Notes On What Might Be Called Propaganda? (pt. 1)

I'm starting with the main websites of the campaigns. First stop: YesScotland. I opened up the website and was met by what was probably meant to be a motivational video:     

(Said video is meant to appear above this writing. If you're reading on your phone, click here to see it)

CONTENT OF 'MOTIVATIONAL' VIDEO:

Violin or fiddle plays vaguely moving piece of Celtic music while an unborn child from the future asks you to support the Yes campaign. Looks like it was filmed by the same people that take pictures for university prospectuses.When looking at the different futures of Scotland (Yes = smiles and happiness. No = a grey world of sadness), the tone of the video oscillates from that of a Visit Scotland and a NSPCC advert. 

After the video, the home page of the website appears. A massive image pops up of a happy couple on a beach with (hopefully their own but possibly just random) three children. What strikes me most about the website is the amount of smiling on it. If you scroll down to the “REASONS” section then there are links to 15 mini essays that are supposedly by normal, ordinary Scottish people that have “look[ed] at and consider[ed] the issues” and decided that they will vote Yes.

The links to these mini essays are all pictures of people smiling. 4 men in suits: smiling. 1 man in a brown fleece in front of a slightly rundown area: smiling. One woman holding a plant: smiling. 1 picture of a possible university student. A girl. And it seems like the photographer wants to emphasise this point by making the room she is in is covered in pink – pink curtains, pink sofa, pink bedcovers, pink lamp and there is also a nice little (pink) Minnie mouse stuffed toy on her bed. She is also smiling.

There’s so much smiling on the site it made me distrust the site somehow.

Now, normal reasons for distrusting the site aside (bias/it’s a campaign site/etc), there is something so strangely off-putting and paradoxically sad about the sheer abundance of smiling here. Maybe it’s something to do with how (most of the time) when people are getting their pictures taken, their smiles are forced. Smiles given for the camera are rarely genuine expressions of happiness; they are mostly the result of the photographer asking the person to smile. I don’t know, but to me this whole website seems to have the same essence of a forced smile. To be plain: it just seems kind of fake.

Now that’s not me claiming that what the website (or what the Yes campaign) is saying isn’t true (but would you trust someone who was telling you ‘how excited they were about the future’ and ‘how very happy they were’ if you felt as if their smile was forced and there was a sort of deadness in their eyes?). It doesn’t help that the website actually doesn’t say that much and the mini-essays (that you can read if you click on the forced smiles) don’t actually have any details about, well, anything. I learned more about the lives and families of the people that supposedly wrote the things than I did about reasons for voting Yes:

Eg:

MARRIED WOMAN FROM ESSAY ABOUT AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE: “I’m looking forward to seeing Scotland empowered to take charge of its own destiny. I’m excited because 18 September also happens to be our 10-year wedding anniversary, so it’s going to be a big day all round!”

WOMAN FROM ESSAY ON SCOTTISH BUSINESS: “I have two boys and when they left home I didn’t think, ‘I’m so worried that they’ll be out there on their own.’ Instead, I felt proud that they were becoming independent and making things happen for themselves. I think we should feel that way about Scotland too.”

RANDOM ENGLISH MAN FROM ESSAY ABOUT HIS OPINION AS  SOMEONE FROM ENGLAND: It’s about creating something new, and that sends a powerful message of hope to our neighbours south of the border and across Europe. My family in England understand that and back my decision to vote Yes.

ELDERLY LADY FROM ESSAY ABOUT SCOTTISH NHS: “I’m three years from my eightieth birthday but I certainly don’t think of myself as old. I still love golf and walking”

SAME ELDERLY LADY: “I like to challenge these ideas in my own quiet way and my granddaughter has really taken up the challenge: she tells me how many people in her class support independence and then says, ‘Granny, that number is much higher now!”

There were some interesting points made however. I will write about them soon. But on the whole, the site is awful (in my opinion). It had a strong sense of being fake and the mini-essays written by (no doubt inherently valuable people but seemingly completely random) members of the public didn’t really explain anything. I left the site without feeling anymore convinced one way or the other. I just wanted to stop looking at the smiling.

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(Picture source: here)