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Article Excerpt
Introduction
U.S. popular culture zoomed in on crisis and fears of the apocalypse following the September 11 attacks and increasing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. This interest emits a mirage of newness and singularity. A variety of responses arose, ranging from criticisms of present wars in Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore, 2004) to books that link these tensions to biblical prophecies of the Apocalypse, such as the Left Behind series, which also support war and violent solutions to the world's problems. Both strains of response to crisis can be analyzed not only in light of unfolding geopolitical tensions, but also in terms of historical popular culture responses to extreme political crises such as Fascism as well as a longstanding preoccupation on prophecies of the apocalypse. Many of these political images exist in close proximity to each other, with similar imagery, which raises questions concerning what type of constituent finds them appealing and what this means for politics. The artistic, literary, cinematic, and even spiritual means that popular culture addresses these issues with raises questions concerning whether society and policy makers still regularly turn toward traditional, detached scientific logic when discussing politics. This article questions how political imagery has responded to and taken part in this implosion in rational debate and what it may mean for modern policy's debate over war.
The media image is the number one asset for a political career (Street, 2001). While this is so, the policy dialogue has left room for analyses of less recognized forms of culture that if researched could illustrate how politics works across borders, especially with war (Singh, 2007), which is a main focus of this essay. On the governmental level, arts policy serves a planning function within the United States, such as rejuvenating U.S. neighborhoods, as well as a controlling function, with conservative constituencies calling for censorship of art that is considered immoral (Strom & Cook, 2004). While declines in spending on the National Endowment for the Arts arose from public attitudes concerning budgets, rather than far-right success (Lewis, 2006), deregulation policies strongly influence the entrepreneurial shift in "new media" arts in the United States (Christopherson, 2004), which signals a shift away from political or expressive artistic creation. The personnel involved in the culture industry are often pressured via politics and media to compromise political content. One example is the U.S. Congress's censorship of The Smithsonian's 1996 exhibits on the bombing of Hiroshima (Hubbard & Hasian, 1998; Wittner, 2005) and, by proximity, prevention of the likelihood of critical content in exhibits on the 9/11 attacks (Fried, 2006). A contemporaneous example is the U.S. government's framing of official photographic visions of 9/11 as apolitical art for international exhibits (Kennedy, 2003), signaling a political process, merging art and policy to control collective memory. With the artistic process becoming more entrepreneurial and leaning toward propaganda, this essay focuses on popular culture that is not Officially part of or sanctioned by governments yet is relevant to major policy debates. The previously mentioned debate within policy literature suggests that for art to be politically effective it needs to take some steps toward framing (for framing see Keck, 1995) its messages in politically potent ways, because room for dialogue in U.S. society appears to be limited, although to do so without undermining the original intentions remains a difficult process.
Surrealist thought helps understand contemporary politics of war and responses to terrorism but needs to be reformulated because its imagery can also be used for less positive purposes. Because surrealism is a widely used term, shows how similar imagery can be used by politically different groups, and is illustrative of the process of artistic activity becoming politics, it is a useful approach for this essay and for understanding arts policy. Following the end of World War II, surrealism was appropriated by mass culture for entrepreneurial uses (Baudrillard, 1981). A search on Google.com News for the term "surreal," omitting "art," "poetry," and "film," indicated 3,155 estimated uses describing recent (2) events ranging from disasters to soccer games that are frightening, that seem unreal, and that are subsequently difficult to explain with conventional logic. Initially, intellectuals such as Benjamin and Bataille considered how to keep surrealism's energies from being usurped by right-wing governments (Habermas, 1984, pp. 87-88). Accordingly, in relation to more progressive uses, surrealism can be reformulated, minus some of its dreamlike imagery, to become an engaging sight for political action among the middle class and marginalized people (Benjamin, 1927), which transforms artistic activity to political activity (Weigel, 1996). (3) Despite different intentions and viewpoints, the fantastic imagery of Christian apocalyptic fiction is not so far removed from surrealist imagery in its depiction of dreamlike imagery, disruptions of reality, as well as its ridicule of the values of society and political institutions. In light of these differences and similarities, one of the questions this essay asks is if the imagery in support of war is more appropriately understood using 1920s German Romanticism as a metaphor.
A less dreamlike surrealist program related to Fahrenheit 9/11 is the starting point for considering imagery of antiwar movements and prowar sentiment. Antiwar imagery is not a unified, consistent artistic style. These images range from the humorous Warner Brothers style cartoon "chickenhawk" on the Veterans Against the Iraq War Web page to the 1930s anti-Fascist style montage in the SOA Watch's (4) "Nunca Mils," a poster of people with giant scissors cutting the tentacles of a skull-headed octopus that is strangling South America. Accordingly, this essay focuses on Fahrenheit 9/11 not because the entire antiwar movement agrees with Michael Moore, but because the movie is familiar to many people in the United States and in other parts of the world. Fahrenheit 9/11's opening saw a "record of $40.5 million in ticket sales" (Halter, 2004). Similarly, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkin's dispensationalist Left Behind series are analyzed in light of their worldwide sales; as of 2004, 60,000,000 copies (Brown, 2004). While LaHaye and Jenkins promote a version of dispensationalist, apocalyptic Christianity that incorporates right-wing politics, their novels were analyzed with the consideration that they are not representative of all of Evangelical Christianity.
To analyze surrealism, as well as Fahrenheit 911 and the Left Behind series, four questions are asked: (1) What is the value that these movements place on their imagery? (2) How much is this value subject to change? (3) How are the images framed to suit a particular agendum? (4) How does the imagery achieve these goals? The answers to these questions support the following assertions: both the examples of antiwar imagery analyzed and the examples of images that support war display a variety of similarities in how both movements try to persuade the U.S. public; however, the imagery of modern antiwar movements are closer to a reformulated surrealism and are more capable of effectively portraying marginalized people, whereas the images in support of war represents a repackaging of discarded far-right ideas to push the U.S. public toward war. For a previous generation, art was effectively used to lead Western society toward an enjoyment of war, through the resurrection of "aura" in the form of pseudotraditional art and popular culture (Benjamin, 1934). This essay, as a subtheme, considered the extent that this assumption applies to present day prowar popular culture.
Examples of Antiwar Images
While Moore is not a member of any modern surrealist groups, and may or may not intentionally use surrealist techniques, there are many images in Fahrenheit 9/11 that warrant a comparison. Surrealism uses imagery related to dreams and questioning of reality. Surrealism has its roots in a variety of authors and artists who did not use purely surrealist imagery (Breton, 1933; Henning, 1979). This flexibility warrants a comparison of nonsurrealist antiwar films with surrealist imagery.
The first question concerning surrealist imagery is what sort of value does surrealism place on its imagery? At the outset of surrealism, the type of imagery was incredibly important. Breton advocates art and literature in the process of actively engaging in Left politics in the 1930s rather than a simplified "proletariat" literature (Breton, 1933). The fact that standard surrealist imagery persists amid immense criticism of surrealism and ultimate rejection from the French Communist Party, with which the surrealists wished to align themselves with (Clark, 1997), suggests a serious value placed upon surrealist imagery. This essay also asks how much the value surrealism places on imagery is subject to change. Surrealist imagery stayed largely centered on dream imagery for three decades; therefore, the dream imagery of early surrealism is not subject to change, although there is some flexibility in how this imagery may be achieved.
How are the images framed to suit a particular agendum? Early surrealists are distinguished by imagery centered upon dismantling religion, family, and nationalism: surrealism eschewed any willingness to die for one's country (Pierre, 1999). Breton (1934), the leader of the surrealist movement, clarifies that surrealism rose and persisted as a mode of "war defeatism," which is inherently anti-Fascist. Thus, following Breton's words, the imagery in the 1930s is framed to fit...
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