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The split screen from hell: How Fox's "wannabe" chyron deforms reality [1]

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Date: 2023-06-19  

Pepsi or Coke challenge.

That is the model, the motif, of the Fox chyron that they recently posted that labeled President Joe Biden as a “wannabe dictator” (the chyron: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED”). This was superimposed on an image of a split-screen showing Biden at the White House and Donald Trump in New Jersey, where he was giving a speech after being criminally indicted earlier that day.

The Fox viewer is invited to make implicit and explicit comparisons between the two men—there really is no reason other than that for the split-screen, especially with the superimposition of that chyron.

As I posted in response to someone asking why Fox would make such a suggestion (“If they want to appeal to those who admire fascists and authoritarians why would they label Biden as a dictator?”):

Because they’re overly invested in the contrast of strong/weak. This is a basic dichotomous paradigm for them: they see the world in these two very different ways. It’s their lens.

This is why it’s important that Fox showed Biden and Trump in a split-screen. This is a cinematic technique that truly, explicitly contrasts two things that are meant to be compared. (Remember the cultural reaction to showing the coffins of those in the military being broadcast alongside Reagan as he addressed the nation? That split-screen had a great deal to do with why that image was so controversial—it communicated something in itself, an undercurrent of information.)

Here, with this split-screen, Fox (as I interpret it) is communicating that Biden wants to be a dictator (ridiculous on its face, so we know we’re already dealing with distortion here) but he’s been cast previously, through many iterations of broadcasts, to be weak. So Biden’s supposed aspiration is a pretense.

The split-screen brings in the image of Trump (a person who still makes claims to present presidential power, that he retains some vestige of the office); and by situating each in their respective cities (indicating that Biden is at the WH, then saying that the wannabe dictator is at the WH, providing for the viewer the locution) the contrast is made that only one of these two is a REAL strongman, and that person is not the one at the WH.

Two commodities, side by side. Ain’t nothing like the real thing

Viewers sympathetic to this idea see the contrast, get offended that Biden seems to be making such a illegitimate effort to take power, and turn even more toward REAL authoritarianism, not this imitation crap.

It’s a visceral reaction. They want the real thing, baby; and they get angry at Biden for being such a pretender (when in fact it’s Fox pretending that Biden wants to occupy such a position of unaccountable power).

The chyron is an exercise in high/low, as Fox is using movie techniques paired with snide commentary; and it’s in this way that what’s communicated is insidious.

As J. Corey Butler says in “ Authoritarianism and fear responses to pictures: The role of social differences ” (International Journal of Psychology, 2013),

“Threats that lead to authoritarian responses are threats to the perception of ‘oneness’ and ‘sameness’ in society. They are threats to common authority and shared values. These threats even include authority figures that are perceived to be illegitimate or unworthy of respect.”

The chyron was especially triggering to authoritarians and made them thirst for someone to fulfill that role in their lives.

Malte Hagener, in “Divided, Together, Apart: How Split Screen Became Our Everyday Reality,” defines the split screen in this way:

Split screens in the cinema have typically been used to illustrate mediality—the transmission of signals over time and space. Consequently, the device has been employed to present media innovations that were new at the time. The telephone conversation, the live transmission of images on television, and later the decentralized direct transfer of data through digital networks were key domains for the use of split screen. The cinema—with its aesthetic means like mise-en-scène, editing, and sound design—reflects the world we inhabit, which is by now thoroughly saturated with media. The split screen has a specific graphical composition that predestines it for the display of mediality. It shows two (or more) spaces that are visibly distinct, yet presented in direct proximity within the image. It therefore mirrors the paradoxical configuration so typical of media: (spatial or temporal) distance is overcome through technological means, resulting in visual and/or aural closeness with the suppression of other sense perceptions.

NextShoot adds this to our understanding:

In its more recognizable form with clear borders or separations and different actions on the screen, a split screen will be used to juxtapose separate actions in the same frame. These can be complementary or contrasting, humourous or tense. It can suggest individuality or distance, or show characters as opponents or to indicate a slew of other interactions. An advantage of this juxtaposition is that the audience can make connections between the two (or more) images even if what’s shown is quite slow or simple. It can also create a sense of dynamism that simpler footage might not have[.]

Act I is over

In Fox’s split screen, the network was re-introducing the two main characters. In effect, this was a redefinition. The second act, at least, has begun: we’ve moved out of the 2020 election and all which dragged out from that impact (with mouthpieces of Trump saying all of this time that the election should receive a do-over, that Trump could [or would!] be reinstated, that he could just walk in and resume his position of authority, because in their telling he never lost it in the first place, etc.). Now we’re repositioning our two opponents—our two contestants. This is political Mortal Kombat, and we’re merely awaiting the voiceover telling these two to “FIGHT!”

This recasting reorients the audience to these figures’ new roles. The chyron points to the figure at the WH and names / labels him “wannabe dictator.” That the actual birth name is missing means that the viewer must take that bit of diegetic information—physical location—and match it up to the appropriate spot in the bicameral space. The split screen becomes interactive as the viewer hunts down, then connects this information.

Play the match game at home!

The chyron, as written, presents a dichotomy. One of these figures is “[the] wannabe”—thus the other is not. This is an unspoken but natural contrast.

So, if the WH speaker is the wannabe, then the one left over, the heroic remainder, is the Rival.

The new label refreshes Trump’s status with his followers and gives them a new handle by which to refer to him. A rival is at least as evenly matched in power and ability, someone who can take incoming fire, dish it back, and sometimes even get in double. “Rival” is a clean designation, overtaking “criminal defendant” or even “sex criminal,” certainly outboxing “failed candidate.” This label christens him anew in the minds of true believers.

Most importantly, these labels introduce the plot of this new act. As stated earlier, we’ve moved beyond the recriminations of 2020 (finally). For Trump viewers, over the last 2+ years, they have accepted his framing with sympathy, that he didn’t actually lose but that which was rightly his was stolen from him (cf. Jacob stealing Esau’s birthright, loss of white supremacy culture in the U.S.). Now, armed with Trump’s resentments—having ingested and incorporated that bitterness—these voter-viewers are ready to set him as pugilistic, pugnacious underdog, snarling and ready to snag teeth into his opponent.

As the split screen has a literal line dividing these two contestants, the battle lines have been drawn. The crowd, the Fox audience, knows for whom they’ll be cheering.

“The anxiety or terror of the situation can be dispelled only by the suspension of interest in reality and the acceptance of, even conscientious participation in, the accuser’s ‘logic.’” — David Shapiro, “ On the Psychology of Self-Deception ” (1996)

Trump’s true believers, deep in a process of self-deception so as to ward off internal anxiety, have placed their belief in Trump as the embodiment of their projected hopes and ideals. But now Trump himself is beset with internal and external anxieties. Now, the only way for these true believers to find relief is to engage in the same denials, minimizations, rationalizations, lies and other defense mechanisms, to ritualistically mirror Trump’s own denial of his own torments to continue avoiding their own.

They are doubly invested—invested at a remove. They believe in Trump as they no longer believe in themselves, and he’s encouraged them over many years to do just that. Now, facing the real prospect of criminal conviction and imprisonment, Trump has no choice (politically or psychologically) except to deny, dispute and obfuscate; and so his followers must do the same, even to the extent of adopting his talking points, the very words used in each excuse. They must adopt and parrot, just as they slipped on his persona so many years ago.

To disbelieve him now is to remove that backstop of self-deception and to have all of that dammed anxiety to come flooding in a flash. For the true believer, the truly self-deluded, this is too much to bear. Better to live through Trump and deny reality.

“Reader surveys have astonished even publishers with the revelation that the roving eyes of newspaper readers take equal satisfaction in ads and news copy. [...] Ads are news. What is wrong with them is that they are always good news. In order to balance off the effect and to sell good news, it is necessary to have a lot of bad news for the sake of intensity and reader participation. Real news is bad news, as already noted, and as any newspaper from the beginning of print can testify. Floods, fires, and other communal disasters by land and sea and air outrank any kind of private horror or villainy as news. Ads, in contrast, have to shrill their happy message loud and clear in order to match the penetrating power of bad news.” — Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, pp. 187-188, with added emphasis

So here may be a difference between advertisements and propaganda. As Folding Ideas (“ Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda ”) revealed, propaganda has no narrative because there’s no character arc or growth:

The same process [in works of fiction] of creating implications, of villainizing or lionizing through juxtaposed imagery, works the same regardless. Where propaganda diverges is in the nuances of how the message is delivered. One of the sand traps of discussing ideology is the demand of narrative. Story, at least in the European tradition, requires conflict. Characters must be flawed, they must make mistakes, their opponents must get the better of them. Things in some way, shape or form need to get bad, need to entertain uncertainty. In Return of the King, a conventional story, Denethor’s actions must bring Pippin and Gandalf and Faramir low in order to create the tension that will be relieved later in the story when the conflict is resolved. However, these basic mechanisms of narrative tension are at odds with the needs of propaganda, because weakness, failure, and uncertainty are anathema to the propagandist. The subject of propaganda has no arc but upwards: they begin strong and end stronger; they crush all that oppose them—their opposition is flimsy and victory is trivial. They win so much that the audience gets tired of all the winning. This is the point.

Propaganda is an advertisement insofar as it’s PR; and it is full of good news of the group being feted. But it is not a story, and it is not news—not inherently. It lacks conflict.

It would seem that this may be where conspiracy theories gain their value, as they provide a (nominal) threat to these Übermensch—suddenly there’s a villain and a plot, thus providing narrative. Whereas news and ads are without a governing structure—images and words may be paired or presented apart in any nonsequential procession—- a plot creates beginning, middle and end, thus elevating the iconography of the propaganda to real story.

Also, a villain necessitates a hero. In fascism, where the central political figure is invested with all of the energies and identification of each individual in the corporate community, once the villain appears, the leader and thus the people become the hero, the implacable victor, by virtue of fate and role.

With regards to our instantaneous media culture, at least in American politics, there is no real point of view. As Marshall McLuhan says, with electric media everything becomes now. Taking this to be true, without a POV, the only organizing structure is through the personal story of individuals. Hence we have the Chaos Caucus of far-right GOP figures who, in turn, attack other members of the House so as to create “good guys” and “bad guys,” where mere contrast substitutes for meaning.

Today’s propaganda operates through news, through the form of news. But it’s really advertisement. Thus, through today’s messaging, mediated through form, propaganda is ad is news.

[A]ll advertising is, psychologically speaking, propaganda.

— Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport, The Psychology of Radio (1935), p. 48, with emphasis

Make no mistake: what we saw on Fox in that chyron was an ad. It lasted 27 seconds. Superbowl commercials go for millions of dollars for a similar stretch of time. Not only was it free advertising for Trump, it was so slanted and yet so casual (“wannabe” is not formal language, but the spot was promoted as being a “news alert,” something that should be very formal) that the viewer could not help but be struck by the visual she or he was seeing.

So the first line of defense, it would seem, would be honing the skill of determining when one is encountering or confronting an ad. If the piece or segment is a commercial,

it’s not news. it might also be propaganda.

In the wake of reality TV and the advent of social media, Americans (who already had undergone a transformation from citizen to consumer) are transforming from voter to viewer—viewer in the reality TV sense. They are political spectators who participate at the very end of the episode, selecting their favorite contestant to move onto the next round.

Viewer-voters no longer pair politics with realities on the ground. The dramas that emanate from their screens are the only storylines that capture their attention—their idea of the world is circumscribed by a square or box of glowing light and only what can fit in those frames.

These folks are audience members first and foremost, who only occasionally fulfill a function to vote; and when they do, they do the same as when they pick up the phone to vote for someone to be booted from Big Brother or to advance on American Idol. The culture of voting, for these viewers, is exactly the same: the nature, the spirit, the outcome.

Thus politics ceases to be a vehicle to tackle problems or transform the world and becomes, merely, a two-dimensional show: a cartoon. A running narrative (such as a scandal) may lift it to the level of soap opera.

But the arena is drained of potentiality, of the ability to effect change. Like sitcoms, everything goes back at the end of the episode to the way it was at the start. It’s a static medium.

Soap operas have a narrative. Sitcoms have a narrative.

By investing so deeply in Donald Trump’s persona, his followers (especially his true believers) can substitute the linear (if irrational) storyline of his travails for the otherwise unlinked, non-narrative format of normal political affairs. By identifying so thoroughly with Trump and then identifying Trump with all of politics (at least for his party), that imposes a structure that permits the entry of human emotion, even base emotion, and the concepts not only of villain and hero but of beginning, middle, and end.

With such a structure, the political arena becomes accessible to the ordinary citizen, much as televised sitcoms or even professional wrestling plots are able to be entered and inhabited via a storyline that seems as ordinary as the viewer. Complexity reduces to something easily handled. (Citizens of all stripes have desired simpler understanding of the myriad activities of the government since WWII, when the government mushroomed beyond previous boundaries in terms of both size and variety. So many people yearn to get their arms around such a wide-ranging institution so as to better master reality.) This cartoonization of the world affords them that chance.

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