- "It's Code Orange," said the Kennedy airport
official, "we have to call back the plane." Code Orangeóhigh
risk of terrorist attack on the Homeland Security Advisory System - meant
that a flight to Paris that had left an hour earlier with my suitcase mistakenly
loaded in its cargo section had to turn around. It was past midnight when
the 747 rolled back to the gate under police searchlights. Though innocent
- it was their bungle, not mine - I was tightly escorted by two armed attendants
as I watched the scene from the terminal's bay windows. A dozen paratroopers
surrounded the plane, machine guns at the ready. Security guards carrying
cell phones paced with their dogs on the tarmac, purposely supervising
an emergency maintenance crew that had been dispatched to sort through
mountains of luggage to find my misplaced suitcase. At long last it was
located, unzipped and searched - my personal belongings duly scrutinized
by two detectives wearing protective gloves and goggles.
-
- There was something obscene about the commotion: the
deployment, the accouterments, the weapons, the uniforms, the electronic
badges, the heavy equipment, not to mention the extra fuel and the expenditure
in employee overtime. But you can never be too safe. No wonder terrorism
readiness is big business. Fear is a powerful profit engine for purveyors
of defense and surveillance technology, services and material.
-
- I might be wrong, but historians will probably study
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's current propaganda campaign
- its color-coded "Threat Advisory System," its "Get Ready
Now" citizen awareness crusade, its "Don't Be Afraid" website
- and wonder how the architects of the program were able to get away with
such a blatantly sadistic approach. Under the pretext of safeguarding the
public's welfare, DHS's policy makers are tormenting anguished Americans
with safety recommendations so wasteful, so overblown, yet so lame, it
defeats comprehension.
-
- Engineering consent didn't used to be a barefaced commercial
operation. In the past, insidious persuasion required a certain artistic
flair. Recall the visual inventiveness of Jean Carlu's posters for the
Office of War Information or the compelling expressiveness of Abrams Games's
advertisements for the British War Office. During WWI and WWII, propaganda
produced posters powerful enough to galvanize a nation. Whether using realistic
illustrations, like Flagg's famous 1917 "I Want You For The U.S.
Army" with Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer, or modernist photomontages,
like Herbert Matter's 1941 "America Calling" Civil Defense eagle,
the images pulled all the stops to coerce and seduce at the same time.
-
- Rosie the Riveter, where are you?
-
- The most notable characteristic of the DHS campaign is
the stultifying effect of its cumulative banality. Its centerpiece, the
Advisory System, is a colored graph showing five levels of alarm - Low,
Guarded, Elevated, High, and Severe.
-
- The graphic icon looks like a circuit breaker panel,
and rightly so. Its function, it seems to me, is to create a disconnect
between preparedness and paranoia. Are the "Threat Conditions"
and their suggested "Protective Measures" based on reliable information
or on inflated intelligence reports? No one knows. But forewarned is forearmed.
"Terrorism forces us to make a choice. We can be afraid. Or we can
be ready," says Tom Ridge, DHS's top official.
-
- Only one thing is sure: the $100 million campaign Ridge
launched in February 2003 to support his "Get Ready" crusade
strives to alienate people from their emotions. Ostensibly promoting readiness
as an alternative to fear, it describes doomsday scenarios in dispassionate
language the way airlines describe the procedures to follow in the event
of sudden cabin depressurization or emergency water landing. Lengthy tutorials
dwell on cataclysmic disasters with steely military detachment, listing
biological, chemical and radiation threats in the same breath as nuclear
blasts.
-
- The campaign, masterminded by Ruder-Finn Interactive
as a pro bono initiative for the Ad Council, gives me the impression of
being deliberately designed to numb the senses. The website, Ready.gov,
presents guidelines to help Americans figure out what to do in the event
of a terrorist attack. Prosaic cartoons describe how to create a panic
room at home (a technique called "sheltering-in-place"), what
to do if you are exposed to radiation from a "dirty bomb" (remove
your clothes), or where to take cover during a nuclear explosion (under
your desk or in a fallout shelter, if you can find one!). The protagonist
of these "airtoons" - a term coined by internet humorists to
describe airline safety-card characters - is a white man wearing khaki
pants and a polo shirt. A listless, emotionless "pod" figure,
he is right out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Cold War propaganda
film classic. In fact, the entire website is eerily reminiscent of that
period. Its commonplace safety recommendations ("Store food that won't
go bad") could be lifted from a Federal Civil Defense Administration
manual from the 1950s.
-
- Yet, back then, in the glory days of the Red Scare, a
little fun was allowed. To promote its famous Duck and Cover campaign,
the Civil Defense created Bert the Turtle, the cheery and bow-tied cartoon
character who instructed schoolchildren to duck under their tiny desks
as if under a turtle shell during nuclear safety drills. No such moments
of levity are permitted in the current administration's concerted effort
to galvanize the public opinion. The ready.gov collateral brochure that
will soon be shipped to every U.S. household is a dour document spelling
out the same trivial recommendations as the website ("Be prepared
to improvise with what you have on hand to make it on your own for at least
three days, maybe longer."). It features photographs of law-abiding
citizens staring ahead with calm determination against a predictably fluttering
background of stars and stripes.
-
- Rational minds have a simple explanation for this display
of quiet hysteria. The DHS's Threat Advisory System and the readiness crusade
are in fact part of a legal maneuver - they constitute a covert disclaimer
that would make it difficult for individuals to sue the government for
liability in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack. A reassuring hypothesis
of sorts, this theory overlooks a couple of disturbing facts.
-
- First, Ruder-Finn's involvement raises a red flag. Sure,
with its formidable experience as a public relations firm and ad agency
for business and institutions, including government entities, it is logical
that it would be hired for the DHS campaign. With fourteen offices around
the world, it has an impressive list of clients, from the governments of
Turkey, Latvia and Moldova to Hugh Electronics and the Gallup Organization.
But unfortunately, the company has the dubious honor of being at the center
of a nasty internet conspiracy uproar. In internet postings questioning
the assertions of a recent BBC documentary titled The Fall of Milosevic,
Ruder-Finn is accused of mounting a PR campaign to demonize Milosevic in
the early 1990s, before the war in the Balkans. Why? As the theory goes,
the U.S. government wanted to remove the Yugoslavian leader because he
was opposing trade agreements promoting a free market economy in the region.
-
- In a revealing October 1993 interview with French television
journalist Jacques Merlino from TV2, James Harff, then a Ruder-Finn director
in Washington, D.C., boasted about what he called a public relations "coup."
"Speed is vital," he stated to explain why unsubstantiated intelligence
accusing Milosevic of organizing Bosnian death camps had been fed to the
press by Ruder-Finn. "It is the first assertion that really counts.
All future denials are entirely ineffective." Ruder-Finn's selection
for Tom Ridge's preparedness campaign throws a shadow on the project, particularly
when you consider the way the present administration has a record of using
faulty intelligence and hasty accusations to justify its actions and deter
its opposition.
-
- More telling, perhaps, is the Department of Homeland
Security's own website. It is rife with business opportunities in the defense
and technology sectors. Within a couple of clicks, you can find information
on how to get involved rebuilding Iraq, investigating the anthrax scare,
working in concert with the Coast Guard to protect our borders, developing
sensors to detect weapons of mass destruction, or doing research in computer
security. If that's not enough, google "Homeland Security" and
you will stumble on more than two million related websites offering journals,
newsletters, guides, products, job and contract opportunities, solutions
and courses in terrorism warfare. Scroll down past the government agency
sites and click Twotigersonline.com. Bingo. This is your portal into an
abyss of paranoia. Fill your cart with Geiger counters, detector kits,
prefab fallout shelters, supplies of potassium iodine and stocks in companies
that manufacture fire resistant materials, maritime security devices and
surveillance gadgets.
-
- I might be wrong, but historians will probably conclude
that the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded alert system is
an invention not unlike the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Nasdaq
Index. Rather than being based on intelligence reports, it is merely an
indicator of how defense and surveillance stocks are doing. The accompanying
public awareness campaign, they might also decide, was just a branding
exercise designed to convince the public that fearmongering is a great
American business proposition. No need to get upset. Emotions are counterproductive.
Terror management is a profitable innovation whose key products are national
security and prosperity at home.
-
- - Veronique Vienne first studied architecture at the
Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris. She now teaches in the MFA program at The
School of Visual Arts in New York City, and writes about design for a wide
range of publications.
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- ©2004 AIGA 164 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=%23.N'%2B%0A
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