Echoes of WWI’s ‘Mad brute’ in today’s campaigns

The viewer may wonder: Why is Braley grainy in that television ad? In black and white? Why is Ernst pale, washed out? The campaign ads could portray their opponents in color, but choose not to. Why?

The answer, surprisingly, goes back to World War I.

In 1917 Woodrow Wilson had a problem: How do you reverse public opinion, quickly? He had been elected on a campaign promise to stay out of the war, but now the U.S. was jumping in. He had months to raise money and troops for the war effort. Not only did opinion need to change, people had to be coerced to act. A Committee on Public Information was swiftly assembled, and a strategy formed:

Arouse emotion, get people to react on impulse, not thought.

The CPI created a massive propaganda machine, heavily emphasizing visual images. Within a year, nearly 1,500 designs for posters, buttons, and other materials were distributed. The posters featured images designed to arouse emotions such as fear, anger and pride. One poster, for instance, portrayed a menacing gorilla with a German helmet, holding a helpless female in his arms and stepping onto American soil; the caption: 'destroy this mad brute, enlist!”

Whether the image made sense was irrelevant; if it aroused enough emotion to generate action, then it was a success.

The campaign did work. By all accounts, the money and recruits that were raised were the foundation of the U.S. contribution to WWI, and it was derived from the mass reaction to the propaganda campaign.

For better or worse, the communication lessons learned from this wildly successful effort were not forgotten. The basic technique of using images to create impulses to action moved into the realm of business and became the basis for the 20th century advertising industry. A right turn was taken from the more traditional communication strategy of writing out reasons that people could contemplate as they made thoughtful choices. 'Don't think, feel!” was now the theme in mass advertising, whether in business or politics.

Today we have campaign ads portraying opponents in black and white, making them seem slightly suspicious - even sinister - while showing one's own candidate in warm, full color. The ads seek to elicit viewers' reaction below the level of conscious awareness.

The traditional premise has been that the core of the democratic process is reasoned choice. Has democracy been thrown out the window in an era of image impulse?

Perhaps.

But campaign commercials cannot force response. For those willing to take the time, the 21st century provides what the masses in 1917 lacked - an immense reservoir of Internet information. Reasoned choice still is possible in response to campaign propaganda; WWI inspired message strategies can be rejected by the voter who looks beyond colorless images to consider candidate platforms. Perhaps the 'mad brute” that needs to be 'destroyed” is impulse.

' David Klope is an Associate Professor of Communication at Mount Mercy University. Comments: dklope@mtmercy.edu.