civilized ku # 658-59 ~ the BIG lie - really, really BIG ... both the lie and the pictures
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 10:59AM 
The Cinemascapist and a Colorama ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film - Rochester, NY • click to embiggen
Colorama exhibit ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film - Rochester, NY • click to embiggenThe current "featured" exhibit at The George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film is Colorama - a very limited (36 pictures) but, nevertheless, impressive look at Eastman Kodak's massive 40-year / 565 picture Colorama endeavor.
For those not familiar with the Kodak Colorama concept, coloramas were huge 18 feet high x 60 feet long panorama pictures (transparencies), produced at a 1-every-3-week-cycle, and displayed in NYC's Grand Central Terminal/Station at the same 1-every-3-week rate. An estimated 650,000 commuters and tourists viewed this popular attraction every business day.
The avowed purpose of this massive ongoing project was simple - sell cameras and film by introducing the consumer to the joy of making pictures, AKA - memories. That is to say, the joys of creating and viewing memories of a "perfect"/sanitized, white, upper-middle-class, American suburban life.
Case-in-point, blacks did not make a Colorama appearance until 1969, nearly 2 decades after the start of the Colorama project. And women ... they were most often portrayed as the model of a picture-perfect mom/wife - who all somehow appear to be completely devoid of possessing anything resembling carnal knowledge - or as an ever-smiling companion for a happy and nattily attired male. Children ... they are all cute as a button and all well above average.
Of course, and perfectly understandable given the marketing objective of the Colorama project, there is not a hint of divorce, discord, alcoholism, spousal/child abuse, poverty, criminal activity, war, racism, gender discrimination ... that is to say, all of the other things that were, and continue to be, part-and-parcel of American life. Which is to say, part-and-parcel of life on planet earth.
Relative to all of that, it is notable that the exhibit and the companion catalog both feature the following observation by Guy DeBord (from his book, The Society of the Spectacle):
The real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.
In the exhibit catalog intro essay, Dreaming in Color: America and the Kodak Colorama - Alison Nordstrom, Ph.D., Curator, Dept. of Photographs GEH/IMP&F, Nordstrom opines about the Coloramas that ...
.... these big bright pictures would have been a constant, still, and resonating presence, offering, perhaps, an escapist portal for the "bright young men in gray flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere...pursuing neither ideals nor happiness" ... they proffered an almost unchanging vision of idealized and perfect landscapes, villages and families, American power and patriotism, and the decorative sentimentality of babies, puppies, and kittens ... [B]eneath the Colorama's memorializing gaze, the gray flannel dads whose daily toil enabled this ceremony of suburban (life) were validated by this fantasy nod to the ideal calenders of their families' lives.
What I find very interesting and intriguing about all of this is that, while the Soviet oligarchy was making idealized images of the working class - what we in the West called Soviet "propaganda" - in order to help keep the busy bees working, the Capitalist oligarchies in America were busy making "advertising" in order to keep the gray flannel dads rushing around in a frantic parade to nowhere - all the while pursuing a "idealized fantasy nod" to the epitome of reality.
How sad and, ultimately, as we are all discovering today, how false, hollow, and destructive.
Reader Comments (5)
Thanks for the eye-opener, admittedly I had not seen this functional parallel between propaganda and advertising despite my long-term disaffection for all that public relations work that is littering our world and our brains.
I guess the only difference is the way it was organized in east and west: top-down bureaucratic there and self-organized by the moneymakers, their breed and their gofers here - if you want to put it in negative terms.
We're in total agreement on this one, Mark. Our "propaganda" machine, or however you wish to label it, takes a backseat to no one's. All you have to do is watch BP's massive ad campaign. You have to give them credit, I suppose - the images are powerful.
I agree with Markus amd Paul.
It didn't escape me that Aaron, who in no way fits the mold of "Average American", is taking a picture of a picture that is of "Average Americans" taking pictures.
You may also add that he doesn't take "Average" pictures.
I was taking a photo of an exact replicate of my dog abby (a tibetan terrier), which I thought was far from average...but I guess she is average.
My friend had that exact dog when I was a young lad, Aaron. Her name was Bippy.