I wonder if protests mean anything anymore. They become spectacles for the curious and the serious, all embroiled in a heady mix of sweat, belief and opposition. I watch protests because they seem like channelled forms of aggression, like curious beasts tamed to one singular purpose, never mind the reasons for such purposes. Protests are like huge engines of war, inexorable, and upon reaching a certain density, unstoppable. A protest wins by existing. That is what I have concluded.
A protest wins by existing. A display of human bodies mashed together against the plastic shields and riot gear of men in blue, green or grey like a sea of belief. Like belief given flesh. Like belief, but not reason; or rather, reason, but bereft of itself when individuals lose their identities in the sea of human opposition. The police stand in a line against this palpable wave of human bodies, like a wall of rigid order against a massing confusion of splintered ideas and beliefs, all confused in the rush to crash against plastic and riot gear. Like an intrusion testing the chinks of the government’s own self-belief.
A protest wins by its own existence. The calamities of technology allow these protests a kind of reach beyond that available in regimes that repress these expressions of opposition. I sat glued to my seat watching the masses struggle against tear gas and water cannons, like watching big, angry beetles flushing pathetic clusters of ants running willy-nilly into each other. I watched other protests, I’ve watch protests and I’ve watched the smoke and tear gas admixed and obscuring people. These people disappear, their silhouettes dancing in the smoke. I see batons rise occasionally, rise and fall, and then rise again. Like watching puppets in riot gear, armed with plastic shields.
The wave of sympathy is I feel is almost inevitable. Blood, battered faces and bruised bodies; a student standing before a tank; booted feet rising and falling.
I took the protests to mean something. Maybe that was my mistake. That the protests meant something rational. I’m sure on some level, I could come to terms with some overriding sense in which all protests have meaning, but I’m not sure anymore. I was reading the online reports and posts from bloggers about the recent protests against the fuel price hike, and the details of beatings endured by a few of the participants. Who could miss it? It was all over the place, and PPS had become the blogger’s equivalent of a 24-hour news network, the difference being that there was more noise than signal - and even the signal was garbled in the mad rush to push some sort of opinion (exclusively negative) on the events.
Protests. For some reason, I’ve come to detest protests because I wonder if these protests mean anything anymore. It’s become a sort of symbol, a kind of birth-right, a kind of trial by fire through which, it appears, civil society must pass under to emerge rejuvenated and reborn into its own new, special purpose. What new, special purpose? Governments are made by and for the people, the people who vote them in. If people need to look for blame, they need only look into a mirror. Protests hijack the democratic process, rather than sustain it. With one protest and full media coverage, the full drama of events are played out on TV screens for all to see and the message becomes entangled and lost within the identities those who espouse that message. If PAS led the fuel price hike protest, will agreement with the protest necessarily mean agreement with PAS? Of course not, but who do you trust to tell the difference?
Worse, the whole question of fuel price hikes becomes embroiled in the chaos of one singular event, broadcast on the internet: the police beatings of protestors, not the reason motivating the protests. Bruises, blood shed, broken arms and legs, screaming daughters watching their father getting beaten up by police, all heinous acts, it smells of so much wrongness. In other words: perfect for mass consumption.
This is me, belabouring a point.
Comments (6)
It’s not surprising street protests receive negative attention, enforce views like yours or even be demonized given its spectacular nature. General perception is, their dramatic visual appeal is motivated not always by genuine communicative intent but to generate pictures for the media.
But like it or not, spectacle has legitimate function.
Once, at the 2000 WEF (World Economic Forum) in Melbourne, a protest organizer said: “Violence is the only way to get people’s attention”
Contemporary politics is largely governed by management of visibility and street protests; its ability to create spectacle that can engage media and public attention has become a vital feature of political communication.
Disorderly, disruptive, violent… this rare Malaysian spectacle-of-the-street works (maybe) to make visible and public, issues relevant to the petrol price increase such as the lack of democratic/public accountability plus subsidiary issues of police brutality, public outrage to insensitive suggestions that man-on-the-street change lifestyle haha.. and man-takes-to-the-street to give the issue a public profile and degree of scrutiny it otherwise never or ever could generate by itself given the media-political nexus or otherwise tightly leashed nature of Malaysian media.
For whatever it’s worth, if we see it from the essentially theatrical nature of the public realm, this protest shows how our public sphere functions, the role of our media, its reporting (or lack thereof) of (media) events and its ability to facilitate (or hijack) processes of debate and political struggle.
While we expect media is most important when and in so far as democracy is at stake, I’d say the muted and sanitized coverage by our MSM implies media had negated the possibility for democracy. That is, I’m looking at democracy as a value (rather than a system) that implies equality, social justice and political mechanisms for people to participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives.
The online coverage reminds me that potent as blogs may be in their immediacy, frequency and blistering commentary, it has been essentially, ‘empty’ coverage - coverage of the ‘crisis’ as disruption to social order, rather than coverage of the real protest issue.
In this regard, blogs (wittingly or not) to significant extent, are probably guilty of favouring the same MSM news values of heady-sensationalism over the weighty-sobering issues of public interest.
It’s reminder too, of the continued importance of print media, it being inherently more reflective, I think
Uhm… that’s me belabouring a point or two, too. :)
I’d agree that spectacle and theatricality have a function, if only to draw attention to something or the other. It’s the subject of these spectacles that makes me properly suspicious. There’s no doubt they were effective during, as you have pointed out, the world economic forums, but the question is, how adulterated are the motivations behind these spectacles.
Perhaps it’s misplaced idealism to demand that such protests and spectacles adhere to some purity of purpose, but the simple fact that remains is that such spectacles are, inherently, a mob by some other name - and as ‘mob’ is susceptible to same excesses that characterize lynchings.
A rhetorical question, but allow me: does anyone condone the widespread violence and mayhem that each WEF protest brings? If one were to take the message at face value, I’d say the WEF protestors intend for us to bring home this “fact”: that if world leaders don’t change economic policies to suit protestor demands, there will be further violence.
This is the same message terrorists want to spread. Ironically, they face the same problem, it appears: no one wants to listen to them, and so they blow up a few people just to get the world listening. But, see, it works, because if an issue isn’t accompanied by violence, hollywood-type explosions and exciting chop-suey kicks and eye-gouges, no one bothers to pay attention. Is this a problem with a dumbed-down electorate? I don’t know.
“… spectacle and theatricality have a function, if only to draw attention to something or the other”
More leh… :)
Considering the public sphere is a social space where private citizens gather as a public body (with presumably, the rights of assembly, association, and expression) in order to form public opinion, spectacles are really focal points that visualize issues/events and generate public discourse.
Machiavelli advised his modern prince of its productive use for government and social control, and the emperors and kings of the modern states cultivated spectacles as part of their rituals of governance and power. Popular entertainment long had its roots in spectacle, while war, religion, sports, and other domains of public life were fertile fields for the propagation of spectacle for centuries.
A ‘positive’ spectacle like, say, the Olympic Games can serve to unify populations. Likewise, a ‘negative’ spectacle of the street aka protest is a means of creating, promoting a certain political consciousness, or a new ideological position, even.
So then, such image events can be considered visual philosophical-rhetorical fragments and spectacles are [dramatization alert!] mind bombs that expand the universe of thinkable thoughts.
A protest is essentially a politics of outrage.
On whatever scale, it can graphically reveal ‘embodied, suffering subjects’ in action. The KL protesters’ actions, their physical support for each other, their confrontations with police, the injuries they suffered were dramatic expressions of the passion with which they opposed the petrol price hike. These passion and emotion became the subject of comment by some journalists, became the MEDIA EVENT. Thus the physical actions are not a sideshow, they become the focus of attention.
So despite dominant criticism that protesters are interested in creating a spectacle and not seeking to generate public dialogue or debate, the spectacle of the street can/does generate dialogue by mere virtue of their oppositional status.
In this sense, a protest is not an irrational, empty gesture but an appropriate and effective communicative strategy in a mediated society. WEF or the Malaysian tame version, they got our attention AND got us talking.
Yes, violence is disturbing. But for people excluded by governmental structures and corporate power, symbolic protest violence is an effective (sometimes the only) way to make it onto the public screen and speak truth to that power.
And, significantly, whatever their meaning or purpose, all spectacles are ‘mediagenic’, hence newsworthy.
So if we understand the media’s interest and ‘investment’ in events of crisis rather than normalcy, disorder rather than order, then, violence - more than thoughtful quotations from earnest activists – will likely draw the attention of news producers. In the WEF 200, instead of showing delegates engaged in cerebral diplomacy, most images concentrated on violent acts. And, of course, where there was no violence in later meetings, television and newspaper coverage fell.
Right or wrong aside, the real question is: what works in this new world?
“If it bleeds, it leads.”
And while emphasis on clashes misrepresent the overall tone of protests, well, conflict is clearly, not the only story.
I think there is no doubt that spectacles can function as focal points of something though that something can, really, be anything. One only has to look to Hitler and his stirring speeches, his adoring crowds and the consequences of such spectacles. If display and theatricality function to push forward a point of contention, debate or to further public discourse, then I think we’ll have to test and see if protests, as vehicles of public discourse, are prey to abuse.
Apart from the question of what abuse means (and who defines what is ‘abuse’), I think we can agree that protests per se have ideas as motive forces, whether these ideas spring from discontent or disagreement. These ideas might even have ‘moral’ worth, or be just, fair, equitable, or a whole host of other positive apellations. The question, to my mind, is whether such protests are, firstly, reasoned, and, secondly, accountable.
It seems very strange that we eschew violence in favour of discourse, but when discourse is prevented, we resort to violence to force discourse. There appears to be nothing wrong with the latter course of action if the other side refuses to listen, but in a country where alternatives are presented every general elections, resorting to violence in the form of protests is to either ignore or to dismiss the democratic process.
Of course, mistrust of the democratic process or mistrust of leaders can be cited as reasons for a being wary of voting with one’s conscience, but surely if the electorate feel hard done by, there are better ways to express their discontent, especially in Malaysia.
The other reason is one I will keep coming back to, and that is the question of accountability. Mobs, which make up these protests, are accountable only to themselves, and not the general public. Mobs don’t represent the views of the majority, only the views of like-minded people, or the views of people who use them. I think the last point is crucial, because we - and I’ll admit, I - have been swept up in the fervour of presenting or voicing so-called “oppositional” sentiment, but such sentiments, I’m begining to find, ignore deeper issues.
We could protest the fuel price hike, for example, but ignore the reasons for such a hike (well, we could cast aspersions on shady government types, but not knowing the truth behind the scenes is simply not knowing the truth). The protests focused on the fuel price hike and the burden to the rakyat, whilst analysts have been praising the prima facie reduction in government support.
Which makes it all the more interesting that you’ve brought up Machiavelli, because what you’ve not mentioned about his lessons in social control is the use of fear, and moral vacuum within which his world operates - which is just political reality. Spectacles like the brutal, barbaric beheading of Ramiro d’Orco will have the same ethical worth, in Machiavelli’s world, as protests.
Ah.. perhaps we’re on different pages here. Still, do bear with me… :)
Elaborating the way spectacle produces meanings in a diversity of contexts, Machiavelli showed up. It might just as easily have been Hitler, as you correctly pointed out. But in such an issue, really, I think, these guys are just the sideshow.
For me, the centrepiece is the mass-media’s role in the construction of perceived day-to-day reality of people on the street. They provide the basis for the public’s understandings and interpretations of non-experiential events around the world, also form the medium by which discourses are produced and disseminated; often a cyclical, self-repeating process.
News coverage of particular events is mostly framed; in ways which reflect the interests of existing political elites and power structures. [with Malaysia’s standing in the transparency and press freedom indexes, this is, unfortunately, a mostly conscious process] This is pertinent when discussing events that involve issues of social upheaval and conflict between protest groups and prevailing power structures.
Interestingly, xpyre, this post [and I assure you I say this in a non-judgmental sense] is an excellent example of how protests can be framed as being a form of ‘performance’.
Were this post accessible to the masses as columnist/opinion piece or a feature article in the press, IMO, I’d say it can jeopardize any serious judgement of the protests’ political context.
Protest actions portrayed as “huge engines of war†with descriptions of protestors “like curious beasts†and police looking like “big, angry beetles… batons rise occasionally, rise and fall, and then rise again. Like watching puppets in riot gear…†With their reasons for being there oversimplified and lost in the background, the protestors are presented as “ pathetic clusters of ants running willy-nilly into each otherâ€.
Brilliant theatre/performance narrative structure there, btw. Mind you, it’s not unlike some of the news narratives that framed events like the 2000 WEF or the Seattle WTO Protests.
It’s like a ‘script’ operating to frame the protestors’ actions and justifications as merely acting, and operating to empty the protest of its radical political content. The protestors come across as mere performers within a spectacle, prompting readers to perceive protestor objectives as akin to participating in some drama. The performance script thus frames anti-fuel price hike protestors as having no substantial, legitimate political perspectives, in stark contrast to the official sources.
Framing protests as mere ‘performance’ and protestors as ‘actors’ effectively shifts the focus of reader attention away from protestors’ political perspectives and reasons for being on the streets. It can polarise the protest’s undeniable political content (let’s assumed that people do not simply undertake social protests without a perceived legitimate political grievance). By shifting the focus away from the political context of the protest, the ‘performers’ are presented to the audience as undertaking protest without legitimate reasons. It depicts protesters as fringe dwellers on the margins of mainstream society. The shift in focus operates to marginalise and delegitimise protestor actions by redirecting any focus on protestors’ political grievances against their given targets.
P/S: apologies for not addressing the issues you raised, my comments are coming dangerously close to exceeding the length of your posts, very muchy sorry..
I enjoy the discussion :)
I think I agree that we are talking at cross purposes here, and I think you’ve pointed out that my characterization of protestors and the police was deliberate, and it was. More often than not, I do believe they are moving in tune to a script, as you put it, not of their own choosing. The most curious thing I find about protests is how these protests - when standing apart and away from the heat, tear gas and water-jets - seem like elaborate pantomimes.
The NST today carries an interesting story (on calls to for PAS to withdraw its statements on continued protests), that seems more illustrative than substantive proof, that protests - and all such movements - seem to be at the mercy of political interests rather than the interests of those doing the protesting. I know, it’s pretty weird to think of “political interests” as divorced from the “interests of the people”, but as you point out, this is hardly an ideal world.
I think, in any case, that Machiavelli is significant: from what I gather, your focus on the media’s power to influence - if not engender discussion - inherently assumes that the ends justify the means, whereas my cynicism about protests arises precisely from a distrust of that maxim - especially in the hands of those who can influence mobs, if not opinion.