Visual Culture Blog

Leader of the opposition in Great Britain, Ed Miliband, at the Bethnal Green Academy 10 January 2012.
Photo by Stefan Rousseau, PA.

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I have turned my attention to the so-called photo op on a number of occasions. For instance, in my post ‘A Photo Op Gone Awry’, I wrote about the amazing moment caught on news cameras when a doctor angrily kicked the British Prime Minister David Cameron off his ward for failing to follow hospital procedures. While the photo op can be a potential disaster, it can, on the other hand, also be a golden opportunity for politicians wanting to improve their public image. Barack Obama famously bent over to allow a little boy to touch his hair as analyzed in my post ‘The President’s Haircut’. Unpredictable behaviour from children or ranting doctors – they are the unforeseen variables that can turn a photo op into a success or an utter failure.

Yet it is also the politicians themselves who can dramatically impact the potential success or failure of a photo op. Let me turn my attention to a more recent photo op to illustrate my point. In advance of an important speech on the economy, the leader of the opposition in Great Britain, Ed Miliband, visited the Bethnal Green Academy in East London on 10 January. Sitting at a table with young pupils, the majority of whom are from an ethnic minority, Miliband sought to portray himself as a careful and empathetic listener, in tune with the desires and anxieties of a younger generation.

Miliband’s position at the table is crucial. Sitting next to two black girls Miliband’s advisors wish to emphasize three important agendas: the Labour party supports young people, young people from ethnic minorities, and especially, young women from ethnic minorities. Miliband’s empathy with this marginalized future group of voters (one that might decide who becomes the next Prime Minister in 2015) is also explored on a visual level. Miliband’s attire is somewhat mirroring that of the pupils next to him, while his tie closely resembles the main colour of the school library in the background and the pamphlets on the table. This mirroring effect can also seen in the image as a whole as the left side of the image closely resembles the right side of the image with Miliband representing the central axis point.

While the girl on the right hand side of the image appears to listen intently to someone in the background, the girl on the left looks straight into the camera. Her facial expression and the slightest hint of a smile give the impression that she is aware of her own image, and possibly, that she also knows why she is placed next to the leader of the opposition. She exudes the type of awareness that is normally associated with image savvy celebrities.

In contrast to the girl’s self-awareness, Miliband appears spaced out as he neither seems to listen intently nor look at the camera. His eyes, wide open and not focusing on anything in particular, make Miliband look as if he is a pupil himself, lost in his own thoughts and struggling to hang on for attention. If this was a real classroom situation, one might imagine the teacher asking Miliband: ‘Ed, are you with us?’. The tragedy of the photo op is that Miliband looks like a child, even less mature and aware of his surroundings then the very children around him.

A small detail in the photograph that debunks this narrative is the cup of tea in front of Miliband. In spite of empathetically sitting next to young students, the cup of tea makes Miliband look undeservedly privileged. One British newspapers exploited this detail when it wrote in the caption of the photograph: ‘Not your cup of tea? Ed Miliband meets pupils at Bethnal Green Academy, in east London, ahead of a speech on the economy.’ (Metro) From an image campaigners point of view, what was likely a carefully planned photo op, turned into a complete disaster. Emerging dazed from the Bethnal Green Academy, Miliband would give a speech that was supposed to convince the British people of his economic prowess.

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AFP

It was, as usual, a carefully choreographed photo op: at an event hosted by LinkedIn, Barrack Obama promoted his $447 Billion jobs package that shall but Americans back to work. The current jobless rate of 9.1 percent is an extremely worrying figure that will likely define the upcoming elections. It therefore made sense to hold this town hall type of discussion with LinkedIn – an online tool for professional networking. Sitting next to Jeff Weiner, the charismatic and handsome CEO of LinkedIn, Obama sought to bathe in the glory of LinkedIn’s success story. Other visual markers reiterate this association: the LinkedIn logo is clearly on display throughout the room, the curtains represent the colour of the company and in the background are mainly LinkedIn employees.

Here, Obama appears to follow a pattern after visiting similar events hosted by Facebook and Twitter. The next year is election year and the Obama administration is carefully aligning itself with the major players of Silicon Valley. It was, after all, the power of the social network that helped Obama into power in the first place. If the social network can help Obama find a job, the underlining message of the photo op is that the social network can also help those that are currently still looking. It is a message filled with optimism and this most Obamaesque of words: hope.

On closer inspection however the main visual association with LinkedIn might come to haunt the Obama administration. It is true that LinkedIn is one of the great recent success stories of the boom in social media. In May 2011 LinkedIn was floated on the New York Stock Exchange which resulted in a market capitalization of currently $7.5 Billion. At the same time however, in the last quarter LinkedIn posted a net income of only $4.5 Million. In other words, LinkedIn’s capitalization does not reflect it’s current income, but rather, it reflects the market’s belief in future income. One of the main indices used to calculate the worthiness of a company’s stock is price-to-earnings ratio (P/E ratio) which, for most ‘traditional’ companies, hovers below or above 14. LinkedIn’s P/E ratio, on the other hand, is currently rated at 1100 either indicating an extremely high expectation in future growth or that the stock is subject to a speculative bubble. Obama’s association with LinkedIn is either based on extreme expectations, or, far worse, it is based on extreme speculation.

But there is another far more important reason why I believe the LinkedIn photo op was a rather ill fated event. Although LinkedIn claims to help those currently looking for a job, with just over 1.000 staff LinkedIn doesn’t actually employ many people themselves. This dilemma is better represented by comparing other companies with a similar market cap: US Steel ($3.35 Billion) employs 42.000, AMD ($4.42 Billion) employs 11.100 and Abercrombie & Fitch ($5.70 Billion) employs 9.000 full-timers whereas it also employs 76.000 part-timers. Obama’s association with LinkedIn is thus purely based on the superficial belief that indeed, LinkedIn creates job opportunities for those who subscribe to it’s services – some of which at a significant monthly cost for the user (I am yet to come across someone who actually got a job through LinkedIn).

A week ago the American Census Bureau published a shocking figure: 46.2 million Americans now live in absolute poverty. By far the worst statistics in the industrialized world, that figure represents nearly on in six Americans. Are these the people that sign up to LinkedIn in the hope of finding a job? Is it those people that have the internet connection that would even allow them to access LinkedIn in the first place? Are these the people that have the IT and media degrees that would make them potentially desirable in Silicon Valley? While these questions remain unanswered, the LinkedIn photo op represents an extremely risky strategy which ultimately hinges on LinkedIn’s continued success in the future. Similar to those investing in a vastly overvalued company, the President’s advisors will hope that LinkedIn’s stock prize has not quite yet reached a precipice.

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Al Jazeera’s news coverage of the Libyan Revolution currently unfolding is hugely symbolical: the left hand of the screen depicts jubilant crowds who have gathered in Benghazi following the news that the ‘rebels’ have taken control of Tripoli, the right hand side of the screen depicts precisely these rebels as they are trampling, kicking, hitting and even driving over a carpet that depicts Muammar Gaddafi. Al Jazeera thus sets out one of the overriding dichotomies evoked by the Arab Revolution: hope symbolised by the jubilant crowds in Benghazi and fury symbolised by those defacing the image of Gaddafi.

The defacing of Gaddafi’s image in the Al Jazeera’s news footage has been, in fact, a reoccurring theme during the Arab Revolution. As the autocratic regimes of Tunisia and Egypt were toppled, it was representations of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak respectively that were attacked by protestors. Even in countries where the political shift has yet to occur, representations of dictators such as Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen or Bashar al-Assad of Syria are a common target for those seeking the end of their reign.

The Libyan Revolution in particular vividly illustrates that the defacing of a dictator’s image holds, in itself, a political power protestors appear to tap into. A recent news photograph depicts rebels as they poke their guns into a Gaddafi poster. The gun penetrating the surface of the poster is symbolical for the rebels penetrating the instruments of power of the regime in Tripoli. Importantly, in the photograph a hand holding a mobile phone can be seen reaching into the image. The mobile phone is recording an action which is similarly performed all over liberated parts of the country. The defacing of the poster is not simply an action worth recording on the mobile phone, or, by extension the news photographer on site, but also, it becomes a recognisable gesture symbolising the eventual toppling of Gaddafi himself.

To deface, as the dictionary notes, is to mar or spoil the appearance or surface of an image. Derived from the Old French word desfascier, it literally denotes the disfigurement of the ‘face’. In the true sense of the word, defacement of an image presumes that the image depicts a human being. As all the aforementioned regimes are ruled by individual men, it is only natural that it is their image that is consistently attacked. In other words, an autocracy, or a form of government in which one person possesses unlimited power, is the very precondition for the popularity of the defacement of rulers during the Arab Revolution. In Libya, after being visually bombarded with images of Gaddafi in heroic poses for more than four decades, the frustration of the Libyan people is most bluntly observed in the way they attack Gaddafi’s image. Attacking representations of Gaddafi becomes the conduit for political and ideological opposition.

Another news photograph depicts a little girl as she is kicking a drawing of Gaddafi. A reading of the photograph suggests that while the little girl is not participating in the armed uprising as such, she is, symbolically, standing up against his tyranny. The defacement of Gaddafi thus becomes a gesture that is not exclusive to those participating in the armed struggle. In the photograph, like in many other similar photographs, the physical contact between the shoes and Gaddafi’s face connote the ultimate insult in Arab culture as George W. Bush once famously dodged shoes at a press conference in Baghdad.

It is important to note however that there is a significant difference between defacing an image and destroying an image. Representations of Gaddafi are penetrated, torn, drawn over, kicked, hit, spat at, maybe even burnt – yet ultimately, as an image, it often survives. In the photograph above, the paint of a Gaddafi street mural is crumbling away in parts where it has been most consistently kicked. Yet Gaddafi right hand fist can still be seen as it is defiantly raised towards the sky. So rather than concentrating on what defacement is doing, let me spell out what it is not doing: it is not entirely getting rid of an image, a representation, a poster or any other type of visual propaganda imaginable. The partial preservation of Gaddafi’s image suggests that, ultimately, in order to move towards an unknown future a reminder of the past must be stay in sight.

For more on cultural production in the Arab world, please read Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field edited by Tarik Sabry.