The Financial Times as the in-order-too of not investing too much time or newspaper space to the bad news that Neo-Liberal Lite Golden Boy Macron is suffering from the political malady diagnosed as ‘popularity plummets’. They have produced a 2:37 second video, so as to demonstrate that they report the news, but relegate the bad news to a slickly produced video, so as not give it full attention. The Financial Time editors and pundits choose to ignore the spoiled ballots, white ballots and abstentions that amounted to 33.4% of the final vote in the French election. Not to speak of the the very same phenomena in the preliminary rounds of voting!
(Source:CNN)
The Financial Times uses the montage as the simulacrum of actual reporting, instead of relying on facts, figures and heavy injections of speculation. They have employed the considerable talents of Mr. Jamie Han who produced and edited this montage from footage by Reuters and photography by AP and Bloomberg. This montage provides glimpses of the Macron in various civic settings, with both sound and silent film/video, and photographic stills. Also video of street demonstrations, of Sarkozy and Hollande and a man, who I do not know, speaking to the Legislature, and the resigned General Pierre de Villiers. Mr. Han has effectively used the montage method to evoke emotion, as the flow of images succeed each other, we barely time to just recognize each before we are exposed to the next image, or set of images: but are attention is directed to the title cards that appear beside each set of images. This is reminiscent of the silent movie device, that provided plot and dialogue. But in this case it resembles the cartouche or balloon that the writers and artists who produced comic books used for the same purpose, as silent film makers. Because we are viewing propaganda, these title cards are used to frame the debate, and to reduce the terms of that debate, about important civic issues vital to any discussion of political action in the Republican tradition of France! Nothing less. The falling popularity of Macron means that The Financial Times’ unstinting advocacy for the Neo-Liberal Project is in danger. The rise of The Populist Spirit in France is a clear and present danger to the project of Austerity, that is the calling card of Neo-Liberalism. That Neo-Liberalism is about the Market being the central conception/practice that rules the whole of the human endeavor: it is, in sum, nihilism without apology. Even though it’s practice has produced catastrophic failure where ever it has been tried.
Almost Marx
