CDA: Graham & Luke (reading for Novemeber)

[Linnea Micciulla]

Hi everyone,

Noriko, thanks for your comments - sorry to take so long to respond!

As I write this, I have the television on in the background, and I can
hear GWB saying, "The enemy has made it clear that Iraq..." plays a
crucial part in their war against humanity... (second part paraphrased,
as I am a slow typist). It is amazing how ubiquitous this message is,
with all of its ambiguity - anonymous enemies and abstract goals, which,
it seems to me, were clearly made up by some speech writer belonging to
the "comitatus" that Graham and Luke talk about. Does Mr. Bush really
expect his listeners to believe that some entity out there has declared
a "war against humanity"? What would be the point of that - it certainly
wouldn't be a very good recruiting slogan. Is it a lie, then? But if so,
who did he slander?? The definite article (the) in "The enemy" makes it
sound like either 1) there is only one enemy (who is it? why doesn't
Bush provide a name?) or 2) it is some sort of generic (eternal?) enemy
(violence? jealousy? is he referring to Satan here? ). Perhaps by
"humanity" Bush means humanity = America, or humanity = Christianity, or
humanity = corporatism? Now my television is telling me that Bush's
approval rating is at 43%. So 43% of Americans polled hear the "message"
and interpret the ambiguous referents to produce a message they agree
with... or they don't try to resolve the referents at all, and they make
their decision based on fear, or loyalty, or the effect produced on them
by the extreme frequency of words such as "freedom" "spirit" and "God"
vs. "terror", "evil" or "enemy".

OK, off with the TV!

I have seen several papers/presentations that have compared the war
rhetoric of various leaders in history, and the similarities between the
rhetoric of those our history remembers as good and those remembered as
evil is surprisingly similar. I think it's extremely important to pay
attention to these patterns, be aware of them and watch for them - that
seems an important step in preventing history from reoccurring.

I think the authors rightly assign a significant role to "discourse" in
the creation and maintenance of the neofeudal corporate system they
describe. To tie this in to our previous discussion of propaganda, I
would suggest that this role for discourse is actually a product of
democracy. In ancient feudal systems, presumably those who had
power/wealth/arms could impose their will on the people with or without
their agreement. In today's system, with elected officials, leaders
generally have to use discursive means to convince the people that their
leaders' will is for their own good. Political discourse may create
artificial groups ("enemies", "those who harbor terrorists") and assign
moral values through religious rhetoric rather than by providing any
evidence. But the need to get consensus on discursively constructed
political reality comes from democracy, and while there is no consensus,
it is very difficult for elected officials to act, at least overtly.
(According to a Project for a New American Century report (Rebuilding
America’s Defenses, September 2000) the US did not launch an all-out
invasion of Iraq earlier because they needed a "catastrophic and
catalyzing event" to convince the American people to go along with it.)
I thought the history of propaganda, or "the world's greatest adventure
in advertising", as Creel put it, is certainly a crucial field for
further study. I looked up some of Creel's writing, by the way, and he
wrote that he chose not to call his enterprise "propaganda" because the
word had taken on negative connotations "for that word, in German hands,
had come to be associated with deceit and corruption." (George Creel,
How We Advertised America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920). He
believed very strongly in what he was doing - and I suspect that's true
of most people who engage in mass information dissemination.

On a hopeful note, Graham and Luke suggest that by renaming capitalism
-> corporate neofeudalism, they take a step (in an Orwellian sense)
towards being able to discuss the current situation. I found that much
of their terminology (such as "organized legitimate violence" and
"organized illegitimate violence" could be useful at getting under the
ideological veneer of loaded names and examining underlying
actions/events from other perspectives. To really increase the
effectiveness of democracy, people need to be able to think critically
about the messages they receive. Education in critical thinking rather
than in facts (as a new list member put it to me) may be the best way to
fight "democratic neofeudal corporatism".

To answer your question about Top Gun, Noriko, I'm afraid I haven't seen
it, nor have I seen any other movies glorifying militarism that I can
recall. I have certainly seen movies glorifying violence, though, and
although there has been a debate about whether violent movies and video
games cause people to become violent, the effect of Hollywood violence
on people's willingness to accept war/the arms industry/bombings has
been absent from that discussion, to my knowledge. I *have* seen the
Star Wars movies, which could be argued to glorify anti-empire
insurgency. :) I doubt very much, however, that it's had that effect on
many people.

Best,
Linnea




杉森 典子 wrote:

>Dear everyone, 
>
>Our November reading is "Militarising the Body Politic:
>Manifestations of neofeudal corporatism in political
>language about the war on Iraq." This pre-publication
>articles is just one click away at:
>http://www.philgraham.net/Graham%20and%20Luke%20-%20Final%20L&P.pdf
>
>>>From this title, you may assume that it is about the war
>on Iraq, but it is much more than that. For me, this is
>the first article that lists more online materials than
>materials in print as references. It is easy for you to
>find sources you find interesting in this article. I
>earnestly recommend this article to everyone, in
>particular, to those of you who are interested
>discourse-historical approach to CDA. 
>
>In order to argue that the current stystem of political
>economic relations in which we live is characterized as
>neofeudal corporatism, Graham and Luke traced the history
>far back. They found that similar strategies for
>militarising bodies politic as recent ones were also used
>in the first crusade by Urban II in 1095.
>
>One of many things that I found interesting is the
>authors' description of the current censorship of movies
>(page 25) as shown below:
>
>The Center for Defense Information (CDI) details almost a
>century of direct and consious involvement by the military
>in the production of moviews (CDI, 1997)--a practice that
>began with Creel.
>The CDI documents extensive,  ongoing, and direct
>censorship tied to 'hundreds of millions of dollars' worth
>of subsidies, and scripting decisions over major
>productions designed to impress upon the public the
>virtues of military ideal and technologies (CDI, 1997).
>According to a US Department of Defence (DOD)
>spokesperson, 
>
>"Top Gun" . . . prepared the American people for the Gulf
>War. . . "Top Gun" showed that we could shoot down
>airplanes, that our aircraft carriers could go anyplace,
>and that our pilots were the best. And so, when the Gulf
>War comes along, there's no reason for any American
>civilian to believe that we can't beat Saddam Hussein.
>(Philip Strub, in CDI, 1997)
>
>CDA-DISCUSS members, what do you think of the above
>statement? Was "Top Gun" so influential? There are other
>war movies whose underlying theme is anti-war, such as
>"Platoon."  How can we reconcile this situation?
>
>Until I read this article, I had naively believed that the
>tabaco industry was the only one that influenced movie
>producers (I had heard that tabaco companies gave movie
>producers a lot of money and asked them to include a scene
>that characterize smoking in a positive manner). 
>
>Best, 
>
>Noriko
>
>  
>