In the finals days of '07, Bostodelphia joined a blogosphere noting the recent poster campaign advertising the upcoming Rambo movie's, how shall we say, iconographically loaded depiction of the title character. In a recent comment, Nick Rucka over at Maboroshii Productions, nails down for us the similarity between this "spraypaint stencil" of Rambo's visage and the mass disseminated silkscreen renditions of Che Guevara's likeness as photographed by Alberto Korda. We've tagged a few other entries noting the correlation as well; and noted that the Playstation 3 community's icon literarcy may be limited to Solid Snake (that Rambo's bandanna warrior look predates Solid Snake's is a fact the Playstationeers will have have to come to terms with on their own).
Turns out the uncanny resemblance is in fact not cosmic coincidence, but intentional marketing strategy. Yesterday's New York Times ran "Tough Guys for Tough Times" by Fashion and Style writer Alex Williams. In a survey of the "return" of a number of 80s macho icons to the pop cultural radar, Williams got in touch with Tim Palen, co-president for theatrical marketing at Lionsgate, Rambo's studio. Regarding advertising Rambo in general as well as what we called the "Che Rambo" ad, Palen was quoted with the following (note this may not be a verbatim quote of words in sequence, as it's coalation of two quotes in Williams' article. Bold text added by Bostodelphia for emphasis):
Stallone and Rambo are huge, iconic images already. It’s really kind of holy territory, especially when it comes to young males, and males in general. ... We called [the ad] Che Guevara crossed with Jesus Christ by way of Andy Warhol. In a way, he’s all of those.
So not only do we get an acknowledgment of the speculated Guevara vibe as intentional, but also the marketers were going for a "Jesus thing" with this. Admittedly, now that Christ has been put on the table, I can see a possible resemblance between Stallone's crags and the faded face of the Shroud of Turin.
Over at Nick's Maboroshii post, someone commented about the return of "great white hope" saving other whites from "the savages", and I think Williams' article picks up on that too, though doesn't push the notion very aggressively. Another commenter drew a comparison between this ad and the works of Bansky. I don't know, I think the Bansky analogy is a little sophomoric. Frankly, I'm tired of every instance of "subversive" appearing art, particularly commercial art, being compared to him. Often they're bad comparison, and dilute the points of Bansky's work.
In a nutshell Bansky is broadly counter-cultural and often specifically counter-commercial. His work is to disrupt, interrupt, if not outright obstruct cultural commerce, be that commerce a visit to a "cultural institution" like a museum or buying the Paris Hilton's album at FYE. In other words, when engaging in "culture", Bansky's trying to give you "second thoughts" on the ideology that engagement participates within, perhaps ultimately dissuading you from further engagement.
This Rambo ad is not there to give us pause, and certainly not dissuade us, from buying tickets to the carnage show. Rather, if anything, this ad campaign is counter-Bansky, or rather counter "culture jamming". Whether it's simply acknowledged as cleverness or bombarded by "OMG WTF!" the Rambo ad does penetrate a market that would likely otherwise see itself as too sophisticated or cool for Rambo. That is, the ad does give it some ironic cred, so the ironic cred crowd can glom onto it, at least that market that spends a lot time trying to come up with new feats for Chuck Norris to brag about. Simultaneously, the ad also appeals to a market segment that does indeed see Rambo as some sort of great mythic figure in some sort of jingoistic American pantheon. Bansky wants to challenge audiences into awareness. This ad doesn't care about your awareness or not, it just wants you to buy a ticket.
While eye-catching, I don't know if this simultaneous appeal to its "literal base" and "arch" audiences is entirely new. I'd say professional wrestling has been doing this for at least a decade now.
Being treated in an ER for a marijuana overdose? Um, yeah. Maybe the Mainline suburban police state wants to further pacify its population by characterizing them as crybabies. You know, the sort who when confronted by the "bad funny" feeling toking occasionally brings, and their parents can't helicopter said feeling away, the tears break out and the ambulance is called. Clueless cops or weak-stomached suburbanites trying to mythologize weed as "hard life" cred aside, a professional reporter taking every assertion by a police spokesperson at face value is just sad. I mean why bother having journalists? Everyone can just find unvarnished truth through everyone else's web press release and public relations machinery anyway, right?
Cheesesteak's been slow on getting back into a blog rhythm post Thanksgiving, he knows that. He will get it together, just wait.
Alrighty, so Bostodelphia's gained some attention via our coverage of the Ron Paul rally. Welcome to those of you who've dropped by and I hope a few of you stick around. We're still getting settled here, some of our furniture's not even been delivered, and we can't even agree on carpet or hardwood floors yet, let alone color of polish or fabric.
Now, I could have kept what follows in the commentary within the aforementioned Ron Paul thread, and it might sound redundant in parts to those who've been following that disucssion. However, it speaks to an issue bigger than just Ron Paul, and also outlines some general ground rules for productive discussion in this blog.
To begin, I said this earlier and I'll say it again, I could be well off with my 500. It's been over a decade since I had to perform crowd estimates with any sort of responsibility on the line, so yeah, I'm rusty at it. My number could have easily been inadvertently processed through a coefficient value reflecting the incredibly "underwhelmed" vibe the whole shindig had for me, the unconverted. For the record, I'm a registered Dem so have no stake in the Republican primary. I actually think a Ron Paul ticket would make the White House more of a cake walk for the Dems that it currently is. That said, I'm a fairly empathic person, and I can see why people are charged up by causes on the other side of the aisle. In this case, I wasn't feeling it. Not at all.
That said, I'm sticking with my number for the time being until someone else comes up with a more trustworthy figure for me to redact in favor of, a reputable source that also cites the means through which its number was derived. Both in these postings and on Digg Ron Paulists have offered this as contesting evidence:
Ron Paul Philadelphia Veterans' Rally Draws 5,000
Monday, Nov 12, 2007 - 11:19 AM By NBC 13 Staff PHILADELPHIA, PA.– Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul today addressed a crowd of over 5,000 enthusiastic supporters in Philadelphia. The Veteran's Day weekend rally took place from 1:00 to 3:00 PM at Independence Mall.
Hundreds of veterans and their friends and families heard country music superstar Rockie Lynne open for the Texas congressman and rising GOP contender, Dr. Paul. John Holland, the founder of Rolling Thunder, a leading advocacy organization for troops, veterans, and POW/MIAs, delivered an enthusiastic endorsement of Congressman Paul, before the congressman addressed the crowd.
The rally coincided with the launch of the Veterans for Paul Coalition, which is composed of several hundred war veterans.
"Dr. Paul's support among veterans is extremely high," said Paul campaign spokesman Joe Seehusen. "These great patriots who have fought for our country know that only Dr. Paul's foreign policy of peace and secure borders can guarantee true national security, and they want him fighting for our country's freedom."
I and Coddy have pointed out two things to our challengers providing this "evidence." 1.) In no way does this "show us" because it entirely lacks both the photographic perspective allowing for empirical evaluation and any explanation as to where the number 5000 came from. 2.) This item from Channel 13 - an NBC affiliate serving Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Anniston Alabama noted for its crackerjack Philadelphia desk (do I have to say "not"?) - looks strangely like this:
Press Release: Ron Paul Philadelphia Veterans Rally Draws 5,000 November 10, 2007 7:00 pm EST PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA– Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul today addressed a crowd of over 5,000 enthusiastic supporters in Philadelphia. The Veteran's Day weekend rally took place from 1:00 to 3:00 PM at Independence Mall.
Hundreds of veterans and their friends and families heard country music superstar Rockie Lynne open for the Texas congressman and rising GOP contender, Dr. Paul. John Holland, the founder of Rolling Thunder, a leading advocacy organization for troops, veterans, and POW/MIAs, delivered an enthusiastic endorsement of Congressman Paul, before the congressman addressed the crowd.
The rally coincided with the launch of the Veterans for Paul Coalition, which is composed of several hundred war veterans.
"Dr. Paul's support among veterans is extremely high," said Paul campaign spokesman Joe Seehusen. "These great patriots who have fought for our country know that only Dr. Paul's foreign policy of peace and secure borders can guarantee true national security, and they want him fighting for our country's freedom."
This duplication isn't some Shakespeare's monkeys fluke. Rather, the good staff of NBC13 decided to take a press release from the Ron Paul campaign and run it on their website unvetted with no corroborative work by getting in touch with say, their affiliate counterparts at NBC 10 in Philadelphia who haven't even bothered to archive any coverage of the rally. This isn't journalism. This is a sad comment on the state of modern network affiliate television journalism, and I'll go further to say that this problem not limited to television either. A note to the staff of NBC13: if you're just recycling press releases as news content, you're not being journalists, you're just "tools" on a lot of levels.
Press being picked up by press outlets and disseminated as news aren't anything new. In fact, it's been worse:
Those who know the story know that nothing in the Negativland angle was true, for those who aren't familiar with the facts of the matter:
Now the Ron Paul grass roots could be thinking they've successfully infiltrated the factual consensus by getting a remote news provider to uncritically distribute the campaign's press releases, and in the Paulists postings here and on Digg were rubbing their deceitful epistemological triumph in our faces. In which case, shame on you and don't insult our intelligence in the future. I get the feeling though that what we're dealing with here are some people who honestly believe that if it's on an NBC affiliated website, it's got to be true, regardless of the source's remote relationship to the location of the event or uncanny resemblance of the news item's text to the exact language of official campaign literature. If that is the case, how is anyone supposed to take seriously a group claiming to have a reading of the Constitution at the heart of their beliefs when they demonstrate in this discussion a complete lack of media literacy beyond the Sesame Street level?
Again, if an intelligent Ron Paul supporter can back the campaign claim up, thus proving me 90% blind, please do so. We want to keep this blog accurate when need be; and I got good health care so my vision corrective prescription will be covered. More importantly we want to cultivate a reasonable discourse based on intelligent discussion of thoughts grounded in critical evaluation of evidence, not a standard of evidence that wouldn't pass mustard in a high school research paper. So far Paulists, I'm even less impressed with the movement than when I left your rally.
