Written By: - Date published: 4:51 pm, June 8th, 2008 - 69 comments
Categories: john key, spin -
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We got this in from the ‘sod and we like it so here’s the guest post we swore we’d never give him (taking the piss out of Ian Wishart didn’t count). ‘Sod, don’t let it go to your head.
Brand Key, or the cultural logic of late capitalism in NZ politics
Like others I have been disappointed to see National do so well in the polls despite offering nothing of substance. Unlike others I have not been surprised. Y’see for a long time now I’ve been arguing that we are now playing a whole new game. No. It’s not a whole new game it’s a whole new era and it’s one in which the foundations of left (and indeed traditional conservative) thought are no longer available to use.
To explain this situation I’m gonna use Fredric Jameson’s watershed essay, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, as an analytical template. This may mean that this post gets a little harder to read than a blog post should be but I’m gonna try and keep it as simple as possible.
The basic argument of Jameson’s work is that the cultural era we are in (loosely labeled postmodernism) is a cultural reflection of particular brand of capitalism we are currently engaged in multinational speculative capitalism. And that as in every era this means of production creates our cultural logic. By which he means the logics of the way we do business and feed ourselves become the logics of our day to day life including our art and our perception of the world. Jameson uses this critical lens to distinguish cultural postmodernism from cultural modernism (the last significant cultural era).
So what does this mean politically?
As the title of my post suggests it provides a way to understand the phenomenon that is “Brand Key” and I’m gonna compare this to “Helen Clark”. You may think it’s unfair to describe Key as a brand and Clark as a person but with any luck my reasons for this dichotomy will become clear as you read this post.
I figure the best way to do this is to take the steps of Jameson’s argument, simplify them for mass-consumption and replace his examples with domestic political examples. So let’s begin…
The Deconstruction of Expression
The idea behind this is that the difference between modernist and postmodern cultural expression is that modernist expression relies on innate meaning while its postmodern counterpart relies on a series of interrelations with a marketplace of meanings. Jameson uses a juxtaposition of Van Gogh with Warhol to describe this Van Gogh’s work is about human depth and implied stories and Warhol’s is about surface and relationships to exterior, commodified narratives. The former requires thought, the latter actively discourages it.
To see a local political example of this you only need to go as far as the way in which the two main parties market to the Maori electorate. In a typically modernist way Helen Clark will talk at length about wins made for Maori and about policy. In doing so she is deliberately using stories that reach forward and backwards in time and creating narrative of cause and effect just as Van Gogh’s painting of peasant shoes relies on a sense of history and pathos to do its work on the viewer.
John Key on the other hand takes a brown kid to Waitangi and wears a tiki teeshirt or orchestrates a hongi photo-op with Tama Iti. By doing this he is (or rather, his advisers are) creating a story by attaching his brand to other “brands” through a surface association just as Warhole’s art gathers its meaning though reference to other brands (such as Campell’s Soup or Marilyn Munro).
Which brings me onto “the Waning of Affect”
Jameson argues that a trope of the postmodern cultural experience is that “affect” or emotional depth is replaced by surface or perhaps more accurately by multiple surfaces. Jameson again uses the example of Warhol but this time compares it to Munch’s famous painting, the Scream. The idea being that the Scream is about human experience and the tragic human struggle to express the inexpressible while Warhol’s Marilyn gets its meaning from the flattened repetition of a single image reduced to an abstracted brand in fact, I would argue, reduced to a logo.
We see this exact thing happening politically. John Key’s use of lines involving the “block of cheese” work to create a meaning that is no longer based on the real price of cheese or on the real relationship between cheese prices and people’s budgets but has become a catchphrase tied into a commodity but bereft of real human meaning. I was very interested to note his careful use of terms like “caramello” in his post budget speech as, like Warhol does with his soup paintings, he is invoking a familiar brand to create a surface connection with his audience. This connection does not bear out in terms of any deep logic – I mean, what does a particularly popular type of chocolate have to do with political leadership? But it doesn’t have to. In fact the application of logic is counter-productive as can be seen in the response to Helen Clark (and to others in the Labour party) when they explain policy detail they are often seen as aloof and “out of touch”. Interestingly, Jameson comments on the fact that much of postmodern theory has been focused on discrediting ideologies founded on “truths” – and it is a short jump from there to see that the postmodern condition punishes those who try to say in any explicit manner whatsoever “this is how it is”.
This “surfaceness” extends to the concept of “Euphoria and Self-Annihilation”
Modernism relied a great deal on the individual subject. On human emotion and response. We see this in modernist works like Ulysses in which it is the experiences of the protagonist that are most important. In postmodern works such as Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 the protagonist is nothing more that an assortment of unstable narratives based on interactions with a world that is constantly shifting.
I would argue that in a postmodern environment the very thing some people criticise John Key for (“he’s anything you want him to be”) is a strength. He has no “self” and as such he exists, like the protagonist of “Crying”, in many different forms in the minds of many different voters and as the product of many different and constantly changing stories.
Clark on the other hand is very much a figure with stable meaning. Again this is because of the fact that she is presented to voters very much in terms of “core-values”, policy and personal history. She is real while brand key is not. But “real” is not something that figures so strongly in the new cultural logic. Because the idea of “self” has been annihilated.
What does figure is euphoria. Jameson’s interpretation of this is that feelings or “intensities” are now free-floating and impersonal. The generic rush has replaced empathetic depth. It’s Iwi/Kiwi over an explanation of how minimum wage rises can make life better for people and it’s euphoric catchphrases such as “violent crime out of control” rather than a contextualised analysis of the causes and effects of crime.
Historicism Effaces History
Another aspect of Jameson’s model of postmodernism is that history is no longer seen as “real” instead history itself become a series of dislocated stories or nostalgias in which are be compiled into a “history”. The important thing to remember is that these stories should not be rendered in terms of cause and effect but as a series of signifying moments they represent rather than reveal. Thus the creation of John Key as a “state house child” has its value in terms of the associations it can conjure rather than as a concrete piece of explanatory information. Despite the fact that many middleclass people grew up in state houses the context such housing has now (and in the postmodern context “now” is all there is) is that it is for the poor. Thus John’s “statehouse childhood” becomes an important way of attaching him to the “poor boy made good” narrative that is already embedded in the cultural logic. And it stops there – the details of this story are immaterial as is any attempt to try to unpack it in terms of what it actually meant because history exists only as a present cultural product. Like the tiki tee-shirt the statehouse childhood story gathers its meaning via its attachment to another story not through any inherent meaning of its own.
A good way to understand this is the marketing of Coke. You will never see advertising in which someone takes a long draw from a can of Coke and then turns to the screen and says “mmm Coke is good and this is why…” instead you see the brand placed amongst stories that will resonate at a surface level such as young beautiful people holding coke cans while playing at the beach. This is the difference between Labour and brand key. Labour’s presentation is modernist it says “this is the product and this is why it is good”. Brand Key recognises the fact that this is redundant. Instead brand Key is about surface association with other narratives. That’s why he talked about cheese toasties after the budget, wore the tiki tee-shirt and made his DVD – because his marketing team understand the current cultural logic. Thus each of these moves was an attempt to provide Brand Key with its meaning by associating it with external stories rather than trying to infuse it with depth.
There are plenty of other examples of the postmodern condition in Jameson’s work but this post is already too long so I’ll jump right to the thesis.
The reason we have this cultural logic is the means of production. The way we think about the world is constructed around the way we materially survive in it. Modernism was the result of the industrial revolution. Its memes were founded on the production of things and on the machines that made them. Postmodernism is founded on multinational capitalism and its speculative nature. There is no gold standard for currency instead there is a whole lot of different currencies that find their value only in relation to each other. Our perception-shapers the journos, the policy makers, the business people have the computer and the internet as their primary tools now and television is the main medium through which people receive their understanding of the world. These are the tools of reproduction not of production and it is inevitable that the logics of these technologies would become the logics that we use to understand the world. That is, surface interconnection and the presentation of reality as a series of interconnected but foundationless stories. But it is not simply changes in technology that account for this change. Rather this technology should be seen as the manifestation of late-capitalism itself in which our economies are reliant on constructed signifiers such as sub-prime debt-packages that have their value and meaning calculated in ways that are more to do with their surface interrelation than any tangible reality.
I suspect that as an ex-currency speculator John Key operates in this floating market of meanings more naturally than Helen Clark does but the thing is these people are campaigning to be our Prime Minister. I know that Helen Clark wants the job in order to make change (a very modernist impulse); I suspect John just sees it as another scene in the story of Brand Key. A man for our times indeed.
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Key has plenty of substance but he knows its not what most NZs want. He wants to finish Rogering us. So he’s not going to let on until it’s too late.
Late Capitalism is not different from early capitalism. Key’s mates may be speculators, but his no 1 backers in the US make real money from producing real commodities (like in China). Not to let China steal a FTA they would like to screw us a bit more on their own account so Key is their man.
The style thing is a delaying tactic. Ironically it says something about our ability still to tell substance from style. Despite O’Reilly and Murdoch onside, Key can’t gamble that the media will monster us once his true policies are out there.
Jameson was always a wanker.
Bravo Sod
Despite your ‘dumbing down’ (which I for one certainly appreciate) I think what you wrote would, rightly, be labelled inaccessible if you tried to spread it around. As FLV illustrated. Sadly, people being inaccessible doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Agree with the suggestions – I’m working on the humour one. Turn Keys Coke into Pepsi (I wonder if the Greens realised how apt their labelling of the two parties was! Doubt it…)
I’ll be spreading what you wrote around among the few people I know who’ll make an effort to read it. Well done.
Robinsod- very thorough analysis that resonates highly with what the people I talk politics with have been saying- ie. that national is making an emotive argument for power rather than a rational one, and we need to get emotive too if we’re to have comparable draw for the election, instead of just bullet-pointing what we’ve done.
Personally I think you still managed to overcomplicate it a little, but it’s an idea elegant enough that it deserves some complication, I suppose.
AG – I was informed by a reliable source on the topic that SATC (both the movie and the series) is purely about the “frocks”. Really. To the extent that she was surprised I thought it ever might have been about the characters. It’s a catwalk show.
Sod: THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE!
Precisement mon frere. Amply demonstrated by the utterly vacuous and blatantly incorrect slogans from the right (eg “one law for all” – when not a single law not “for all” could be found) which are nevertheless accepted as gospel by the swinging voters.
Two caveats but, to an impressive analysis:
One, I don’t think the postmodernist paradigm is as pervasive as you suggest (particularly in my age group!) Remember we’re only talking about those swinging voters here (and sorry to harp on but remember too that 70% refusal rate, so it’s still only around 3% of the population that swung to provide the “15%” gain – albeit crucial). The vast bulk of the electorate are not sound-bite suckers and have always voted either on the “real beef” of achievement and ability, or as punishment for (real) betrayals and failings.
Two, this “simulacrum state” relies on repetition to take effect: any and all of the comments from HS and burt are sterling examples. In short, the “Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt” approach actually works – much to the astonishment and dismay of rational beings. Hence the rage at the EFA and the continued crucial role of the media.
So I’d add a fourth strategy to sod’s suggestions: Repeat, repeat repeat – the Labour “brand” of achievement, experience, and SUBSTANCE. In sodspeak, use a postmodernist narrative to establish brand modernism – beef over cheese flakes. Just how to go about this is another matter entirely…..
‘Sod – an interesting read. Reads a bit like one of my third-year anthropology essays.
One nuance that might be added to it is that existing governments are judged more by substance than the opposition parties. i.e. it’s well known that unemployment kills governments. So if you aren’t competent it will soon come to impact on your image.
On the other hand if you’re in opposition and you aren’t able to ruin the economy, your “substance” doesn’t matter so much.
Though on further thinking, right-wing governments have been able to create certain “theatrical” events in order to elevate image above substance to suit their purposes. i.e. take John Howard’s “Boat People” deception, which allowed the Liberals the opportunity to paint themselves as the protectors and heroes of Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2002/s483269.htm
Then we’ve got George Bush senior’s “baby’s thrown from incubators fabrication, which made the war electorally possible, and allowed the Republican administration to paint itself as a civilising hero.
http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html
AK:
“One, I don’t think the postmodernist paradigm is as pervasive as you suggest (particularly in my age group!) Remember we’re only talking about those swinging voters here”
I agree that ‘sod creates a false absolute or binary there (though perhaps for the purposes of brevity and simplicity?).
But the problem is that they account for around 45% of the voting populace (National’s core is about 20% while Labour’s is about 30%, while the Greens sit at about 5%.
Also, their votes unfortunately “decide” elections.
Bollocks nome and I do miss you on kiwiblog.
Kind regards
d4j
xx
Dad, cheers. Don’t get too smug though. Your next ban is for two months no?
John Key is a ‘consumer item’ politican. He is packaged and marketed and somem people want to ‘buy’ him. The Nats ran something like this with Brash but he wasn’t good enough to pull it off, Brash was too ackward and gaff prone. Key is presenting himself to the Kiwi public as a consumer item rather than a politican with agency (the power+
to do things and create change). Are we seeing the ‘coke’ Key or a ‘MacDonalds’ Key? His approach was summed up for me on 3 news tonight. People were commenting that it is time for a change from Labour but many were not exactly sure why. The marketing of Key is aimed to convince them to change from their usual brand of consumer commodity even if the new commodity has no superior function to their current one. Mazda cars ‘zoom zoom’, people are apparently ‘loving it’ an McDonalds or ‘eating fresh’ at subway. They are ‘timing a change’ with John Key. A hollower man indeed?
Ak and roger nome –
” “One, I don’t think the postmodernist paradigm is as pervasive as you suggest (particularly in my age group!) Remember we’re only talking about those swinging voters here’
I agree that ‘sod creates a false absolute or binary there (though perhaps for the purposes of brevity and simplicity?).”
One thing to bear in mind is that the argument presented makes reference to the operation of the current system. Those of you old enough to have been socialised during a more modernist moment will probably be thinking in a modernist way. It might be a shortcoming of Jameson that there’s no detailed discussion of the overlap in our lived experience of historical moments and how this operates on the ground, but the macro/micro divide seems to plague all metanarrative theories. I don’t think it’s a simplification, at least, not by RS, especially given that he’s reading closely with Jameson. I would say the binary is a core theoretical problem for Jameson, but it doesn’t invalidate RS’s argument. I doubt anyone would argue that once the baby-boomers all die off, postmodernism will be the fullscale mode du jour – and god knows what that’s going to mean for the democratic endeavour.
T_Rex:
Yes, I did come away from it thinking that there was something fundamental that I was missing.
But to a functional minimalist like myself it was like the first time I watched one of those brutal film festival films doco’s about year zero in cambodia. I was watching people with a totally alien set of values.
Then to have the ‘sod explain that John Key was being marketed as a brand accessory was a total revelation. An epiphanic event ensued
BUT the movie was actually quite good fun to watch. Watching someone teetering on very high heels in pajamas and a fur coat on a snowy New York street on new years eve was classic slapstick.
Sort of like watching JK with that video clip of him wandering around porirua market sniffing vegetables and trying to make contact with the local populace.
This thread has been a great read..lots of excellent contributions. Sod’s original post can best be described as a ‘learning experience’ as far as I am concerned.
Along the same theme I spotted this in New Scientist this week;
Review: The Political Mind by George Lakoff
Looking up Vance Packard’s classic “The Hidden Persuaders”, I was surprised to see that it was first published in 1957, and that he was questioning the morality of using these techniques even then. Legitimate substance SHOULD win over medacious style, but the polls tell us differently.
In the right wing mind, morality is simply a question of adhering to the letter of the rules (witness National’s total lack of contrition over it’s use of secret trusts to flagrantly subvert their own 1992 Electoral Act)…winning is all and morality is for losers. It begs the question then; if the electorate doesn’t know that it is being manipulated (nor care much even if it did)…then which path do we go down? Is substance and truth redundant in a world where the right simply creates it’s own reality?
Interesting analysis, Robinsod.
Of course, it applies equally well to the Obama/Clinton celebrity death match. Obama being considerably better at style than Key.
There seems to be some confusion about the difference between political agenda and political marketing. It is not true to say labour = substance and national = style. Both have underlying political agendas which would translate to “substance” in government. Or does anyone here actually believe that National might get into power and say “Sorry, but we have no idea how to run the country”?
Or does anyone here actually believe that National might get into power and say “Sorry, but we have no idea how to run the country’?
Well the fact that behind Key the National bench consists mainly of the same clueless gang of tired old party hacks that buggered the country in the 90′s, and the fact of that this same crew after 9 years in Oppostion have failed to produce ANY substantive ideas or policy about how they WOULD run the country … then I have to ask you what makes you think they are likely to do any better this time around?
“Or does anyone here actually believe that National might get into power and say “Sorry, but we have no idea how to run the country’?”
I’m starting to think that they won’t say it, but yeah.
The rhetoric they are using is a modified version of what we have seen from the GOP. And they don’t actually seem to have been that concerned about governing. It’s just cut taxes, react to events, cut some more taxes.
Pretty much exactly what they say. If you don’t think the govt has much reason to exist, why would you have any plans for doing things as a government?
Instead, you cut what you can get politically away with, slash taxes to starve the beast, and use everything from wars to disasters to paint your opponents as weak kneed traitors, and govt itself as a failed enterprise. I don’t think it’s a conscious strategy, just the natural policy outcomes of modern right wing thought.
Sod,
Very interesting and useful, inasmuch as it engenders further thought about the nature of political discourse in Aotearoa.
Jameson’s frame seems well-suited to the analysis of high culture, but high culture has always been an elitist project, has it not? Warhol wasn’t really aiming to ‘bring art to the masses’, and he never did, despite the wide appeal of his art amongst those in the middle classes with higher education. (Spent an hour once waiting in a queue at the Corcoran Gallery just to meet the man.) Wasn’t Warhol (and conceptual artists) representative of an approach to art that had its strongest following amongst curators and critics? I look at the art that adorns the homes of the middle classes today and it includes a great deal of abstract art — but wait, that’s modernist, no? And what does it say about the human condition?
In short, do we have the empirics to back up this post-modern interpretation of the appeal across the populace of brand over substance?
PS Enjoyed the post.
Jafa – as I’ve pointed out Jameson formulated his thesis in 1984. I’d say since then things have moved on a bit and postmodernity has become more pervasive. This is a big picture thesis and looking at a series of individuals isn’t the best way to think about it as each will have their own set of narratives. One could argue that the fact that abstract art will often sit next to a Georgian writing desk or a superreal piece is a sign of the plurality of floating signifiers that Jameson talks about. One could argue even more convincingly that the most people’s experience of the world is now largely hyperreal and gathered through a plethora of mediums – all of which are replicators of the world and of each other and all of which are designed to place euphoria over feeling.
In my experience much of the world (say for example an event) is not “real” to people until it has been validated and reconstructed by the media. Even if they were there themselves. It certainly isn’t real to those who were not there until it is “published”. And when it is “published” it is represented in a multifaceted manner through an increasing number of mediums. There is the left-wing blog reality, the right-wing blog reality, the RNZ reality, the Press reality etc.
In short JP, watch the news and then step outside and see how it pertains to the “real” then ask yourself which you spend the most time thinking and writing about. Then ask yourself where most people are gathering the narratives that give them a sense of social and spatial place from. It doesn’t matter if those narratives are modernist or renaissance (in fact it is likely to be a blend of many “eras”) as postmodernism subsumes and provides all narratives. The single truth of postmodernism is that there are many truths and none of them are True. Neither Jameson or I am unaware of the irony of that statement.
Check out the big brain on ‘sod.
Aw shucks billy. Now you’ve made me blush…
redlogix –
I’ve watched Lakoff’s lecture regarding “moral politics” language and psychology several times now. It’s fascinating a must for any campaign strategist.
key words:
“Familiy and Security” – Associate your brand positively with those words and you’ve gone a long way toward success. Of course the specific semantics will change from culture to culture, but those are the essential and universal themes that tap into the emotions like no other.
The lecture can be found here.
where?
Sorry, stuffed up the html:
here it is
no it isn’t
RN,
Reminds me of the 2002 election when every time Dunne said the meaningless “common sense” the worm went off the scale.
Robinsod, would you say that the people rioting for food in various countries are doing it so they can go home and watcb it on TV?
Postmodernism was a fad among middle class intellectuals in the 70s in France, and the US in 1980s and Australia in the 1990s. It had done its dash by the the turn of the century. Do you really want to rehabilitate it for NZ in the 21st century?
Why rediscover it to explain the sign ‘cheese’ when we have been reliably informed in the adjacent topic that for Key it is intimately tied to his significant investments in ‘cheese’?
Once this link becomes exposed the ‘reality’ will dawn on those who actually vote Labour outside the incestuous blogosphere. It would be sensible for Labour to re-affirm its rejection of postmodernism and give the people some real ‘bread’ to eat with the Green’s ‘cheese’ before they start ransacking the supermarkets.
Dave – take note of where people are not rioting – what are their cultural conditions? As for your contention that postmodernism (and I assume you include post structuralism) was a fad. You seem to have missed the fact that it is a precondition of most cultural and critical theory today. Sure there are a variety of pragmatic responses to PS but most recognise it as underlying the discourse. You talk about “reality” dawning on people. How will this reality dawn?
I agree with you that postmodernism is not a nice place to be but a straight out rejection of it leaves one doomed to a niche backwater.
Starving probably.
Most critical theory is for critical theorists. It explains their careers nothing else. The original critical theory of Adorno et al had workers as ‘dupes’ of ideology, and your version is no different.
Food riots are examples of ‘reality dawning’. In NZ reality will dawn when the current triple whammy hits and despite the media spinmasters Key will be seen as a hollow parasite.
No Dave – they’ll find out through the media. And I don’t see people as dupes. I just think that people respond culturally to their means of production and survival.
I agree that most critical theory is for critical theorists but I don’t see that as a reason to discard critical theory altogether. These are powerful analytical tools we can use to unpack and deal with real and tangible issues. There is a danger of falling a victim to theory’s clever games at the expense of action but there is an equal danger of failing to properly analyse a situation and to then act redundantly.
Damn google video. Hopefully this time it works.
Third time lucky
hey sod,
I came back for a second read and I see where you are coming from (although I didn’t read the entire post).
You make a fairly good (although laboured) point. All other things being equal I would prefer the modern approach rather then some post-modern claptrap.
However from where I am standing I see:
Labour – modernist socialist liars
National – post-modern marklah, labour lite, slight consideration to libertarian views
neither Labour or National provide a compelling case for my vote
Robinsod, the media is the media, it has not displaced the reality. People riot because they are hungry not because TV tells them they are hungry. That’s why they are not ‘dupes’. They may try to escape in soap but that doesnt wash because reality intrudes.
The right does not have a monopoly of the media. It may try but it can’t do it. Witness Venezuela in 2002 when the alternative media (cell phones, cable, internet) exposed the rightwing mediasprung coup against Chavez.
My point is that the social reality has not changed. Postmodernism is not a social condition but a branch of the propaganda industry. It presents everything as an individual consumer choice. But that doesnt work when you can’t afford the basics.
Capitalism is still modern. Bosses still exploit workers. Governments still compromise and try to please everyone. By conceding much ground to the neo-liberals Labour has undermined its working class support base.
The looming triple whammy reality will intrude. Labour can dispel all the right wing media spin with a few policies that are directed at the poor. Get rid of the GST on food and fuel; get rid of Comalco; do a deal with the dairy farmers to tackle emissions by taking a share of Fonterra.
Obviously Robinsod’s attention span has run out, that’s postmodernism for you.
Aww, Sod, you thought of me when you wrote this. I’m touched.
I agree with it in principle, too, though I’d have preferred it not be dumbed down since I’ve not read Jameson.
The discussion of affect is central to all of this. It reminded me of the antipathy between affect and information, which is one of Murray Edelman’s foundational principles of symbolic politics (per Sapir etc.). He argues that in politics `information’ is by definition anything which does not confirm a given belief. So-called information which does confirm a given belief is regarded as truth or is self-evident:
“Political beliefs and perceptions are very largely not based upon empirical observations or, indeed, upon “information’ at all. More than that, non-empirically based cognitions are the most resistant to revision based upon observations of the world, and accordingly they have the most potent influence upon which empirical observations and social cues are taken into consideration and which ignored.” (Politics as Symbolic Action, p31)
I use this definition of `information’ below.
All information is therefore regarded as essentially wrong somehow, and people will often go to some lengths to argue against it because they believe to be wrong. This founds almost all ideological discussions and explains the sort of heated stalemate to which political debate often degenerates. Where affect and information meet, affect almost always trumps information, and in cases where it doesn’t (where information `wins’ if you like), people tend toward either fight or flight responses – the former resulting in more and more untenable and illogical arguments, and the latter resulting in going away to find more rationales to support their preferred belief. In cases where people have apparently been caused by new information to change their opinion on a matter, usually it’s not in fact that they’ve been convinced by the information, but by some emotive or affective baggage contained in it. So the key to having people accept your information is to have them accept the emotive reasoning upon which it is based. It doesn’t matter how good the intellectual rationale is if it won’t pass the emotive sniff-test. This is essentially what lakoff means when he talks about family and security (top-order symbols).
All quite tricky to prove categorically, but powerful principles upon which to found a political strategy. Essentially, branding is the process of getting people to act with their emotions, rather than with their brains, and it’s been well-harnessed here by National.
dave: People can afford the basics, and while they can, the propaganda machine matters. According to some of the more insightful Marxists this is the point of capitalism: to give the proletariat a minimal level of comfort so they won’t rebel and break the system which enslaves them. I think this is all a little cynical, myself, but there you have it. Yes, people are still exploited – but they’re led to believe they aren’t. That’s it working.
L