Design of Dissent Analysis

For this assignment I chose the picture entitled Brainwashing, which at first glance  looks like an ordinary dishwasher knob, but when we take a closer look at it we can see the message intended with this piece of art.  On the right side of the know we see the names of a number of different TV stations, the inclusion of CNN leads me to believe that the artist intended the viewer to think of the news reports from each of these stations, as well as their general programming. The image itself is simple, and easy to understand. The image isn’t doctored very much so it is immediately recognizable to the average viewer. This helps to increase the images effectiveness because it gets its message across without much effort from the viewer.

There are a couple of different messages that I was able to pick out from this message. The first, was the artists belief that the programming of these stations is often times intended to “brainwash” the viewer, influencing the opinions of the viewers that they may make. This can be seen throught the commercials played on the network, althought this is also often times seen in a political slant, or bias that a news station may take, especially during elections or times of national crisis. I believe it was fox news that was notorious for having a strong republican bias, and backing the president almost totally oblivious to his actions, and failures.

Another aspect I noticed was the parallel between a washing machines spin cycle, and the c0ncept of spin, used to changes the way a story is perceived based solely on how it is presented. They say there are two sides to every story and that most definitely is true, and White house press secretaries and TV news talking heads have mastered and got it down to a science. In conclusion, progaganda and branwashing  can be an incredibly useful and powerful media element when used correctly and when well designed, however, in the wrong hands, aka hitler, or as in the artist opinion, when used irresponsiblly or too often it can have some severe negative consequences.