Christiane Robbins: Chaos and Illusions, generation, and a comparison with the anti-Viet Nam movement
I'd like to enter the fray here in response to both Loretta's and Trevor's recent posts. I have been away and am catching up = apologies in advance if I may have missed or replay some critical points that have already been raised.
It is without question that the war in Iraq continues to be shockingly costly - in every form of currency exchange with which one engages: socio-economic, political, cultural, religious, our own sense of humanity and compassion, etc. It is also without question that the collective response to this war has been shockingly displaced, disaffected and repressed in the USA. The complexity of issues forming a response as to why that is the case, has been the fodder of innumerable academic and personal discussions, blogs, posts, articles, books +++. A number of these issues have been raised in Loretta's post.
However, drawing an analogy to the war in Vietnam and the response it engendered in the sixties and seventies is simultaneously beneficial and deceptive. It strikes me that this period has set the stage for the rerun of that time ever since. That we are participating in a drawn out play of the post-sixties ( not only in fashion but in the hard-hitting political landscape - more like a 45 record having been digitized and constantly remixed into a looping extended dance track....one which has finally exhausted its audience ... no matter how many pharmaceuticals are ingested.
Not only must the USA ( and the rest of the world ) endure the devastating results of the misguided psychological dynamics of the former Nixonians in their ill-fated attempts to win what they feel was taken from them during their downfall 30-40 yrs ago, we are expected to blindly share their mediated and institutionalized self-delusions as the key to our happiness.
I'm uncertain of other peoples response on the day of 9/11 as I can only speak to my own. And my own was predicated on the research and work that I had been doing on a collaborative project with Jackie Orr ( a Sociologist, Professor and Performance Artist ) the title of which was " Keep Calm ... in the Cold War. " We ( primarily Jackie ) took a look at the contemporary militarization of U.S. civilian psychology in the context of World War II and Cold War efforts to target the psychic and emotional life of civilians as a battlefield component of ‘total war.’ Selectively tracing the entangled histories of academic social science, the mass media, military technologies, and U.S. government agencies, we posited that the post-World War II emergence of the U.S. national security state is founded in part on the calculated promotion of civilian insecurity and terror. From the televising of U.S. atomic bomb tests in Nevada to ‘Operation Alert’ exercises (1954-57) when thousands of civilians participated in a simulated response to Soviet nuclear attack, strategies for productively frightening the U.S. population have become a significant feature of U.S. political history and popular culture.
The militarization of civilian psychology—that is, the psychological re-organization of civil society for the production of violence—becomes historically visible as an administrative imperative of U.S. government. This visibility is paramount in interrogating and intervening in the complex politics and cultures of terrorism today.
I pasted a project description below in an attempt to lend yet another perspective to how we might engage with the issues at hand
Keep Calm, a cross disciplinary installation tracing and interweaving the cultural socio-economic forces revolving around the legacy of the cold war, its relationship to the ascent of technology, the resulting subterranean presence of anxiety ( both real and constructed ) and the prosperity of the Cold War California suburb as represented through the ubiquitous presence of mid- late 20th century photographic narratives and related media. Imagine 1954: It is the height of the cold war. Troops march uneasily along the border between North and South Korea. The United States congress is holding hearings about immorality and treason in government. Many conservatives believe that a secret cabal of godless communists is trying to create a New World Order. There are rumors that aliens have landed, and UFO reports abound. 1997: The cold war is over--and we won! Or did we? Some people believe "black helicopters" watch them, because they know too much. Aliens from Roswell, N. M. are alive and abducting new people every day. A "New World Order" is coming, promoted by the godless humanist conspiracy, or the United Nations, or both. X-Files ( the television show) shows a government divided against itself, with covert agents of a mysterious something (the New World Order?) pursuing their agenda and concealing their presence. The Cancer Man is pulling strings, Deep Throat is dead, and Mulder and Scully never quite seem to be able to bring it all out into the light.
Recall September 11, 2001.... as the media has repetitiously stated, things can never be the same ... the imaginary of our national landscape has been altered and the flatness of the viewing screen has made it even more unfathomable.
Where did all of this come from? What does it mean? " The truth is out there. "
The "war" is over, but the language and imagery of the war continue to shape our thoughts, our fears, our collective and gendered imaginary. Through this installation and database, we will offer a visual/cultural analysis of the rhetorical devices through which the people of the United States came to understand themselves and the world during the Cold War. In addition, we will explore the function such rhetoric serves and begin to learn to evaluate the rhetoric for what it reveals and confuses in our world, our culture, our relationship to technology, our economy, our society, and ourselves--both in the Fifties through the turn of the century.
Now ... of course the question begs as to why this installation has not yet been realized during the years following 2001 ...
Could it be that a consensual hallucination (resulting from cinematic/media/sonic narratives ++++) offers an augmented reality that resides in our collective consciouness that is activated by issues mentioned already on this list as well as the direct defunding of education in USA ?
I've taken the liberty of attaching a couple of images: the first depicts the game simulations for military training at the Institute of Creative Technologies - with some of you may be familiar; and 2. a screen shot of some "silo" info one could grab off the internet prior to 9.11. Just for your viewing pleasure -
> Christiane Robbins