If you had to pick one image, one “iconic image”, to represent the Iraq war what would it be? No contest, really, the one that would come to mind is the pulling down of Saddam Hussein’s statue. The Americans were presenting the war as a liberation, not an invasion, their soldiers would be greeted by flowers, said one war architect. Memories of the Americans riding into Paris in 1944 were being invoked. The Americans riding into Baghdad were the same as those GI Joes riding into Paris on their jeeps, pretty girls rushing out to kiss them, old women and children throwing rose petals, everywhere cheering crowds, and, all over Paris, citizens smashing, pulling down, destroying, symbols of the occupation. This is what they were, in Iraq, liberators, and they wanted to eliminate any possible comparison with the columns of German tanks driving into Paris in 1940, met by sullen and stony faced crowds, some of whom would soon form the Resistance.
So, liberation, not invasion, and liberated people would, naturally, pull down the Saddam Hussein statue, that’s what liberated people do. And so down it came, in slow motion, cheering people around it. And the world saw and registered the iconic image as proof of the legitimacy of American action.
Trouble was, of course, as became quickly known, unlike 1944 Paris, this was all a stage managed fake. The statue was pulled down by American soldiers, the cheering “crowd’ was tiny, just a few people gathered around the base, as became evident when the original close up film released by the US was compared to a wide angle shot of the square. And the small crowd were essentially a rent-a-crowd, Iraqis in exile who had quickly been brought in by the Americans as the invasion succeeded. There were no crowds throwing flowers at the American soldiers.
Didn’t matter. The fake iconic image was reality. It established a truth the Americans were creating. Sadly the lie was quickly overtaken by reality as a resistance movement rapidly formed to resist the occupation troops. But didn’t really matter because the icon had three advantages. It was cheap to create – a few soldiers, and an army vehicle, a length of chain, half a dozen Iraqi performers. It matched public expectations of reality, and so was accepted as being so even when the construction of the image was exposed. And it was short and sweet, a convenient chunk of an image which would sit in the libraries of television channels all round the world, a short sequence which could provide wallpaper vision behind any news item on the Iraq war. Would still be used in this way seven years later, by which time there would be few people in the west who hadn’t been exposed to it, overtly or subliminally, hundreds of times over those seven years. And every exposure would harden the view that this was the way things were, this virtual reality, of liberating Americans and a grateful Iraqi public, would replace actual reality.
Reminded me of a sequence of events in Perth recently. The government announces that it intends to take a proportion of the grossly inflated profits of mining companies. Instant protests, and threats, from the heads of mining companies. But not really a good look, grotesquely rich mining chiefs complaining that they have to pay more tax when they are already worth billions of dollars. Hard to get sympathy from anyone except Tony Abbott when you have already personally extracted billions of dollars from the soil of Australia, soil, in theory at least, owned by us all. So campaign not going well. What to do? Get Mitch Hooke to scowl at everyone? Get Clive Palmer to accuse Rudd of being a communist? Nah, people just laugh at you. Need an iconic image.
Ah ha, got it. A demonstration, the people take to the streets, protests by the public against big brother in Canberra, ordinary men and women of Australia trying to turn back the creeping tide of Rudd socialism, hold on to their jobs. And so there was a demonstration, on the evening news bulletins. “People protest against new mining tax”. “Good heavens”, the viewer would say, “the people are revolting. This isn’t just a matter of Tony and his rich mates, this is grass roots concern, whatever has the Labor Party come to when it punishes the workers?”
Well, that was what the casual viewer would say, but a political junkie, wondering what was going on here, paid a bit more attention. And suddenly realised that this piece of iconic film might not be what it seemed. First of all there were Gina and Twiggy, clearly wondering how they too were going to put bread on their tables, just like the horny handed sons of the mines. And there were Iron Bar and Julie, marching it seemed, to the Internationale for the first time. And speaking of sons of the mines, didn’t these people in their suits and ties look rather more like office workers than miners? Then you became aware that with one, I think, exception, the signs these people were holding up were rather too neat. All the same size, all neatly mounted on poles, all PRINTED. There was none of the hastily written, in crayon or variously coloured paints, in the white hot rage of class warfare, made up slogans scribbled, and misspelt, and barely fitting on the sign so the last few letters of “unite” had to be written very small, signs of real demonstrations by uni students or people trying to save koalas. No, all beautifully printed on a machine in uniform font, nicely centred.
And finally you realised that it was a little odd that these people were packed closely together, tightly shoulder to shoulder, rather like a school class photo, or tourists on a bus trip. And even odder that the filming was being done just a few metres from the front row, carefully avoiding any wide angled context shots rather in the way that the fall of Saddam’s statue was filmed. You wondered, if the whole population of WA had arisen in revolution and were filling the Esplanade, why only one tiny part of these masses was being filmed. The next night all of these puzzles were apparently solved when one tv reporter (the only one I saw do this) suggested that the demonstration had been organised by the publicity company that works for miners, and that most of the demonstrators were office staff from the company, bused down a couple of streets from where they were working, handed the beautifully prepared signs, and told to look photogenic and chant a bit. Well, of course he might say so but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Anyway, whoever these people were (and I don’t know, for sure, that there wasn’t a real miner in there somewhere), however many of them there were, and whoever had organised proceedings and printed the signs and marked the spot where the cameras should be set up, didn’t matter. The television networks had a piece of footage that could be run as wallpaper behind any news item on the new tax, and, to match the footage, some mention would need to be made of the mass public protests, the grass roots resistance. Didn’t matter if cynical old fellas like me had considerable skepticism about how the “demonstration” was constructed, there it was. And there it continued to be, on every channel, on every occasion where negotiations were underway, right up to Julia’s recent visit to the West. The state, naturally, where there was “public outrage”, cue footage of massed protesters and printed signs again, where, as a result, Labor was in big trouble. Footage that undoubtedly will continue to be run right up to the election. Footage which, for a very small outlay in the cost of some cardboard and poles and a printer, and a small bus, resulted in thousands of votes going back to the Liberals, and billions of dollars going back to the mining executives.
Powerful things, icons, but cheap.
