On September 1, 2022, Joe Biden gave a speech. He and his team chose a color to illuminate the backdrop. In so doing, Joe presented the GOP with perhaps one of the easiest opportunities imaginable to communicate a visceral message to a national audience. Though we know all too plainly what Biden had to say, I don’t need to repeat it here in this analysis. There is his posture, bearing, emotion, clenched fist, and in some moments, face, contorted in anger. If someone was hidden in a cave and was brought out just to see images throughout the speech, it’s almost inevitable they would feel the rage that is Biden without hearing a word. If you removed Biden from the image, you would still come away with a clear impression of an emotion and an agenda. Two marines stand guard, adding context to the color. The red color and the shadows play off the building, forming shapes strikingly similar to the Nazi War Eagle, in fact, there are three abstracted graphic eagle iterations within one backdrop. This is an overt militaristic message. But it is the color red that speaks directly to a viewer at an emotional level. Someone is going to war and you are either an aggressor or a defender. There will be violence.
To understand the power of color, I would recommend a book, The Primary Colors: Three Essays, by Alexander Theroux. Theroux delves deeply into semiotics of color in a rambling casual way. Color speaks. As there are an infinite variety of shades to any color and each communicates something different, behind Joe Biden is a striking almost pure red,. It appears to have been generated by stage lighting and the medium of the building upon which it is cast does not diminish its hue. The red is primary, war like, even hell-like superimposed amidst the shadows struck up on the building. The shadows, which are the absence of light and color, are an integral piece of the picture, but they also frame the red.
Color has the capacity to directly speak to the emotions and even subconscious. Almost every commentator I’ve read so far treats the backdrop as a secondary faux pas made by the producers of the Biden speech. In fact, most of them treat the entire event as an accident and a blunder of miscalculation. I regard the entire production as thoroughly calculated, even down to the shade of red. They meant to militarize.
What I don’t think they intended was for their adversaries, the would be ‘America First’ demographic to read that same message, written on the wall as plain as ‘Mene, Mene, tekel upharsin’ and to realize that their government now has them in the crosshairs. Only a certain class of wonk people listen to speeches. A broader but still small group reads or listens about Presidential speeches. The vast majority of Americans are in the class of ‘other’. I believe this group of people could view an image of that speech for a few seconds and understand on an emotional and sub-conscious level what it’s saying. If a part of that ‘other’ group are the die-hard Biden base, they will take that message as a call to arms and await further instruction. But to disengaged conservatives, and I believe most uncommitted middle and Independents, they will understand where this Administration has left the path and left them.
So run that image, run ads night and day, fill the frame with blood red just as Biden intended it to be shown to convey his hatred for over half of America. Get the message out far and wide.