When Fear Turns Graphic
Just over two months ago, Switzerland banned the building of new minarets. “A poster was widely cited as having galvanized votes for the Swiss measure but was also blamed for exacerbating hostility toward immigrants and instigating a media and legal circus,” Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times reports. The poster depicted minarets rising like missiles from a Swiss flag with a woman wearing a niqab glaring next to it, and the word “stop” written below. Kimmelman states “the obvious message: Minarets lead to Sharia law.” Alexander Segert, who designed the Swiss minaret poster, told Kimmelman “ ‘if what we do stirs up controversy, then we’ve already won the election.’ ” Political scientist Marc Bühlmann agreed, explaining that “ ‘the aim in making the posters is to be as racist as possible, so then when critics complain, the populists can say elites don’t want ordinary people to know the truth. And the media fall for it every time.’ ” Designers like Segert are successful because, as Segert put it, “ ‘we know how to reduce information to the lowest level, so people respond without thinking.’ ”
- How can a poster exacerbate hostility? How can an image have so much power?
- Kimmelman writes of the posters: “crude, cleverly exploiting the ancient power of a still picture over moving ones to fix an image in a viewer’s mind, the posters share a calculated homeliness and violence that is in its own way artful.” What is propaganda? When does a piece of art become a piece of propaganda?
- When describing the role of the poster, Segert explained that “ ‘maybe 80 to 90 percent of people are not interested in elections. So our job is to tell them: Be interested in what doesn’t interest you, make a decision about something you don’t care about, then act on it, vote. That’s a lot for a poster to accomplish. We’re successful because we know how to reduce information to the lowest level, so people respond without thinking.’ ” How might a poster get someone to respond without thinking?
- Segert said that “ ‘if what we do stirs up controversy, then we’ve already won the election.’ ” What does he mean by this? The controversial nature of Segert’s images leads to their increased reproduction. Thus, Segert said, “the aim in making the posters is to be as racist as possible.” How might controversy lead to increased attention to the racist posters? How could this cycle be stopped? Why doesn’t the negative attention stop people from reproducing, sharing, or being influenced by these posters?
