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New Surveillance Propogandist imagery..

13:06 / 28.10.02

Right - there's a really good post here about a new poster that has been around London recently. Frankly it's a terrifyingly Big Brotherish poster that's making the imagery of that novel almost real... Here's a pulled in copy of the image...

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Here's what I put on my site about it: "I've had issues with the levels of surveillance that are appearing in the UK for quite a while now. When I lived in Hampstead I remember remarking that there was no point between my front door and my desk at work where I was not on at least one camera. Every so often someone decides to celebrate the terrifying amount of cameras around us all and hey normally do that with a poster telling us all how safe we are now that we're continually examined. Just recently a new poster started appearing around London, and frankly it's terrifying beyond measure. It looks like the cover of a 1950s alien-invasion novel, and drips with the sentiments of 1984's Big Brother posters. But it's difficult to know what to complain about - the poster itself is more than a little distasteful, but at least it's triggering a little alarm from liberal parts of the country. Without it we'd probably accept this stuff without a second thought..."

13:23 / 28.10.02

That's horrible. I thought it was a joke poster at first glance. They must know how that really looks.

13:25 / 28.10.02

Fabulous graphic art, but surely (as Barry says) they must realise the message that that gives out? Especially as everyone gets taught how to recognise wartime propaganda in school history lessons these days...

pointless and uncalled for

13:31 / 28.10.02

Britian is widely recognised as having the highest level of public & private surveillance and authoratative observation in the democratic world and has been for sometime.

I can understand the reasons behind the campaign as there have been a number programs, reports and the like relating to security issues on public transportation. Given the existing pre-scare imagery of London transport it is an important move that they attempt to negate this negative PR. However, the employees of LT's marketing division and the advertising company clearly should be lined up and poked with large sharp sticks for a long time.

On the subject of actual surveillance I have it on good authorities that the capacity for monitoring far, far exceeds the real levels maintained.

When seeing counter-big-brother sentiments expressed I am often keen to put up a poster of my own. Maybe the slogan would be Anarchists Relax - "They" haven't go a clue.

13:37 / 28.10.02

Perhaps it's a lead-in to a campaign for boosting public revenue by fining people who are sick on the buses...

13:44 / 28.10.02

It does reek of 40s WWII / 50s Cold War imagery.

Like receiving a cell beating by a bunch of coppers wearing Dixon of Dock Green masks.

But it feels like a parody. Is that designed to neutralise the feelings of violation with a knowing wink? Or is it just really badly thought out?

How about duplicate posters with the eyes asleep and the bus careering off the bridge? Tagline: "Errrrr... Wha...?"

13:55 / 28.10.02

Since the aim of this campaign is clearly to act as a deterrent (the suggestion being that you're probably being watched), I think they're fully aware of the image the poster presents.
For me, that the poster has a nasty Orwellian touch about it is marginally less disturbing than the fact that I can only rally my brain to actually care about being under surveillance when I'm not too busy elsewhere.

14:06 / 28.10.02

Actually, Tom, have you read the comments on that post at Samizdata? Instructive... many of the posters are saying that the poster and the level of surveillance is due to (in effect) Britain's nancy nanny State forbidding its citizens the right to defend themselves with guns. Oh, and of course, David Blunkett is a Stalinist... good God...

Surely there's something wrong with the automatic assumption that CCTV cameras are a *left-wing* intervention into the rights of human beings and part of the PC conspiracy ('yet do not dare to make an allegedly 'racist' remark or pour scorn on someone's religion or make a joke about Wales: if you do then expect to find yourself up in front of the Beak justifying yourself under threat of fine or gaol, and forget saying "I was just exercising my right to freedom of speech".')

Call me idiotarian, but why do these people assume that 'totalitarian' automatically equals 'left-wing'? Can't we have some kind of resistance to this stuff that doesn't rely on horrible right-wing rhetoric?

15:19 / 28.10.02

I think it is retro to make it all warm and fuzzy and familiar to imply that surveillance is not a new thing. It's so very English and reiterates a world before all that complicated modern stuff like video technology and, I guess, immigration, bringing to mind that glorious past where you could leave your front door open and we looked after each other. That mythical, street-crime-free period after Dickensian London and before the jailing of the Krays.

It's not, I think, targeted at the politically/historically literate.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will make much sense to your average twenty-first-century street urchin either.

15:30 / 28.10.02

Kit-Cat> "Totalitarian" is not necessarily a right-wing word. And it is a uniquely left-wing strategy. In a capitalist society , you can't force people to buy stuff they don't need, or vote for you, you have to use other, less perfect, means of persuasion.

15:35 / 28.10.02

But not all right-wingers are capitalists, or big business capitalists at any rate... and the very far right can be just as prescriptive as the far left.

Totalitarian: Of or pertaining to a system of government which tolerates only one political party, to which all other institutions are subordinated, and which usu. demands the complete subservience of the individual to the State. (OED)

15:56 / 28.10.02

They come down to the same thing really, but "manufactured consent" is different. And probably cheaper.

19:52 / 28.10.02

I suppose it *was* rather daft of me to use 'totalitarian' when I don't think any of the posters I was talking about did... but I think it's fairly clear what I meant, which was: why do many people (I was going to say right-wingers which is not what, after a closer look, the people at Samizdata are - they're libertarians) regard state coercion as being a purely left-wing phenomenon?

Don't quite know where 'manufactured consent' came from - unless you mean that that's the right-wing version of totalitarianism? In any case, saying this: They come down to the same thing really, but "manufactured consent" is different doesn't make much sense to me - could you clarify that?

I think I'm getting this all tangled up with my warblogger problem...

21:46 / 28.10.02

I wouldn't say daft. And I'm often guilty of using a particular form of verbal shorthand that only I understand :-)

Yup, I'd say "manufactured consent" is the right-wing version of totalitarianism. Right-wing governments can't do totalitarianism as such because it conflicts with their professed ideology. So they distort truths to get the population on-side.

Left-wing governments don't have this problem because it's clear from the start who's in charge.

21:47 / 28.10.02

And what's your warblogger problem? :-)

22:14 / 28.10.02

Impotent and inarticulate rage, usually. On my part, that is. They either ignore me or delete things. Actually harder to approach than Ganehs's Christian BB... and less open to alternative points of view. I've pretty much given up now.

I'm going to make myself a t-shirt saying 'Proud to be Idiotarian'...

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:15 / 28.10.02

I agree that it's a gorgeous illustration - such detail! - but it does appear that the bods at the London Buses design station seem to be bereft of Vitamin Clue. How can this have anything but bad associations?

More when I've had a think; but typical - I leave and they finally put something other than those "pick your fare evasion colour" posters. Bastards!

23:45 / 28.10.02

Kit-Cat> I take my hat off to you for going into the lion's den. People like the Anti-idiotarian daschund and Lileks in my opinion are all barking mad and have deliberately forgotten what they learned in their freshman World Affairs classes because it was oh so complicated. And, I suspect, have very small penises.

But we're wandering off topic ... the only way I can think of to turn it back is:

Rothkoid> Did you also miss that other new, ill-conceived bus-stop poster -- the schematic plan of the bus route, replacing the proper street map showing the route in the real world with all the connections? What is the point? Now nobody can tell where the hell they are after a few drinks. Good for muggers hoping for disorientated victims though. Perhaps that's why they've had to raise the profile of the CCTV.

10:09 / 29.10.02

Actually I think the poster's rilly quite cool. By foregrounding the Big Brother imagery it both undercuts the instinctive "It's just like Orwell" and emphasises the differences. (Which is to say that, unless you're a big fan of the slippery slope school, it's pretty clear that the cameras are to stop people pissing on the top deck of the bus rather than hound political dissidents).

Then again I'm a big of fan of pulp illustrations and can excuse almost anything in their name...