viz. - Hillary Clinton

I'm Jack Nicholson and I approve this message

Jillian Sayre — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:27:50 +0000

Today I was introduced to Jack Nicholson's video endorsement of Clinton. It is currently making the rounds on YouTube:

Here's the problem I see with his montage-style endorsement: Nicholson lets his fictional characters do the talking and the most obvious problem here is that Nicholson rarely plays sympathetic characters. When the Joker asks me "Who do you trust?" and Col. Jessop from A Few Good Men tells me how military leadership should work, I don't feel benevolent towards their recommendation. Then there's the appalling moment when we return to Jessop to hear him talk about the sexiness of a woman in power. Is speaking through the mouths of liars, murderers, and psychopaths the best strategy to forward an endorsement?

Are these the cultural icons one wants associated with one's campaign?

At least, to follow up on Tim's post about the Devil and Hillary Clinton, we have no Witches of Eastwick

The call is coming from inside the House!

Jillian Sayre — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:53:14 +0000

Check out a new political ad from the Clinton campaign:

I almost didn't want to be the one to blog about this one, because we've got some pretty rich material here. My favorite thing about this piece, though, is that it reminds me of the old Babysitter horror stories we used to/still tell ourselves. It really puts the domestic in domestic threat.

The Serious Side of Sarcasm

Jillian Sayre — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:18:38 +0000

Is sarcastic, rather than bitch, the new black? To build on our discussions of the image of women in politics (see John's post about Michelle Obama's halo and Tim's recent post about Hillary and/as the Devil), I find the discussion of the two women's "edgy" humor to be quite interesting and I think it affects the way that their images are produced and read.

Katie Couric, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and now Newsweek have all noted how Obama's rhetoric contrasts with the optimism and hopefulness of her husband's campaign. But while most of these sources will present the trait as positive (albeit dangerous), the Times for instance called Obama "Outspoken, strong-willed, funny, gutsy", Clinton is considered dour or angry.

The funny thing is, the visual argument seems to be presented in the opposite manner. Newsweek's profile of Michelle Obama featured a good deal of "stern" pictures, despite the frequent mention of her humor in the text (she pokes fun of her husband, makes frequent jokes that not everybody gets). Despite a few nostalgic young Obama shots (and the cover which features a controlled smile on a woman who seems almost to be physically restraining herself), most of them looked like this:

both images property of Newsweek

Hillary, on the other hand, as Tim's devil picture indicates and as Jon Stewart has pointed out, seems discomforting in her happiness, the "hard-nosed realist" who enjoys lambasting hope and faith. When she makes these sarcastic comments in speeches and during debates, she smiles, even laughs. While I think we would agree that this normally says, "hey, joke here!" it is read by these critics as over-rehearsed or abusively cynical.

Perhaps what I am most intrigued by in this debacle is the disjunct of rhetorical strategy and analysis. While Obama's serious posture is productively rebellious, making her a thoughtful as well as humorous (Newsweek says that she's not the expected "Stepford booster, smiling vacantly at her husband and sticking to a script of carefully vetted blandishments"), I think Clinton joyfully produces her barbs so that the listener is encouraged to hear her and laugh along, a sort of benevolence. The effect, though, is suspicion and distance; these critics argue that her smiles actually isolate the audience and I wonder what context creates this reading.

Case in Point...

timturner — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:18:47 +0000

See this earlier discussion of iconographic photography on the campaign trail.

First spotted at Wonkette

Here's the full picture:

Visual rhetoric on the campaign trail

John Jones — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:24:33 +0000

As the Democratic primaries have continued on throughout the winter, columnists and pundits have been reaching out to find ever more ways of distinguishing between Obama and Clinton. Salon has posted an article analyzing the design of the candidate’s logos, while Clay Spinuzzi has blogged on the contrasting designs of Obama and Clinton campaign flyers being distributed in Texas (without any images, unfortunately).

In both cases, Obama is declared the temporary winner. According to Karrie Jacobs in Salon

Of the current campaigns, Barack Obama’s is the best at getting his message across through graphics—think of all those “Change we can believe in” signs—and most careful observers see his as the first sophisticated corporate-style identity to emerge from presidential politics. While the Bush-Cheney W was, in Froelich’s words, “cold,” Obama's symbol is the opposite, literally and figuratively sunny. While the W was crude, Obama’s mark is smooth.

Spinuzzi claims that Obama’s flyer seems more detailed, noting that

the Obama flyer appears customized for Texas from the ground up, while the Clinton flyer seems more generic.

While politics have always depended in some way on visuals for their persuasiveness, it is refreshing that this visual persuasion is getting this kind of attention from the media.

Sheep’s clothing

John Jones — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:12:32 +0000

Barack Obama has taken some heat for remarks made to a New York Post reporter attacking Al Sharpton (who’s had a lot to deal with lately, thank you very much) which pundits are arguing were made by an Obama operative. Now there’s this:

source: YouTube, by: ParkRidge47

This hatchet-job on Hillary Clinton, which incorporates footage from Ridley Scott’s striking Super Bowl ad for Apple, is now making its way around YouTube in various guises. Significantly, it ends with a plug for Obama; once again, it seems, Obama’s thugs are on the prowl, taking shots at anyone who would threaten his rise to world supremacy. Whether or not this characterization represents the reality of the situation—apparently the identity of the video’s creator has yet to be established, and the Obama camp has distanced themselves from it—it is clear that the creator of the video is bashing Hillary and providing Obama as an alternative.

With that fact in mind, I’ve yet to see anyone analyze the content of the video to see if this Obama’s-operatives-theory makes sense. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the user who posted the video claims that s/he did so in response to “Hollywood entertainment mogul David Geffen's public critique of Clinton—and ‘Clinton's campaign bullying of donors and political operatives’ in the wake of it.” This explanation would be believable enough if it weren’t for the Obama plug at the end. The association with Obama smears him by implying that he is smearing Hillary. Does this seem like a logical move for an Obama-supporter to make?

More telling is the actual argument of the video. By making the association with 1984, the video presents the senator from New York as a Big-Brother-like figure, one who is interested in socializing American culture, if not in the actual spoken text (“people who want to be part of a team, the American team”), than at least by implication. This isn’t a liberal argument against Clinton; it’s a conservative one.

So, either the creator of the ad 1) is pro-Obama, but was ignorant of the video’s rhetorical effect, or 2) the ad was created as an attack on both Hillary and Obama. I vote for 2.

That aside, I like the stylish "O" at the end of the video, fashioned after the old, rainbow-colored Apple logo. While the leaf is a bit distracting—it reminds me of “Ó,” the wrong letter—I enjoy the thick line of the “O” and its perfect circularity. Obama should definitely adopt it for his website. In my opinion, it is far superior to the Bank of America-esque logo he’s using now.

Update: Apparently on today’s episode of Good Morning America, the above argument is mentioned. Some have taken this to be evidence of big-media spin. Unfortunately, since I am not a member of the media, big or otherwise, anyone who wants to take a shot at this blog entry will have to do so by attacking my argument, not my ethos.