All posts by Gary C. Woodward

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The Imagery of Insurrection

Rhetorical Mastery, , , , ,

Political iconography is always interesting to read for attitudes and assumptions that are displayed rather than articulated. Visual imagery easily cuts through the limits of an individual’s level of fluency: their reluctance to “own” explicit language or express taboo thoughts. What people want to display can function as substitutes: visual analogues of fantasies and grievances.

Anyone viewing the images carried by the rioters who broke into the Capitol Building on January 6 could not help but notice that they communicated mostly through with flags and posters. Few seemed to be ready to address issues relevant to the deliberative space they occupied. And few pamphlets or tracts were left in the ransacked sections of the building: mostly flags that seemed to owe as much to shooter games and action films as any thought-out ideology. Such is the impoverished language of much of our civic culture that a person with poor eyesight could be forgiven for momentarily thinking the aggrieved monsters were just a disorderly drum and flag unit.  But we now known their deadly intent.

The image above of a “Rambo Trump” was on a flag of one of the insurrectionists staging the assault. It’s both funny and sad: comic book muscles, a lethal weapon, a look of toughness, a male color palette: all seemed to speak for some of those present and now charged with assorted crimes.

The flag can be purchased from an online dealer, and certainly invites a range of reactions to its intention to inspire: absurd, juvenile, pathetic, the detritus of a mind degraded by digital games. What could the carrier of the image have been thinking? Could he put his unintended cartoon into words?  And how does someone end up wanting to carrying around an agitprop image of a sedentary and defeated real estate developer whose rhetorical weapons are schoolyard taunts and a nasty sneer?

The Rambo image is an echo of the poster image used by Poland’s Solidarity Movement featuring Gary Cooper from the 1952 film High Noon.  Cooper’s Will Kane was a peaceful man goaded into a showdown with a crook: a strong but reluctant sheriff who could articulate his principles. Guns were not his preferred tools of persuasion.  And Cooper, who convincingly played a Quaker in Friendly Persuasion, could pull it off.  In short, Solidarity in the 1980s was saying, among other things, that character mattered, that there is nobility in a degree of quiet dignity.

What a difference with the mob looking for someone to attack in the Rotunda, all under the gaze of the landmark paintings of John Trumbull, and the striking frieze by Constantino Brumidi just above them. To be sure, Brumidi’s images of moments in the national’s past are their own kind of preferred narratives that are now out of step with more recent revisions of the historical record.  Even so, the  Rotunda was completed as Lincoln’s message that the union had a future. It was to be a visual plea for unity and a dramatic way to honor the nation’s history. It’s doubtful those breaking into the Capitol had a clue about the hallowed ground they occupied, or how to engage others in ways appropriate to it.

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The Appeal of Being Inside A Fence

Problem Practices, , , , , , ,

Brexit seems like a self-inflicted wound. It turned legitimate grievances about questionable regulation into a grotesque  overreaction.

The recent departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union is a good time to ponder the now common impulse around the world to offer voters the candy of cultural segregation. Brexit was about many things: everything from the price of butter in the shops to tighter controls on who can visit and stay within the United Kingdom. Donald Trump’s southern wall is a cruder manifestation of the same impulse, as were the recent chants of “USA! USA!” from thugs in the halls of the Capitol.

Around the world nationalism is having its moment against internationalism. This resurgence has hobbled the work and play of many who rightly sense that their futures depend on engaging others across political borders that are out of date by hundreds of years.

Until this year, residents of the U.K. had an open ticket to explore an incredibly diverse part of the world.

 

The idea of forming a kind of United States of Europe was one of the real international achievements of the Twentieth Century, tossed aside by expensively-educated Tories looking for an easy way to mollify restless voters. It was a modern marvel to witness France, Britain and Germany working together to open borders and minds. And so many benefited, especially younger Brits and their continental counterparts who understood that it was now their birthright to explore a range of traditions and languages only a train ride away. It wasn’t just businesspersons who woke up in Britain and met clients for lunch in Paris. Swedes and Scots, Northern Irelanders and Greeks, English and Austrians traveled a vast and open region encompassing 28 countries. Up to the end of 2020, U.K. residents had greater opportunities to go to college, work, and to explore an incredibly diverse part of the world. Musicians could do the same, accepting a gig in an Italian club or French theater with a minimum of paperwork. Visas and work permits were relics of the last world war and a more suspicious age.

Britons will need to relearn the rules of foreign travel in ways that many still inside the EU will not. Most European youth and some cross-border workers on the continent have escaped the effects of Brexit. But a British student or musician is now more confined to their shrinking home country, which has triggered new pleas for independence in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland especially benefited as an equal trading partner with other nations in the EU.

It is surely no coincidence that Britain’s most beloved orchestra conductor, Liverpool native Simon Rattle, just announced that he is seeking German citizenship and will abandon his post with the London Symphony Orchestra. Rattle has made his point: as a musician he wants no part of a English provincialism.

It is reassuring that Joe Biden generally takes a dim view of Britain’s attempt to go big on patriotism and think small as an island. Biden’s internationalist instincts represent at least a momentary pushback against the separatism that fueled Brexit. But he will have his hands full with a withered GOP that still panders to a base of aging white Americans wishing for a monoculture that never was.

In the end, I seriously doubt that Britons are going to feel any better about their politics, save for those who viewed the rest of the world as much “too foreign” to visit.  There are some signs that buyer’s remorse may already be setting in. But if they are still able to warm to the new status quo, they will come to resemble the travel agent I once met near Birmingham in the center of England. Even in middle age she had yet to find her way to Scotland just a few hundred miles away.