Michael Casey | The Image Mirror

Four words that are already becoming a cliche: Obama is a brand.

I like to think I was a bit ahead of the curve on this idea (and, admittedly, I haven’t stopped banging on about it, having most recently hit the issue in the tail end of a CNN interview.) We don’t even need the news from Spain that eight trademark registrations for the name “Obama” are currently pending there to prove we are dealing with a powerful presidential brand. Obama’s political campaign was very early on focused on the persuasive power of images and on the management of a branded concept of packaged ideas, one that encapsulated desirable notions:  “hope,” “progress,” “change.” Inevitably, I hurried to put references to this phenomenon into my book as the Obama juggernaut swept into office before it went to print. And now, as I do interviews promoting the book, I find that the Obama versus Che brand comparison is a question that pops up frequently.

Me? This Obama feelgood stuff makes me feel good. But now I find Chris Hedges warning me against being duped into “Buying Brand Obama” - this from the left, not from the whining right. Hedges is excessively morbid, which I find antithetical to my own excessive optimism - a mere glance at the cover of “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” will tell you that the seminarian-cum-war correspondent-cum left-wing philosopher is a gloomy guy. But I admire his intellect. He’s an extremely clear-headed thinker with a rich repertoire of philosophical material to draw on. The problem is that he sometimes has too much of that thinking thing going on. In this case, his erudite unraveling of the nature of “pseudo spectacle” in politics go so far as to deny the existence of some fundamental elements of the human condition.

First, we find Hedges confusing the observation that Obama’s appeal is built around a branding strategy with the question of whether or not his policies are moving the country in the direction of true reform. Sure, there are reasons for progressives (myself included) to be skeptical of the Administration’s “progress: Obama is a long way from introducing universal health care and everything from Wall Street’s TARP to the Big Three auto bailout suggests that corporate lobbyists still rule Washington. But the truth is the ingrained structure of American power is such that dismantling it is not only politically difficult, it would be dangerously disruptive to do it in one fell swoop. Change has to come gradually. And for now I’d say that the gradual change is heading in the right direction. But to be sure, the Obama Administration deserves more than 100 days before I, Hedges, or anyone can pass judgment.

Still, an assessment of the Obama record is not what I most want to challenge Hedges on. Rather it is his assumption that images and brands are nothing but vehicles for distorting people’s perceptions of reality. Yes, they are abstractions from reality but, as semioticians habitually remind us, so too are words and language. We all communicate in stories, embellishing ideas so as to tap into our listener’s or our viewer’s emotions. Regular communication, I would argue, always contains a big emotional element in the same way that commercial branding strategies do. (Question: was Hedges’ choice of title for his new book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” a random decision, without any mind to how it might influence the prospect of the book’s sale?)

Throughout history, images have been the most powerful means of communicating ideas. It starts with cave paintings and moves through the insignia and iconography of ancient religions and tribes to the national flags of the modern era. Just like modern brands, these symbolic images of old reduced something complex and difficult into a simple, appealing concept.  It’s how politics, religion and commerce has always been conducted. Branding is really a fancy new name dreamed up by U.S. business schools for a very, very old practice.

Even more important, I find it offensive to think that by letting my emotions be moved by an image or a brand I am necessarily being conned. Note: Nelson Valdes, another writer who occupies the same zone on the left as Hedges has criticized me (inaccurately) for treating the Cuban Revolution as a brand and for misrepresenting those who support it as dupes of a marketing plot. Not only does this criticism contradict Hedges, both miss the point. And they do so by wrongly assuming that the relationship between an individual and a political brand devalues the person. I can’t disagree more. Much of what makes us human, that which feeds our imagination and allows us to separate ourselves from our “inhuman” earthly existence is tied up in the emotional investment we make in images, art and brands.

This became clear to me when I encountered Jaquelin, a teenager in a destitute Argentine shantytown who told me that the reason she never, ever removed her Che T-shirt was because “he is beautiful” and because “I dream of him, always.” (Read about the encounter in the epilogue to my book, excerpted here.) The Che image - i.e. the Che brand - offers her a chance to escape the drudgery of her harsh daily existence through the refuge of beauty and imagination. More than anything, the Che image gives her hope. She deserves this “luxury” more than anything else I would argue, for to indulge in such imagination is what makes her human. The hope, dreams and imagination inspired by the brands and images that surround us are the foundation upon which humanity is built.

Letting people believe in Obama and the change he represents is a positive thing in its own right. Whether or not the real world still sucks is another matter altogether.