right to left!
L
This has been nagging at that back of my mind, so I’m going to try to write a coherent response…
How can we articulate the difference between consciously constructed propaganda, and the expression of an individual who has eaten a diet of propaganda?
This may be designed as propaganda, or it may be a conscious artistic response to propaganda, or it might be an artistic expression by someone whose world view has been framed by the propaganda of others.
As for my immediate responses when I originally saw the post
1) All the permanent elements are natural, all the impermanent ones human created.
2) Each human created element reduces the beauty of the scene.
3) Will the oil rigs be able to be stripped away from the landscape in the same way the photoshop (?) layer can be stripped off the image? (Which made me wonder about the phrase “burned in” given the colours)
4) Right-to-left directionality in art is awkward to me (and to most people in our culture). As the photo could have been flipped the artist either didn’t see the awkwardness (although they used a phrase which is specific to English-speaking cultures) or the awkwardness is intentional
Anita,
At the risk of channeling Barthes, does it matter? Doesn’t this sort of ideological semiotic Rorschach reveal more about us than about the author?
L
Lew,
Yes and no :)
If we’re only thinking about the response in the viewer than it probably doesn’t matter. But if we’re thinking about the intentionality of the piece then it does matter.
More broadly though, it does raise how an idea makes it from the subject of one group’s consciously constructed propaganda to inclusion in others’ work to ubiquity.
Anita,
Indeed!
Well, in this case intentionality is unknowable, and I’d argue that speculating about it would be a source of entropy in a conversation, and therefore best ignored, as Barthes would want. I don’t think that’s universally the case, though – where the author is known it’s certainly useful to consider their perspective as part of the text.
L