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Fifty Years Of Political Ads
By Laurence Pantin In almost every election year since televised political advertising began in 1952, ads
have generated controversies and ethical or legal debates. As a result, some political ads
seem to stick in viewers’ minds and to even be part of the national cultural capital.
For instance, most Americans older than 50 will remember Lyndon Johnson’s 1964
“Daisy” ad, which contrasted the image of a girl picking petals off a daisy with
that of an atomic bomb exploding and was intended to raise fears about Barry
Goldwater’s inclination to start a nuclear war. It ran only once, on CBS on September
7, because Goldwater threatened to sue Johnson for libel. Yet, despite the retreat, the ad
was repeatedly shown in the news after the controversy was publicized. The material in “Political Advertisement 2000” is by no means exclusively for
those over 50 or for viewers of American television. Offering an overview of the history
of election politics and political advertising on TV, it is intended to provide a new
perspective on the current presidential campaign by highlighting how politicians try to
introduce themselves as heroes, how they try to differentiate themselves from their
opponents and how they attack each other. Power And The Media In the early 1980s, Muntadas showed some old political ads to American video and
installation artist Marshall Reese, who got enthusiastic about the project when he
recognized a 1968 ad commissioned by Hubert Humphrey attacking Richard Nixon. In this ad,
a man who is asked what Nixon has done for him seems incapable of remembering any
significant Nixon measure. While thinking hard — “There must be something
Nixon’s done,” he says — he enumerates good things others have
accomplished, for example, “Medicare? No, that was Humphrey’s idea.” The
irony in this ad distinguishes a new trend in political advertising, contrasting with the
straightforwardness of earlier ads. American Air, American Money Does Money Buy Votes? “[‘Political Advertisement 2000’] starts out clearly as a
documentation,” says Marion Masone, who brought the video to the Walter Reade
Theater, “and by removing themselves [the artists] let us see the craziness of it,
how it truly is selling of people.” Removing the ads from their original context
neutralizes their political and ideological message. This recontextualization creates a
critical space in which the viewers can directly analyze the ads’ form and challenge
their content. “If you see any decontextualized ads,” says Muntadas, “you start to
question the idea of truth in the words and the images you see.” In other words, when
watching “Political Advertisement,” what viewers perceive is not the political
or emotional message that they more or less passively receive when they see these ads on
their television sets. The tricks, the strategies, the way the candidates look the same
and talk the same, even though they constantly contradict one another — all these
factors stand out once the ads are taken out of context. Evolution of Ads
Muntadas and Reese’s enterprise is especially useful because it shows the evolution of the techniques of political ads. Starting with “Eisenhower Answers America”, where average Americans ask the candidate questions and get a brief answer from a straight, standing general, the video takes the viewers to 1960 Kennedy ads that made use of political friends and families, such as Eleanor Roosevelt comparing the candidate with her husband and Jackie Kennedy addressing a Hispanic crowd in Spanish. Another Kennedy ad intercuts pictures of the candidate and supporters with cartoonish drawings of hands holding banners, accompanied by a cheerful song whose simple lyrics urge you to choose “a man that’s old enough to know, but young enough to do.” Campaigns started using aggressive, negative ads, such as the 1964 “Daisy” ad and another Johnson ad linking Goldwater to the Ku Klux Klan. Earlier ads focus on the image of the candidates, while a newer generation don’t even show the candidate but instead use a voiceover to criticize the adversary. These noticeably more sophisticated ads began to turn up around the time that candidates started forming teams to advise them on image and advertising strategies. A 1968 Nixon anti-crime ad could be an excerpt from a suspense movie. It shows a woman walking alone, clearly scared by the sound of her own footsteps, which resonate in the silent night. When the voiceover starts enumerating statistics about crime, you expect to see a man jump into the screen to attack the woman. But when nothing happens to her, you feel relieved and realize you have been tricked into feeling the same anxiety the woman was supposed to feel. A 1972 George McGovern anti-bomb ad used the same kind of strategy, offering images of an injured Vietnamese child in his mother’s arms over the sounds of planes taking off. The child’s voice asks: “Does a president know that planes bomb children?”
“Political advertisement has changed,” Muntadas notes. “At first ads gave information. With the evolution of advertising, ads give less information about the product, and they are more about strategy. What they want is to get people to buy the product — the candidate.” Indeed, the spots in “Political Advertisement” reveal just how much techniques have evolved from an Eisenhower trying to make his stances clear to his viewers to a Reagan playing to the dreams of his audience. As Media Criticism So, if not a theory of how political ads influence voters, what will the viewers of Muntadas and Reese’s work get from it? The force of the project is that it pushes one to look critically at both political advertising and politics. When asked if she was impatient to see the new edition of “Political Advertisement 2000,” a viewer of an earlier version said, “Well, I’ve seen it already on TV, but without the mediation.” What she meant is that she had seen ads of the current campaign, and used her experience of watching the earlier video to understand the strategies, images and discourse. At the end of an hour of being bombarded with political advertising, you are left with the impression that candidates are offered to consumers/voters pretty much the same way beers, fast food or candy bars are. It doesn’t matter what taste, it doesn’t matter what brand, shape or color, they all look like they have the same artificial flavor. Just one shot of “Political Advertisement” might be enough to vaccinate you, for this political season at least, against letting election-time television in general, and political spots in particular, impress you. Whatever impact campaign ads could have had will be undercut by questions. This is the art: “Political Advertisement 2000” transforms a potentially influenced viewer into a skeptic. — Laurence Pantin is a graduate student in journalism at New York University. She was granted a scholarship from the Fulbright Commission in Paris, her home, last year. Screenings: Monday, October 30, 8 p.m. Wednesday, November 1, 7:30 p.m. The video can also be rented or purchased from: Video Data Bank, 112 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60603 (312) 345-3550 Information about Antoni Muntadas and his works can be found at: Information about Marshall Reese's other work can be found at:
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AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA. |
Last month, in the middle of the battle for
the American presidency, the Democrats accused the Republicans of using the equivalent of
chemical weapons in political campaigning: subliminal advertising. The suspect ad was a
television spot attacking Al Gore’s prescription drug proposal. It said that
Gore’s plan would let “bureaucrats decide” what coverage Medicare patients
receive, but as the word “bureaucrats” appeared on the screen, the word
“rats” flashed in capital letters for a thirtieth of a second. A suspicious
viewer saw it, the story got into the news, and another "dirty tricks"
controversy was born. 
The “Daisy” ad is one
of the nearly 100 ads — some of them well-known, others never seen before —
featured in their entirety in “Political Advertisement 2000,” a one-hour video
representing 12 presidential elections and 50 years of political ads, edited
chronologically and without commentary, by artists Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese.
Revised before each presidential election since 1984, “Political Advertisement”
will celebrate its fifth edition with screenings at the Lincoln Center Walter Reade
Theater in New York City on October 30th and at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley,
California on November 1st (more information 
Spanish artist Antoni
Muntadas’s fascination for political ads started when he met MIT political scientist
Edward Diamond, who was then working on “The Spot,” a book about the history of
political advertising. Some material in “Political Advertisement 2000” comes
from Diamond’s own collection. But while Diamond describes and analyzes the evolution
of political ads for his readers, Muntadas and Reese let the material speak for itself.
Muntadas, who has lived in the United States since 1971, is known for works that
investigate the mechanisms of power and the media, such as "
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan
specialized in “feel-good” ads. “Political Advertisement” features one
of them, in which the easy-listening tune, smiling families and photo of Reagan next to an
American flag communicate an everything-is-going-great message while avoiding any content.
Yet, once you contrast this with other ads in the video, you are likely to notice this
attempt at distracting your attention from the problems of real life; it’s the same
technique used in commercials which associate, through images, a product with a good
feeling. In the 1990s, nearly every candidate used this technique. 
