Design commentary as propaganda

[imomus]

It may well be because I came to it immediately after listening to a podcast on socialism by Tony Benn and reading an article by the author of Why Do People Hate America?, but the fascinating 1958 design film "The American Look" struck me as outrageous peacetime propaganda -- a highly selective arrangement of the tools of a culture in order to show that culture in the best possible light. (Click the picture to watch the whole 28 minute film.)



"The American Look (A Tribute to the Men and Women who Design)" was financed by Chevrolet, and a chunk of it showcases the design of their 1959 Impala model at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. But it could just as well have been financed by the government, so relentlessly does it harp on the themes of freedom and individualism. "By the way things look as well as the way they perform," crows the narrator over a relentlessly triumphalist orchestral score, "our homes acquire new grace, new glamour, new accomodations expressing not only the American love of beauty but also the basic freedom of the American people which is the freedom of individual choice."

Oddly enough, though, the film calls to mind nothing so much as the North Korean propaganda movies that were showing at Christian Kracht's booklaunch. And, just as insecurity lay behind the confident, Utopian tone of those films, so it underpins this American film too. Certainly the late 1950s was a time of optimism, affluence and consumerist expansion in the US, a time still bathed in the glow of the military victories of World War II. But there's something uneasy in the film's harping on the essential Americanness of Modernist design, when so much of the architecture and furniture design on display here looks more Scandinavian or German. Only the grotesque, elongated, decorative and gothic Impala looks like a truly American design, and it strikes a very different note to the restrained, sparse and spare Modernist designs. (Better suited, in fact, to Postmodernism -- which raises the question of whether pomo came along simply because Modernism wasn't essentially American enough.)

The Impala's Space Age streamlining points to another insecurity, one I outlined in my AIGA Voice article Creativity and the Sputnik Shock. The central thesis of this film -- the idea that good design goes hand-in-hand with American "freedom of individual choice" -- was at that very moment being disproved by the success of the Soviet space program. On October 4, 1957 the communists had successfully launched the first satellite into Earth orbit. America reeled, throughout the late 50s, with a keen sense of its own educational, technical and creative inadequacy. As a result, money was poured into creativity research -- and into design and lifestyle propaganda like this film.

All propaganda, no matter how Utopian, optimistic, and triumphalist, raises fears; all that's left unsaid seems to gather just outside the frame, a threatening black cloud. In my case, when I watch "The American Look", I don't just worry about the people excluded from the ideal scenarios depicted. I also wonder whether all design writing -- and I've done my share -- isn't just a more subtle version of this kind of propaganda. Just like the film, we design writers like to point to the "ever-improving good taste" of the public. We like to select only the most advanced and beautiful designs and suggest that, soon, they'll predominate. And we like to evoke futuristic scenarios like the ones in the final shots of this film, in which rocket cars and dome houses dominate the landscape. Yet fifty years after this film was made, mock-Colonial and faux-rustic farmhouse styles are more likely to define the American design landscape than bubble jets and space craft. Put it down to "the freedom of individual choice", perhaps.

Comments

off

[mnog.livejournal.com]

how do you think to come to russia?
by the way about north korea :) http://mnog.livejournal.com/tag/north+korea

Re: off

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I get invitations to play in Russia quite often, because I'm still in the honeymoon period with your country -- my first Russian concerts in 2004 sold out and people were turned away at the door. No doubt I'll be back before long! I particularly want to see St Petersburg, of course. Last time I only saw Moscow and Izevsk.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Dude, didn't you just call those DPRK films some kind of love song?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Propaganda is always, in a certain sense, beautiful. It's what crowds just outside the frame that disturbs.

blitcon

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I was quite interested in reading Why do People Hate America? but I've just read that article and it reads like the essay of an outraged sixth-former. Very disappointing. All opinion with virtually nothing to back it up, decrying the bias of the Blitcons while itself being extremely biased.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

By the way, I'd be very interested in your views on the Borat film, if you've seen it. I've only actually seen clips myself so far. One thing sticks in my head, the lady saying, "The cultural differences are vast. But I think he could be Americanized quite quickly." Or something like that.

There were many Americans I met in Japan and Taiwan who basically had this attitude. They couldn't see the indigenous culture at all. All they could see was somewhere ripe for Americanisation.

One of my favourite stories on this theme was told to me by a friend of mine. He was approached, in Japan, by a typical Jock character who stuck out his hand and said, "My name's Brad and I hate fags. Which state are you from?" To which my friend replied, "I'm from the one attached to France by a tunnel." He was, hilariously, then accused of having "attitude".

I remember an American talking to me in Taiwan and shaking his head in despair at the number of barbarians that still had to be converted to Christianity there.

In a toilet in Nagano, someone had written anti-American graffiti. Beneath it, an American had written the retort: "Your words, our bombs."

I don't know if these kinds of things are mentioned in the book, but these are the real reasons that people hate America.

I could go on, but you get the general idea.

Kazakhstan's sixth most famous man

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

I love the Borat film and am only half way through it. I've laughed out loud several times already. What comes to mind right now are the reactions of the car salesmen trying to explain to B that the "chick magnet" is not an option that comes with the car. "But I want the chick magnet!" he says. Hahaha. I was lucky to buy the DVD off kids hanging outside my liquor store and so can watch it over and over at my leisure/

[bricology.livejournal.com]

>>"My name's Brad and I hate fags. Which state are you from?"<<

>>"Your words, our bombs."<<

I always find it rather odd when otherwise intelligent people choose to disparage "Americans" (the most diverse people on earth) because of the words or actions of a few. You can come to similar misconceptions about any group (Brits, gays, blacks, Russians, pop musicians, et al) if you're going to base your opinions on such limited input.

So a few Americans have said stupid things while abroad. Shall I base my perceptions of France upon a few Parisians who have visited San Francisco and been rude to me? I think they'd hope for a more balanced view. And you're dismissing the countless thousands of Americans who have selflessly and thoughtfully volunteered in foreign nations without any expectation of reward. Who has built more fresh water facilities, hospitals and the like in developing nations than American volunteers? Answer: no one.

You claim "these are the real reasons people hate America". Oh really? I disagree. I think that there are a number of equally competitive reasons, and many of them don't speak too well of the people doing the perceiving. For one, there's a general sense of envy about America that's manifested in hatred -- "how dare they be rich, powerful and culturally successful?!" It's like hating the pretty girl who's also smart, the handsome guy who's also rich.

Despite what some here might claim, "Americanization" comes from within. You can take any formerly isolated nation on earth and put a satellite TV in each household, and within a year, they're all going to try to be like Americans; for better or worse. Some might claim that's the result of propaganda, but that's only one factor.

This sort of rhetoric is little more than spying the cheerleader squad entering the high school cafeteria, and throwing tomatoes at them, out of spite.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Two of the iconic mid-century modernist industrial designers were American - Charles and Ray Eames. The designs look like they'd be German, but a lot of it was started in America and then copied by Europe. The big Scandinavian one is what, Vernor Panton?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Alvar Aalto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvar_Aalto).

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed watching that, thank you. As much as anything, what really struck me (and maybe I've been reading too much William Morris and Eric Gill) was that the designs come from above - from the corporate organisation. The ability to make beautiful things is portrayed as the property of a benign controlling agency; beauty is something only they can bestow. As you say, the people outside this fairyland are a concern, but so perhaps are the neutered ones in it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's very much a tone of "And now here's something that'll interest you housewives" -- but the emphasis is always on participation by consumption, not production.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I'll always have a soft spot for the Arts & Crafts movement. The Eames were the last of an independent American strain that ran all the way back to the Shakers, who were engaged in elegant, spare aesthetics while Europeans were besotted with a hideous Victorian Roccoco revivalism. It may have been inspired by their religious leanings, but then so was Japanese art and design.

Of course, what Nick proffers here is propaganda, too. After all: what could possibly go wrong in a utopian nanny-state, right? Human nature has changed sooooo much over the past century!

As a species we're simply not wired for such a circumscribed existence--we've literally spent the past two hundred thousand years living in groups of less than thirty, with plenty of room between us and the group that lives over that hill. We ignore such inconvenient facts at our own peril; reality is organic and improvised, not subject to mechanistic abstractions.

I'd rather deal with the sight of ugly split levels than the toxic effects of a repressive social order. Talk about horizontal relationships all we want, but a monolith lying on its side is still a monolith.

[(Anonymous)]

The full text of Ziauddin Sardar's is at

http://www.newstatesman.com/200612110045

Regards
FrF

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thanks... can it be Frank Furedi?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Very tangentially, I sometimes think that certain American academic circles are becoming a bit too engrossed in perceived anti-Americanism, whether broadly European or Middle Eastern or anything. Attitudes to empire always warrant some sort of study, of course, and for most part people even deal with the subject rationally. But there's an odd "us vs. them" school of thinking that crops up every now and then in study of anti-American attitudes (and this happens regardless of whether the author is right-wing or left-wing). It's very disappointing. It's not as if we go around spending all our energy on caring about Americans.

[(Anonymous)]

but what you've just written is propaganda!
your personal view on propaganda, is propaganda.

you running around in wig, is propaganda.

selling the illusion of "momus".
witch is a figure generated by you, as propaganda, to sell records, and create an image of yourself (thats not actually "you") to the popular public.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think three things make something propaganda:

1. it's all facing in one direction
2. it advocates something
3. it leaves everything else out.

Click Opera is all over the place, advocates tons of things but nothing in particular, and will probably cover everything in the world, given time.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

'good' design has become to the eye what music (stored on ipods) is to the ear and they're both what drugs had become by the 70s - nothing but official instruments to stop one from formulating and asking too many questions.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< we design writers ... like to select only the most advanced and beautiful designs and suggest that, soon, they'll predominate. And we like to evoke futuristic scenarios like the ones in the final shots of this film, in which rocket cars and dome houses dominate the landscape. >>

But you sell yourself short, momus. You say you want only the most advanced and beautiful designs, but I think you like functionality too. Nothing wrong with beautiful and advanced so long as utility is not compromised.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Ford made similar film. I think it was called Alphaville.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

"...so relentlessly does it harp on the themes of freedom and individualism"

Indeed! What have freedom and individualism ever done for us?!

[(Anonymous)]

Kudos Nick, An excellent article, it's fascinating how product marketers link the democratic concept of freedom with the item they wish to sell-
as if by the act of purchasing their product one was stating ones freedom as a citizen of a democracy.
Thomas Scott.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

OH GOD not Tony Benn.

He gave an introduction to a Paul Robeson film I went to see last year, and I had to heckle him because he was talking crap.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh you don't want to mind Tony, coxcombical, old blue-rinse socialist that he is and all...
Thomas S.

Jerry/Joe Building

[(Anonymous)]

Jonathan Meades is your man for architechtural design as propaganda - Jerry Building and Joe building go into great detail about the buildings created for The Nazis and for Stalin not just culturally and as propaganda but the legacy and current perception.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Nick -- my objection to your post comes down to this: you've taken your well-known anti-American sentiments and dressed them up in a designer frock. This is betrayed by rhetoric like "'The American Look' struck me as outrageous peacetime propaganda -- a highly selective arrangement of the tools of a culture in order to show that culture in the best possible light." I'll ask you again -- how is "The American Look" distinguishable from advertising, and how is it any different than say, any nation's pavilion at any World's Fair over the past century? In fact, it isn't. Sure it's hubristic, inflated, self-congratulatory. Just like all advertising. No one ever sold a product by avoiding showing it "in the best possible light". But by taking your personal political views and making them appear as if they were carried in the DNA of American products. That's nothing if not ambitious, I'll give you that!

You wrote "But there's something uneasy in the film's harping on the essential Americanness of Modernist design, when so much of the architecture and furniture design on display here looks more Scandinavian or German." I'd hate to think that I need to remind you of some of the great Modernists who were American natives. I'm sure you're also aware of the fact that the lion's share of important foreign Modernist designers, artists and architects ended up in America. I could easily name a hundred of them off the top of my head, but for starters: Gropius, Mondrian, Stravinsky, Aalto, Saarinen, Beckmann, Schoenberg, Neutra, Mies van der Rohe, Breuer, and so on. Why do you suppose all of them emigrated to the US? And I think it's safe to say that many of those who were unable to emigrate here wish they could have. How many creative people in the Soviet Union were forced to squander away their talents, who would've given anything to be able to enjoy the creative freedom unavailable in the USSR? Countless thousands.

You went on: "On October 4, 1957 the communists had successfully launched the first satellite into Earth orbit. America reeled, throughout the late 50s, with a keen sense of its own educational, technical and creative inadequacy. As a result, money was poured into creativity research -- and into design and lifestyle propaganda like this film."

I'm sorry but that's utter nonsense. First, the Russians didn't have much of a space program since Tsiolkovsky in the late 19th century; it took their expropriation of former German rocket scientists after the War to get them anywhere. And the 1957 Sputnik was nothing if not a propaganda tool. Regardless, within a few years the technological machinery of the US space program surpassed anything the Soviets had ever accomplished, and we've been superior to them in space ever since. But bleeping metal spheres in orbit were the only leg up the Soviets had on the US.

Aircraft? Automobiles? Computers? Electronics? In all likelihood -- toasters? The Soviets played catch-up to the US from their earliest days. Every automobile made in the Soviet Union was an inferior copy of a non-Soviet brand, and usually a few years behind the rest of the world (not that any Russians could afford to buy a car). Even in popular culture, the USSR was far behind the US. And need I point out that the "counterculture movement" often so fondly referred to here passed the USSR by? No "peace and love", no "make love, not war" in the Soviet Union, or it's off to the gulag with you!

And America had "creative inadequacy"?! Oh, brother! Can you give me one significant example of America's "creative inadequacy" relative to the USSR? How 'bout relative to any other nation? This is where I have to question if your sense of reason isn't taking a back seat to your zeal in bogeymanning America. You want to criticize this or that American government? You'd like to criticize aspects of consumerism, clumsy marketing, bad tail-fin design? Fine; I'm likely to agree with you on most of those matters. But to try to portray American design and America's designers as somehow both inferior and as embedded tools of the Vast American Capitalist-Colonialist Conspiracy, and I'm afraid you're off in fantasy-land.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I'm expecting a tirade on the political ramifications of American midwestern women's proclivity for gem sweaters any day now. Maybe even an Omaha street style blog link thrown in for good measure.

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