Page 65 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Ideologies 49

were feeling hedged in by a bad economic situation, they were more
attracted to a slogan or word that seemed to guarantee liberation from
constraints.
Conservative Ronald Reagan ’ s television commercials for his presiden-
tial campaigns were masterful exercises in visual rhetoric that swayed
voters to vote for policies that were dangerous to the world and harmful
ultimately to their own economic interests, as everyone fi nally discovered
in 2008, when the “ free market ” ideology Reagan promoted fi nally crashed
in a display of malfeasance, irresponsibility, and simple greed - motivated

skullduggery. Bad thinking wedded to bad motives finally showed what it
was capable of. But it would have been difficult to tell from the ads Reagan

used that the future held such a disaster.
Consider this ad from 1984: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-
1
IBF8nwSY . Notice how it uses a very smooth set of editing transitions to
communicate a sense of comfort and ease. There are no sharp edits between
contrasting images. Just in its technique, it creates a sense of harmony and

unity, and it is a very unified White America that is depicted. But is largely
the America of the well - to - do, those with jobs and enough money to get
married. It is also a highly selective vision that leaves out lots of American
life that would have made for some very sharp contrast edits were all of those
other dimensions depicted. There are no poor Blacks, for example, or even
successful ones, for that matter. Images of Black poverty would have been
reminders that it was not “ morning in America ” for everyone, and the image
of successful Blacks would have contradicted the conservative image of
Blacks as “ welfare cheats ” who were incapable of economic success when
given a chance. Notice too that all the shots are roughly similar – medium
shots of happy events. This creates a sense of a stable reality, one that audi-
ences can take as real and true, one worth preserving and fi ghting for. The

final part of the ad suggests the purpose of this when it refers to American
“ strength. ” What that meant at the time was a reassertion of US military
power in foreign policy to shore up conservative economic elites around the
world and to stop the uprising of poor people against such economic elites.
It was class warfare on a world scale, and America under Reagan ’ s leadership
was always on the wrong side – promoting and supporting ruthless militaries
that massacred civilians or death squads that routinely abused human rights
and murdered opponents of wealthy conservative economic oligarchs in
countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua.

During the same period, conservative filmmakers such as Francis
Coppola used movies to drive home the Reaganite argument. Apocalypse