Photo: NY Times
Since conventions have become infomercials, they need to be analyzed like them. For me this first night was best symbolized by the design of the stage itself. Design can tell you a lot if you know how to read it. So while the other blogs are going on about the speeches, let me take a less-beaten path.
Let’s start with the color scheme–blue and a kind of sickly blue at that. It’s a well-known fact blue is a big TV color. I used to kid a politician friend of mind who goes back quite a ways about his wardrobe of blue “TV shirts.” I also remember talking with director Alan Pakula about his wanting to give All the President’s Men a blue tint to suggest TV.
Of course, we know why the blue is there: because that’s the color the networks have hung around the Democrats. So the adoption of blue is a capitulation to the network’s world view. I don’t like the color thing because it’s too simplistic, but by adopting the networks’ world view, the designers of the Democrat’s convention site have signaled the networks call the tune.
For a campaign that is supposed to be about change and about uniting America the choice of blue is telling. Barack Obama needs another designer, because what he should have done is to take back the entire flag not just one color of it. In fact, the mention of the flag leads to another design issue. Political conventions used to literally drape themselves in the flag, but try as I might I could not find a flag anywhere to be seen. Maybe I just missed something, but it certainly was not in a dominant position.
Given Obama’s issues with flag pins and Democrat’s and liberals problems with the flag in general, not giving Old Glory a prominent spot is a bad decision. I imagine the wingnuts are already ranting about it.
Instead of the flag we have a stage that reminded me of nothing so much as a television game show. The weird podium resembled those lecterns people stand behind on Jeopardy. I’m not sure what to call its style except that it looks like something you might buy at K-Mart. The podium also is pretty low-tech in that it appears unable to change heights, so someone somewhere made a compromise about how tall to build it so that the taller speakers tower over it while the smaller ones look like talking heads.
The most ridiculous piece of the stage is the backdrop to the podium with its changing colors and not-so-subtle DNC lettering moving around like some cheap lava lamp behind the speakers. I don’t know if anyone tested this thing on camera before the convention–you have to believe they did–but if so, they had a terrible eye. The changing backdrop became really distracting as you tried to follow a speaker, drawing attention away from who was speaking and what they were saying. The lights on the side resembled something from a used car lot.
The symbolism of the chameleon-like backdrop mirrors the comments I made earlier about the preamble of the Platform. It seems to serve as the perfect background for a Party not sure what it is or what it stands for.
The stage itself is monstrous, appearing to dwarf the convention floor itself. It is a bit like walking into a theater and finding the stage bigger than the seating area. I suspect this was done to allow the usual huge gathering of people at the end, but tonight its emptiness only further emphasized its size. This too sends a not so subtle message to people watching at home and to the delegates themselves: the delegates are not as important as the big shots on stage. The delegates themselves appear crammed in some narrow space between the monstrous stage and the galleries and luxury boxes, a depressing symbolic statement.
Dominating all this were the monstrous television screens. The screens loom over the convention much the way that huge poster looms over Orson Welles in that famous shot from Citizen Kane. I kept thinking of Susan Sontag’s famous quote to the effect that reality has become what is shown by cameras. The sight of all those delegates star9ing up at the giant screens frankly had a 1984ish quality to it. The real speaker was dominated by the TV speaker. It must be a strange feeling to have a giant image of yourself looming behind you.
Now before some commenter writes in and says they’ve been using giant TV screens for conventions since what my son terms “back then,” let me say that the giant television screens combined with the giant stage serve to dwarf not only the audience but the speaker. The real speaker appears like a mini-me, especially since instead of spotlighting the speaker like they should, the lighting deemphasizes the real speaker for the TV version.
This is an inexplicable decision for a convention whose nominee is the best political orator of our times. The entire design of the stage should have been constructed to emphasize the speaker, but instead it has the opposite impact. In short this is a set designed for the cameras and not the actors. People watching at home will of course get the camera feed from the giant TV screens, but when the networks switch to a shot of the actual platform as they did tonight during several speeches, the impact can be disconcerting.
The domination of the TV screens along with the blue color scheme leads to another major mistake–the lighting. Other than when you are watching the giant TV images, the entire place seems a bit dark. The need to make the TV screens more easily viewed has caused the lighting people to tone down the lighting everywhere else, so it has the look of a conference room when someone is showing Powerpoints.
The entire convention floor has a shadowy cast, further heightened by the networks own camera lights which they employ at maximum wattage when they are doing floor interviews. I’ve already nicknamed the place The Cave, not only for its darkness but for the TV images on the wall ala Plato’s cave.
So the set on which all the action takes place communicates several messages: the delegates don’t matter, the speakers must play against a backdrop that diminishes their impact, the colors play against Obama’s theme of unity, the lack of a flag is a major mistake, and the placement of the giant TV screens suggests the media matter more than the people.
What will be interesting is how this set plays out over the next few days as it becomes more and more familiar. Tonight for example when the convention went through the long wait for Ted Kennedy, I flat out got bored. Some of the speakers were flat out boring, because they were playing against the set.
The Speakers
This was Michelle Obama’s night and with all the doubts expressed about the decision to give her such a prominent spot, she hit a home run. I am sure we will be seeing parts of it in campaign commercials. Frankly there has been nothing comparable to it. People from Iowa who had heard her speak during the run up to the caucuses had alerted me to be prepared for something special and she did not disappoint.
The use of Republican and former Iowa Representative Jim Leach was also brilliant. His speech provided a needed history lesson that was just what this convention needed.
Finally to see Ted Kennedy somehow summon the fire one more time was a truly remarkable moment. The pundits were questioning the decision to give him so much prominence, but first he has earned it and second he did exactly what Obama needed him to do which was to pass the torch from his own and his brothers’ generation to Obama. That it may well be the last big public speech Kennedy ever gives only made it that much more powerful.
Here’s an exclusive: my wife, ever the nursing professor, said she spotted what looked like an IV connected to Kennedy. When I asked her to speculate what they might be pumping into him, she answered, “Painkillers, maybe something else.” If that is the case it makes Kennedy’s moment all the more magical. I am convinced he really believes he is witnessing something historic and “passing the torch” is far more than empty rhetoric as was his statement that he “had to be there.”
The Kennedy family has never anointed another Democratic contender like this (much to the Clintons’ and Jimmy Carter’s chagrin). They may well be Obama’s best weapon. An ad with Caroline and Ted Kennedy and the rest of the family would be extremely powerful if done right.
So despite the lousy set it was a night of powerful moments. Next comes the turning pint of the convention: what will Hillary and her supporters do?
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