If You're Not a Terrorist... Then Stop Asking Questions! is described by amazon.com as "the hilarious follow-up to Micah Wright's hit debut, You Back The Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want! Wright creates a stellar send-up of the Administration's War at Home, combining "remixed" full-color World War-era propaganda posters with critical political commentary to deliver a scabrous take on the State of the Union. Taking aim at corporate corruption, the Bush White House, Ashcroftian legislation, embedded reporters, the 2004 presidential elections and super-patriotism, this is a must for art collectors and rabble-rousers both."
His website has a veriety of "remixed" posters from the World War-era. The most recent posters attack the issues of privacy that have come to the attention of America with the implementation of the Patriot Act. With it the National Security Agency has secretly amassed call records of tens of millions of Americans obtained from AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. It also gave way to the expanded use of "National Security Letters," which allow the FBI to search telephone, email and financial records without a court order. Many Americans are torn by feelings of betrayl by their government while wanting to do what is "best for the country."
On Wright's website he has a section for "hate mail" in which he has a public discourse with readers on the internet who disagree with his position. This creates an interesting dialogue that at times seems like little more than a pissing contest. So often people are looking for something to bad mouth or fight against simply to have something to fight against. While personally I find Wright's posters slightly unsettling, I can certainly appreciate the sarcasm and dark humor behind them.
2 comments:
After some of the posters from this website, I am amused. American citizens are clearly responsive to these “old age” images after living in this generation, learning about it from family, friends and today’s generation, textbooks. What a great use of rhetorical discourse. I agree it is important to maintain a certain respect for your government, although by no means does that limit your entitled opinion and freedom of speech. This is what makes America so fantastic, artists like these who show other sides of the story without directly “slamming” the proud government of the United States.
I find privacy issues in the United States to be intrusive, if abused to unnecessary levels. The National Security Agency does carry a responsibility to protect its citizens and be cognizant of the goings on that could potentially be a safety threat and proceed to nip it in the bud. I have a hard time understanding that before 9/11 when many signs were surfacing of a potential attack, we did not choose to act on them then. This goes beyond tapping phone calls, the government had information and never acted upon it, so maybe by enforcing these new privacy regulations, it will appear to citizens that the government as well as its agencies are doing all that they can, so that no one can be blamed and no questions asked.
I believe this policy does have benefits. These new intrusions are taken it too far when and if individuals are getting arrested for their personal, activity, whether that be illegal or not. The line has to be drawn if it is a public threat, anything else should be considered a breach of privacy.
This Patriot Act Policy reminds me a lot of the book by Orson Wells, 1984. A life without complete freedom would be a miserable one indeed, and I think that it is important as American citizens that we keep our government close enough to monitor their new policies and act as citizens to speak out. I think these posters as a form of rhetorical discourse are very effective in the way they inform citizens, anger most of them, and indirectly encourage them to act in a way that maintains some sort of change throughout the policies of the government on the American people.
Although some may think these posters to be unsettling, I think that the unsettling feeling has nothing to do with the posters themselves, but the audience reaction to the true depictions of what exactly is going on right before our eyes and
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