In addition to reshaping the global balance of power in ways that the U.S. foreign policy elite once again failed to predict, the Russia / Ukraine conflict has solidified the existence of the “social media war.” That is to say, a war which is to be won not solely by “kinetic” battlefield supremacy, but by making one’s projected hyperbole, embellishments and outright falsehoods more believable than those of the enemy. This has been an entirely predictable consequence of war that has become more distinctly targeted at civilian populations – a trend acknowledged by thinkers of the “left” (e.g. Paul Virilio) [i] and of the “right” (e.g. Hans-Hermann Hoppe)[ii] alike. The degree to which propagandistic social media content has been uncritically accepted is, so far, one of the more significant narrative threads of this miserable and avoidable war. On one side, supporters of the Ukrainian resistance, desperate for any sort of reassurances in the opening days of the conflict, enthusiastically bought in to heroic fictions like the “Ghost of Kyiv”: such wishful thinking reached its apex of black humor when those unfamiliar with the “Sam Hyde” meme (i.e. the repeated gag of crediting this troll/prankster with every new act of spectacular mass violence) cheered on “Samuyil” after his identity was “revealed.” The pro-Russian factions, though not as noticeable due to their banishment from the predominantly Western-owned infosphere, nevertheless seemed willing to accept any and all reports of slain Ukrainian commanders, selfless acts of Russian charity towards Ukrainian civilians and captured combatants, and generally faultless moral conduct. In too many cases, all of the above were embraced as truth without supporting footage, or with footage too inconclusive to convince the otherwise uninitiated.
There is one particularly striking thing about the new incoming waves of propagandistic content; namely the ease with which they slot into the default mode of modern aesthetic experience, rather than standing out as dispatches from an exceptionally cruel and horrifying theater of existence. After decades’ worth of so-called “reality” television, viral video and vlogging, distinctions between superficiality and depth of content have been abraded away, with nearly all broadcast content attempting to project an appearance of “authenticity”. In the current media environment, wherein immediacy and/or spontaneity are accepted as the most reliable indicators of truthfulness, it is much easier to develop and propagate convincingly “true” content, and on the leveled playing field that results, we have essentially reverted to believing whatever conforms to our already accepted patterns of experience and our embedded socio-political biases.
In this context, it is beneficial to re-examine the key differences between propaganda and art, to see if the latter can still say something to us at a time when the former is omnipresent. At its simplest, propaganda is a didactic form which, generally founded from some degree of un-truth, aims at very specific objectives: the success of a “five-year plan,” the repulsion or extermination of disloyal “flunkeys” / “wreckers” etc. Processes and products that we recognize as art can also be born from falsehood, but the key difference here is that specific objectives will rarely be stated either within the artwork or the secondary communications that follow (be they artists’ interviews or curators’ supplemental texts written for exhibitions). Put another way: the more a media product allows for an ambiguity of interpretation, and the more it refuses to castigate those who choose to receive a different message than that which the artist was transmitting, the closer it strays to the “art” end of this propaganda-vs.-art spectrum. The more that a work hopes to perpetuate the specific falsehood which necessitated its creation, the closer we are to the opposite end of that spectrum.
The classic examples of propaganda are, at least for those who have some benefit of historical hindsight, immediately recognizable thanks to the didacticism mentioned above: see, for example, rapturous propaganda posters of Stalin in glowing white uniform with flower-bearing children huddled around, or nearly identical imagery of Kim Il-Sung that may as well have been painted by the same artist. These particular templates of imagery have lost much of their global media currency by being associated with ideological defeat (in the case of the Soviet-era Social Realism) or with entities that have a persisting status as an international pariah (in the case of the devotional art acclaiming the North Korean Kim dynasty). Unchecked enthusiasm of the kind exuded by these classic propaganda pieces is also too close to the forms of generally discredited commercial advertising that work with a similar template of triumphal images, such as cigarette advertising: this was especially true in the case of the “father of American public relations,” Edward Bernays, who infamously likened the cigarette in a woman’s hand to a torch of liberty and egalitarianism.
Yet while citizens of the information age may have built up a stronger resistance to particular dated strains of propaganda (and everyone is a passable “skeptic” when it comes to ideas they already opposed), there is little reason to believe this population has been fully immunized against all forms of didactic art. In fact, and as the prior examples relating to the Russia-Ukraine conflict show, the 21st century propagandist can be quite successful in influencing public policy by merely turning the constraints of the Social Realist model on their head: trading out the appearances of high polish, careful collective planning and majestic decisiveness for low resolution, on-the-spot improvisation and a sense of exciting uncertainty heightened by distortions and disruptions plaguing the otherwise “clean” audiovisual feed. Much of the present Western population has come to believe that the latter qualities are more indicative of an un-corrupt or non-coopted actor, since, after all, who would want to broadcast something so rife with technical glitches and so devoid of stylistic flair…unless it was something that really needed to be shown? The master propagandists of the world have, by this point, easily intuited the incredible amount of public goodwill afforded to jittery phone-camera footage from the “man on the street,” and they surely know by now that this elicits a more reflexive acknowledgement of its truthfulness than high-budget studio productions. The smarter among them have at least begun to utilize such footage to diversify their propaganda arsenals.
Thankfully, there is an increasing quantity of art – film in particular – which cleverly displays how values like spontaneity and immediacy are easily integrated into a program of manipulative artifice. Belief in the so-called “end of history,” and in the equally suspect post-modern collapse of great narratives, has brought one too many observers into a nominally skeptical world where “authenticity” is the most sought-after quality in aesthetic experience as in other areas of daily existence. In the case of something like documentary film, commitment to authenticity often can produce something closer to objective truth than anything bolted together in cable TV newsrooms or “focus grouped” into existence. Yet claiming that these signifiers could never be put into the service of deceptive propaganda, though, is giving them far too much credit.
Critic Jonathan Sterne has noted that the “goal” of documentary footage is not necessarily “mimetic art” (i.e. a perfect reproduction of events as they occurred), but rather “crafting a particular kind of […] experience…realism is, at its core, a set of arbitrary artistic conventions designed to have a particular aesthetic effect.”[iii] However, merely presenting a filmed work as a “documentary”, regardless of the amount of scripting, editing and post-production tricks actually involved, is enough to convince a large enough number of viewers that the work has a claim on the truth superior to something more blatantly synthetic. Obviously fictional oddities like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity or Harmony Korine’s 2009 bizarro opus Trash Humpers luridly suggest as much, presenting implausible activities with the more “sincere” eye afforded by a lower budget, “shaking camera” type of production (in …Humpers case, complete with the “tracking lines” endemic to frequently used VHS cassettes). Even as we witness scenes in which an awkwardly joined-at-the-head duo serves up pancakes slathered in dish soap, or we witness the murdered body of a man who previously pranced about reciting poetry in a French maid’s outfit, illusory immediacy (or a camouflage of authenticity) somehow keeps this all within the realm of the possible.
This is far from the only example of “documentarian deception” put forward by an acclaimed filmmaker. Palme d’Or-winning director Bong Joon-Ho, whose ecumenical mockery of authority has been a recurring theme throughout his career, was responsible for a particularly striking 2004 short entitled Influenza, apparently shot using only (as the film’s introductory text claims) “the large numbers of observation cameras and CCTV security systems found in Seoul.” It is an unquestionably unique means of realizing a cinematic feature, and one that previously had some utility within the realm of video installation art (also, ironically, within the imagination of the boldly un-authentic Andy Warhol, who once allegedly brainstormed a nightly TV program of such footage to be titled “Nothing Special.”) With plenty of the sardonic humor that reaches full flower in Bong’s feature films, Influenza purports to follow several years’ worth of documented public transgressions credited to a perhaps mentally disturbed sociopath, “Mr. Cho”, as he becomes progressively more violent and morally reprehensible: Mr. Cho loudly acts out some sort of vulgar sales pitch in a train station restroom full of other citizens trying to mind their own business, Mr. Cho gets ejected by police from a subway train for some unspecified offense, Mr. Cho and female accomplice cruelly rob a senior citizen of her ATM card and freshly withdrawn cash, Mr. Cho and same accomplice inexplicably beat a man in an underground parking garage with blunt objects. The sequence of events itself is not a wholly unique study of criminality, but the method of filming forces the viewer into an intriguing act of forensic analysis: as the scenes become progressively more ridiculous, less thought goes into musing on whether this all “actually happened,” and focus shifts to why these particular scenarios were chosen to “lie about”.
As regards that, there are seeds of doubt scattered all throughout Influenza, particularly relating to the technical feasibility of some shots being achieved, the slyly choreographed feel of some action sequences, and the possibility that a crime rampage this notable never became a national news item. Starting with the former: the collected imagery of the chaotic “Mr. Cho” is, if the film’s intro text is to be believed, not created from whole cloth with some editing system designed to emulate the imperfections of CCTV video feeds, but is in fact brought to us with the gracious assistance of authorities like the “Seoul Regional Police Headquarters”, “Security Optical Inc” and some other august bodies dedicated to local film preservation. It would not have been technically impossible to isolate several filmed instances of a petty criminal from a daunting amount of raw footage (particularly if his antics were newsworthy items and therefore easy enough to associate with specific dates, times, and places). However, as Influenza progresses, certain aspects of the audio-visual presentation invite skepticism as to the whether or not these events were dramatic fabrications. The quality of the audio, particularly when captured from within the ATM lobbies where “Mr. Cho” finds his victims, seems a little too crisp and “present”, and casting doubt on the audio fidelity already involves a generous suspension of disbelief: at the time of Influenza’s filming, it would have been a distinct rarity for financial systems’ CCTV cameras to come equipped with microphone / audio inputs that could either indiscriminately record throughout the entire day, or have the ability to record upon the triggering of a motion sensor.
Again, there are dramatized moments in the film that, while not impossible, cleave a little too close to the type of parodic absurdity that Bong has massaged into his other films (e.g. 2019’s Parasite) – in other words, they do seem to bear a distinct directorial signature rather than marks of complete spontaneity. These include a scene in which Mr. Cho and accomplice, clearly intending to rob a Seoul bank branch, take a number from the teller, wait until said number is called and then realize that this was a “winning” number entitling them to a special prize. The awarding ceremony for the prize is accompanied by goofy fanfare, causing the would-be crooks to be so closely mobbed by bank employees that they are forced to abort their mission (or maybe they are just satisfied with the cash value of their prize). In the film’s climactic moment, another attempted ATM mugging turns into a full-blown fracas once the intended victim resists: children viewing the action through the ATM lobby’s windows become frenzied and start attacking one another in emulation of the violent events, while Cho’s heavy-set accomplice throws herself against the door to bar entry to multiple, outclassed police officers.
The real value of this film comes, I’d argue, from its illustration of the differences between the didactic lies of propaganda and the multiple readings that can proceed from the lies of art. In Influenza, when the question of its truthful presentation is ignored, the possible lie of the “as it actually happened” narrative becomes the vehicle for numerous other truths. We are confronted with such facts as the need for Seoul’s citizens to be monitored by camera even in public restrooms, or with the contagious nature of unhinged violence (as the film’s title may be suggesting). Some may even contemplate the over-abundance of goodwill that international film festival audiences accord to “foreign” directors when depictions of their native cultures are unquestionably accepted as sincere. Again, the focus upon the circumstances of some artifact’s creation, and whether or not some level of deceit was involved in this creative process, seems misguided in situations where the director has no propagandistic stake in convincing audiences of a film’s authenticity.
There are other film projects that have communicated the same in a much more “punch-in-the-gut” fashion. The 1992 French production Man Bites Dog [C'est arrivé près de chez nous in the original] is one film in particular that skewers the ambitions of documentarian as an impartial, uncorrupted messenger of truth. Somewhat analogous to Lars von Trier’s The Idiots in that it critiques certain species of authenticity while using “authentic” methods, Man Bites Dog is claimed by co-writer Rémy Belvaux as a film that was both made with virtually no money and also intended to be about this same process. Ostensibly a cinéma vérité filming of happy-go-lucky serial killer Ben (Benoit Poelvoorde), the narrative spends much of its running time exposing and mocking the conceits of the “observational mode” of filmmaking. We see not only boom microphones in the frame but their operators as well (at one point all parties get stinking drunk together), and we are treated to a stark merger of both filmer and filmed subject that does not so much comment on making a “no-budget” film as upon the gullibility of those who feel that lack of funding is a prerequisite for honesty; that such a condition could provide the basis for non-manipulative communication.
While all this makes Man… a sort of spiritual cousin to Influenza, its violence is taken to more intoxicating extremes, at some points equaling the stifling discomfort provided by dramatizations like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Ben’s gross transgressions, almost all delivered with a disarming smile and flash of exhibitionist wit, include such acts as yelling into the ear of a clueless pensioner until she has a fatal cardiac arrest, cracking racist jokes over the corpse of a slain construction worker, and concocting a mixed drink called a “dead baby boy”. He moderates this activity with exhibitions of his more traditionally acceptable “creative” side: reciting a choice of his poetic verse at a seafood restaurant prior to projectile vomiting his mussel dinner, or skillfully accompanying his ill-fated clarinetist girlfriend on piano.
All of this activity gradually descends to the blackest sub-levels of the “black comedy” genre, as we watch our initially naïve co-producers progress from merely laughing along with Ben’s antics to assisting him with the murder and rape of his victims. Once the ultraviolence has reached the point where the film crew themselves start to emulate their documentary subject, Man… becomes a fairly obvious satire on the supposed non-involvement and incorruptibility of the documentarian, and the ease to which they can be manipulated by third parties who know how to flatter this self-image. As the filmmaker characters played by the directors’ team of Belvaux and Bonzel become more and more deranged in their over-identification with their subject, it should become clear to the audience that their behavior is just a particularly extreme depiction of the lengths documentarians must go to if the portrayal of truth is their primary goal. Having staked so much on capturing their lovable psychopath “as he really is,” they are required to play by his rules, and this means acting in ways that seem violently incompatible with their otherwise sheepish, socially awkward personalities: they must falsify themselves to present their subject in the most truthful light possible.
It is interesting to note here a kind of “coming full circle,” here at the 100th anniversary of trailblazing Soviet director and propagandist Dziga Vertov. Vertov, who famously took propaganda to the illiterate peasantry with his documentary films shown on special “agit-trains,” was without a doubt one of the earliest and most significant proponents of documentary truth as an alternative to the studio films’ soporific and pacifying “factory of dreams.” The aforementioned cinema term cinéma vérité began in earnest with, and was a direct translation of, Vertov’s Kino Pravda, which would “catch life as it ought to be” (namely, it would “see and show the world in the name of the proletarian revolution”).[iv] Yet, for all this enthusiasm and outreach, Vertov and other now legendary figures like Sergei Eisenstein would eventually be condemned as “formalists” whose work did not speak to the stated desires of the masses, and by the 1950s Vertov would fall prey to Stalin’s bouts of anti-Semitic wrath following the “Doctor’s Plot” conspiracy. When considering the role Vertov’s theory played in the formation of cinematic propaganda technique, it could be said that the type of brassy, “official” Social Realism as described above was a historical aberration rather than the perfection of the propagandistic art. We are very much back in the same place as 1922, with distrust of the “factory of dreams” compelling us to trust anything more apparently immediate and unfiltered: yet, again, it remains to be seen whether the honest and incorruptible documentarian will ever be more than a fantasy. Such figures are as susceptible to false, distorted media indoctrinations as the rest of us, and with that in mind, it is maybe more useful to continue looking to satire for something resembling the truth.
[i] Virilio, P. (2008). Pure War: Tewnty Five Years Later. Trans, Mark Polizzotti. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
[ii] Hoppe, H. (2011). Democracy: The God that Failed. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. One of Hoppe’s arguments towards the anti-democratic thesis of this volume is that the introduction of wars that target civilian populations has coincided with the expansion of democracy as a system of governance.
[iii] Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Production. Durham / London: Duke University Press.
[iv] Taylor, R. (1979). The Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.