When Republicans Attack

A video record of distortions of Barack Obama’s image by John McCain television and web ads:

If you’ve been following our analyses of visual distortions in McCain’s ads, the following frames from the latest ad, “Joe the Plumber,” (in the same style as the “Acorn” ad) need no commentary.

The ad itself (link if embedded version doesn’t load: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmZ3o0Di7Go)

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SELECTED FRAMES

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Smoke from mouth:

Frame 566, 18.885 seconds

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Small horn on head:

Frame 568, 18.952 seconds

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Fire from hand:

Frame 578, 19.285 seconds

Frame 578, 1:56.297

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More fire from hand:

Frame 581, 19.386 seconds

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Fire from eyes:

Frame 583, 19.452 seconds

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Transition to second monster:

Frame 812, 27.093 seconds

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Just as you suspected (if you’ve believe the McCain rhetoric), Obama’s not from around here.

Frame 818, 27.293 seconds

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Frame 819, 27.327 seconds

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Frame 820, 27.360 seconds

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Frame 821, 27.394 seconds

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Frame 822, 27.467 seconds

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Large horn on head:

Frame 844, 28.861 seconds

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Frame 897, 29.929 seconds (end of ad)

(Frames 885-896 have similar distortions of Obama’s left eye and left cheek.)

Previous McCain ads we’ve analyzed embed distorted images of Barack Obama. But no ad so gleefully defaced Obama’s image as did McCain’s ad “Acorn.” The official ad has been removed  from YouTube because of a copyright claim by Fox News, but it has been copied and uploaded by other YouTube members. (Note: the full embedded video below has different footage than the edited version we present. In the full version from PoliticalWazoo, Obama points to a blackboard. In the version we downloaded from JohnMcCain.com, and portions of which we include below the full video, Obama stands to the right of a series of posters with large X’s.)

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Here is an edited version, with the Obama images that have been distorted, in most cases by hyperkinetic abstract swirls of color:

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Here is the same footage, slowed down from 30 frames per second to 5 fps (the audio commentary is not synchronized with the video):

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Even at the slow speed, the final gimmick of the video may not register on the viewers’ consciousness. But when the nearly last frames are slowed down to 2 frames per second, a frightening image emerges behind Obama, an explosive blast not at all random:

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Once again, the McCain campaign  implies that Obama will plunge the country into violence and anarchy, a theme developed in the earlier ads linking Obama with former Weather Underground member William Ayers.

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A few other interesting frames:

Are these horns on Obama’s head, or random scratches?

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And does this vampirish distortion of Obama result from chance artifacts?

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Whether the McCain Campaign has deliberately manipulated these frames in this form or not, it continues to present an image of Barack Obama that robs the candidate of his familiarity and humanity.

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The following subliminal technique, however, can’t be anything but deliberate:

The ad, in seeking to connect ACORN with subprime loans and hence the recent economic crisis, collages hundred dollar bills with words torn from headlines about the crisis. But it adds, for just a frame or two, a word that was not likely part of any newspaper headline: “unhappy.” The ad uses a technique called “semantic priming” to create an emotional response in the viewer (see, for example,
Semantic Priming : Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition).

Given the manipulations and distortions in other McCain Campaign ads, it’s unlikely that all of the subliminal techniques in the “Acorn” are completely accidental.

After setbacks in the polls, the McCain campaign staff has released a series of visually complex (and deliberately disorienting) TV and web ads: Dangerous, Ambition, and Ayers (embedded below). All three use panels of frames with bogus frame numbers to give the impression of continuity and objectivity, when in fact images are juxtaposed in an extremely subjective manner, to create guilt by association. When Republicans Attack will analyze each of the three commercials in detail, but as a fourth installment of the Subliminal Shenanigans series, we’ll concentrate on eight contiguous frames in the Ayers ad.

Here’s the entire ad:

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The ad uses several swish pans, but the most interesting occur after the frame at 16.154 seconds (frame 484), and continues for four frames:

Frame 486, 16.221 seconds

In the above shot, the left frame depicts the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a project that had both Ayers and Obama on its staff. Here is how the National Review Online article (the source used in the Ayers ad) characterizes the challenge:

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

In the half-frame to the right of the Annenberg image is the Pentagon, described in the “Ayers” ad as a target of Ayers and the Weather Underground. The stage is set for the Obama / Ayers image distortions that follow:

Frame 487, 16.255 seconds

Frame 488, 16.288 seconds

Frame 489, 16.321 seconds

The beginning of the Obama / Ayers skull heads.

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Frame 490, 16.355 seconds

Frame 491, 16.388 seconds

The full death-head distortion, which lasts 3 more frames.

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Frame 492, 16.421 seconds

Frame 493, 16.455 seconds

The skulls at their clearest.

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Frame 494, 16.488 seconds

The last of the distorted images.

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Frame 495, 16.522 seconds

The swish pan ends, and the images lose their distortion (though the photos are hardly flattering, and of course Obama’s and Ayers’ undistorted smiles are all the more frightening after the previous frames).