How The Lincoln Group Likes To Shades Things

If you're going to play on the fear of terrorism, is red your color?  (Now let's see, there's blood red, Commie red, burning red, infrared....)

As a propaganda vehicle for the Pentagon, The Lincoln Group was allegedly responsible for planting 1,000 pro-Iraq War stories in the Arab media world wide, as well as issuing payments to newspapers to run similar stories without a byline.  In his NYT column yesterday, Frank Rich's stated that Lincoln took in an estimated $100 million in government contracts carrying out these and other special marketing and propaganda projects for the government.

While The Lincoln Group maintains a low profile, BAGreader Jeff Kline took a particular interest in the group's website.  The site employs a series of rotating images which, although somewhat abstract, lend a strange aura to the business and its world view.  The visuals are interesting, while both overtly and subliminally bizarre.

I chose out the graphics above, and Jeff put together an on-line collage of the entire set.  As always, I would be fascinated to know how the BAG community evaluates the Lincoln site, and reads the images either individually, or as a group.

Jeff offers the following impressions:

The pictures are all clearly modified, the technique of choice seems to be tinting.  The color red is overwhelming.  It's an emotional color.  In this case, it seems the intent is to evoke fear.  The pictures have a dreamlike quality to them.  Some seem just odd (like the chopsticks for sale) while others are frenzied and nightmarish (like the two pictures showing public celebrations).

The pictures in the top row [of the montage] have a throwback feel to them. The top left picture could be drawn directly from red-scare propaganda of the '50s and '60s. In the public chess picture, the queen is highlighted -- she's the most powerful piece on the board -- and her color is the most intense in the picture.  The people, on the other hand, are shades of grey.  Power is the focus.  Real people are inconsequential.

Many of the other pictures are unfamiliar to American eyes. The new and unknown can be frightening.

What's your take?

Comments

[pjr]

Another sad commentary on the desperation for BushCo to paint Iraq as a glowing success, marred by only occasional violence, and bursting with optimisim and freedoms.

Especially when you read about it in an article written in Washington, and paid to appear in Iraqi and regional newpapers. Of course there's reason to believe in the Democratization of the Middle East, as long as the US can implant some of their duplicitous and decidedly un-Democratic principles, like buying the media and lying to the population about the state of the nation.

Freedom's on the mar.......oh forget it.

[Marysz]

The website and the photos have a "retro" aura to them, but is this ironic or not? The first picture of the two men reading looks like it's from a stock photo library. Graphic design from the fifties that used black and white photography along with one process color did so because full color printing was so expensive. But why here, where there's no need for it? The only thing I can think of is that the Lincoln Group is hoping to evoke a Cold War sense of America fighting an easily identifiable enemy, an enemy that can be easily manipulated through slick public relations.

[ummabdulla]

I find these pictures really strange. What I see is a company that has no no significant experience or references other than their work in Iraq (and they got that job with no experience, didn't they?), but they're trying to present themselves as being familiar with many different cultures around the world. And the photos are meant to seem strange and incomprehensible, so that visitors to the website realize that they need this company to help them make sense of other cultures when they want to do business in other places. Maybe they see that Asia, and particularly China, is a big opportunity, because several of the photos seem to suggest a Chinese influence.

[Victor F]

Many of the pictures look like combinations of several images. The picture of the flags is definitely not an "original." In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if these were stock images the Group bought and altered for the sake of design. But what jumps out at me is an impression of nationalism that was already noted. The flags are red, the person is gray. The queen is red and so are the buildings, but the people are gray. As if the nation exists without the people, which is utter junk in my opinion. But I do think the point of the tinting is to highlight something and tie an emotional reaction to it. Could be nationalism, fear, protection, power, energy, mystery.

If the stories issued by the Group are anything like the pictures they use to illustrate themselves, I can assume they are flat, pasted together selectively from various sources of variable relevancy, and colored by the authors' pet preferences.

[Kevin]

My take -- these people (The Lincoln Group) are disturbingly creepy mind-manipulators. And Bush paid them $100 million of our money to do their 'work'. Oy vey!

While I've never actually seen the image of a naked lady inside an ice cube in a liquor ad, I've been disturbed by the whole advertising/marketing world since first reading 'Subliminal Seduction' way back when. Don't get me wrong -- I don't hate people who toil in the field -- I love our many friends put food on their tables by doing so. But the whole idea creeps me out and smacks of mind control.

The Lincoln Group seems to have taken the concept to the nth degree.

[itwasntme]

Ummabdulla has a good take, I think. I find these images make it difficult to actually "see" what's going on in them. It takes concentration. There is a kind of vacancy in them - people are there, but as pieces of "graphic" and not as humans. I find the constant red irritating, a kind of visual interferrence that washes out or smooths over any message the graphics are trying to make. When is a picture/graphic NOT imformative? Here's a good example...

[momly]

you just KNOW that the two guys in the first picture are going to kiss so the gays are taking over....
the muslim-like spires in the second one mean that islamofascists are taking over....
third and fourth mean the chinese are taking over...
fifth is dungeons and dragons devotees are taking over...
sixth - back to the islamofascists....
seventh - the liberal press is taking over...
eighth - they got hungry and sent out for chinese....
nine - Monty Python tribute....
ten - Japan is taking over...
eleven and twelve - um, not sure what these are pictures of but the faces are dark and in tribal masks so watch out, they want to take over.....
thirteen - looks like somewhere in russia so we flash back to the Russians are coming, the russians are coming....
fourteen - kid posed reading a paper with lincoln group inserted "facts" that they are coming to take over....

[readytoblowagasket]

More information about the Lincoln Group can be found at SourceWatch.org, which includes links to additional articles (the list of links follows the SW article):
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lincoln_Group

The collaging (as Victor F notes) and lack of full colors manages to obscure every scene — no place is completely recognizable, even race/ethnicity gets blurred beyond recognition. I originally mistook the top image The BAG posted as an Asian setting; it's not. It's African or aboriginal. But I saw the skin color as Kabuki white, not black. And that's exactly what the Lincoln Group intends to do with these images — obfuscate.

I think they didn't add color to black-and-white images, they removed color from 4-color images — sometimes blue, sometimes yellow, sometimes both. That would account for the magenta color in most of the images as well as the "black" skin tone turning "white." If you see a 4-color-process image in only one or two of the colors, it's impossible to see fine detail. How perfect is that for LG's mission?

I can't find a great picture of this, but here's a tiny example attached to an About article:
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/basic/g/cmyk.htm

[Ed]

What is black and white and red all over? It is a child's riddle. If this is intentional I do not know. But how very bold if it is! Black and white and red refers to newspapers, but furthermore, the black and white photo recedes from the red, which calls out a particular feature. Is this not exactly akin to the work being done by the Lincoln Group. Highlighting more favorable aspects while allowing (hoping?) unfavorable ones to disappear into the background. It is all there in black and white and red (read) for us to see.

[Don M]

I think the general message or theme of the Lincoln Group is that truth can be made - as in the multi-pane window pic. Truth is often appearance and opinion made. The Lincoln Group can instill its clients preferred truth - globally.

Or, the masses need not participate.

[Rafael]

Red...

Can mean many things but usually means:

Fire, Blood, Passion, Death.

Things that are interelated, mostly because the first two invoke the third.

Fire, a wild destructive force, the engine of war. Agent by which great cities and nations are brought low. One of the reason why demonic (demons, dragons, barbarians) entities are almost always associated with fire and this color.

Blood, invokes filth and disease. When expose to the air it becomes infected and poisonus. That which bleeds is dirty and must be avoided at all cost. One of the reasons why past war movies would should incrdible amounts of violence, but no blood.

Passion, extreme expression, uncorntroled and unbridled. Wanton sexual desires, excess and madness. People afflicted with deep passions act in ways unknown and incomprehesibleto the civilized mind. Passions are primitives and those who dwell on them are decadent and inferior.

Death, see all of the above. Bloody, messy fiery death.

Red then becomes the color of fear and loathing. Red represents all the things that must be feared, controled and destroyed.

Notice that none of the images refers to any symbols of Americana. Only foreign symbols, flags from otehr countries, chinese characters, a child from another culture are highlighted in deep blood reds evoking fear on the obeserver. It is Us vs. Them, and only the Lincoln Group can help you tell the difference.

As a reader her once put it, it seems like something out of 1984.

[jt from B.C.]

The Lincoln Group are playing from two books, one Fanciful the other Fanatical.

Image # 13 says it all for me.

THE RED QUEEN
“I declare it’s marked out just like a large chess-board!” Alice said at last. “There ought to be some men moving about somewhere—and so there are! she added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. “It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, best.”
www.ruthannzaroff.com/wonderland/redqueen.htmPhoto

“The Grand Chessboard is the book we have been waiting for: a clear-eyed, tough-minded, definitive exposition of America’s strategic interests in the Post–Cold War world. A masterful synthesis of historical, geographical, and political analysis, it is geostrategic thinking in the grand tradition of Bismarck.”
— Samuel P. Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
www.perseusbooksgroup.com/ basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465027261 -

Many believe that Project for the New American Century and the neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration are following the Grand Chessboard playbook to the letter
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game

[SEAS]

I think the color combination is very right now, or maybe five minutes ago. The red/grey/black color combination has been big in women's clothes for the past several years; aren't media campaign designers also at fashion's edge? You even see a few accessorizing splashes of color like the bizarre blue-faced man in image 10.

Most of the images of men are pretty sinister and all are foreign and ethnic - a subtle plea to the white power structure's under-the-rug racism. It's even the black queen that's been colored red. (Aren't these images really aimed at the white American power structure responsible for doling out government largess?)I agree with Rafael's conclusion: "It is Us vs. Them, and only the Lincoln Group can help you tell the difference."

[HeavyJ]

House of Games.

"We see the red threats you don't."
"This kid is brown, and WE know he's a terrorist."
"We're masters of the game."
"We're watching China."

[steve talbert]

It looks to me like the "creative" person in charge is color blind and not very good.

Sometimes bad just means bad and doesn't have a hidden message. That is more typical of what is rewarded in the Bush Admin. They are so out of it and uncreative that they don't even know it... I think that is scary enough to think about..

[rchsod]

really bad on all levels of design. i`ve seen 8th grade art work portray better imagery than these hacks. i`ll agree with steve talbert-it`s art work only the bush boys would buy.

[bg]

The chess photo and photo of the kids reading the newspaper look totally staged to me. The way the men are all looking at the chess pieces (a public art project?), why exactly have they all turned their attention there? And the kids, well, they just would not be reading a newspaper, not in any culture at that age, I don't think.

That said, Wonkette.com has the following posted about the Lincoln Group. . .these are two kids, from the party group if you ever followed anything about Jennifer 8. Lee--they got a hundred million for this campaign? Bushco is so incrediby morally bankrupt, this is just another example. Anyway, this from Wonkette:

Reading the New York Times' massive front-page story Sunday on the U.S. military's propaganda efforts, we were charmed by these ideas generated by the now-infamous "Lincoln Group," sadly left on the drawing board:
Lincoln proposed variations of the satirical paper "The Onion," and an underground paper to be called "The Voice," documents show. And it planned comedies modeled after "Cheers" and the Three Stooges, with the trio as bumbling wannabe terrorists.The latter, clearly, offers the most intriguing possibilities, including the image of a terrorist slapping his nose up and down and saying "nyuck-nyuck-nyuck" after a car bomb explodes early.

If it sounds like the Lincoln Group is the "Stripes" of information warfare, it may be because its founders -- Christian Bailey,30, and Paige Craig, 31 -- are more young-men around-town than strategists, well-known to Washington's under-40 media-government-nexus as regulars at the infamous soirees of former Washington hostess Jennifer 8. Lee. Over the past year or so Craig and Bailey -- apparently flush with the first blush of Pentagon cash -- have baffled their friends with vague descriptions of what they did, exactly. No one ever suspected they were masterminding an incendiary, controversial PR campaign intended to star Osama bin Moe. One acquaintance said the group decided that Craig and Bailey maybe had something to do with trucks.

[floopmeister]

99% sure the second photo is of either the station or the law courts in Kuala Lumpur - the small domes and cupolas are very Mughal in style. It might be something from Mumbai, but I think it's most likely KL...

It's an interesting choice. These buildings in KL were designed by a British colonial architect (if I remember correctly) but designed to combine Victorian and Mughal styles. They are Western interpretations of the romance of 'the East'.

They are reflected in the modern skyscrapers of KL - the traditional reflected in the modern. KL has a large and influential Chinese population, but this architecture is presumably meant to invoke Islam. The irony, of course, is that the photo is taken in a booming city in a society in which Islam appears to have been integrated well into a multiracial state with a strong economy.

Anyway, it is definitely NOT China, or Chinese architecture. The chopsticks might be Chinese( 300 RMB as opposed to 300 yen - which is most likely?) but the men carrying the shrine and the fish motif to its left are definitely Japanese.

NONE of the pictures appear to be of China.

What does that say? Probably that the artists couldn't tell the goddamn difference between the two cultures.

[floopmeister]

Damn - hate it when I post too quickly! I stand corrected by myself - the men in the background of the fish picture do appear to be Chinese PSB or PLA.

So, one definite China picture...

The large globe is being held by two Garuda - my bet is it was taken in Thailand, Indonesia or Laos. Not China! China appears to have been coloured on the globe more deeply, but the figures are definitely SE Asian Buddhist in flavour...

The tribesmen on the bottom right are from PNG, by the look of it.

Hell, who cares - they're foreign and therefore dangerous, right?

;)

[floopmeister]

Here's the KL railway station:

http://allmalaysia.info/news/attraction.asp?id=379&pt=10

[khanum]

Has anyone read the children's novel by Lois Lowry called The Giver? Similar to Orwell's 1984 - grey is the predominant colour and one person in the totalitarian nightmare is the giver of dreams. Red is the first colour the "receiver" notices.

[PaminBB]

am I the only one reminded of the little girl in red in Schindler's List? The boy and the chess piece have a similar quality of being singled out, but I have no idea why.

[ummabdulla]

I don't know how much coverage the protests at the WTO talk are getting, but every time I see them, I'm reminded of these pictures. South Korean protestors with red fabric tied around their heads, clashing with Hong Kong police in riot gear...

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