Saturday, 12 September 2020

L5 summer project - the politics of bumper stickers

 The bumper sticker

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/origins-of-the-bumper-sticker/472395/

In 1934, the Kansas City silkscreen printer Forest Gill launched Gill-Line productions; the first company credited for making bumper stickers. Following WW2, Gill experimented more with materials and developed a self adhesive bumper sticker using DayGlo ink; this was a vast improvement from the previous concept of 'bumper signs' which used metal and string. 

The bumper itself had only been around since 1910, as it was added to enable drivers to 'safely' bounce of things like farm animals. The bumper was then later used as havens for advertising; bumper stickers were very much a product of post war America, with many Americans wanting to drive their new cars and show off, especially for tourists as many used them to show where they had been. 

So to begin with, bumper stickers were very much focused on advertising and tourism following WW2, but this didn't last for long; the 1960s saw more of a political influence on bumper sticker designs, with politicians capitalising on the essentially free advertising for campaigns. in 1968 Gills' sticker company printed 20 million bumper stickers for the presidential campaign of segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace. 

In an interview with The Atlantic, Gilman says that bumper stickers are often popular with the Democratic party, stating "were making a lot of Bernie Sanders stickers this year" (2016). 

The death of the bumper sticker?

Gilman however, has reported drops in the sales of bumper stickers; blaming it mostly on digital and social media advertising replacing the need for stickers. 

Bumper stickers, according to Larry Bird (a curator from the National Museum of Americas History) are very much a symbol of Americas' last 'hurrah' campaigns of the 1950s. These campaigns were a lot more focused around parades and rallies. Nowadays, campaigns are much more driven around television, thus loosing the need for the physical touches of bumper stickers. 

The premise of bumper stickers, Bird claims, is the physical connection around that thing, 'much more tangible than a facebook post'. 

Negative connotations surrounding bumper stickers

Bumper stickers are now seen in a much more negative light, with even Kim Kardashian highlighting the tackiness of them; 'Honey, would you put a bumper sticker on a Bentley?' when asked if she had any tattoos. 

Even more so, a 2008 study by Colorado State University found that people that put bumper stickers on their cars are 'more aggressive territorial drivers'. 

Jack Bowen - "If You Can Read This"

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/who-made-that-bumper-sticker.html

Jack Bowen, the author of "If You Can Read This" discusses the semiotics and philosophy of bumper stickers with the New York Times. His book studies the history and connotations of bumper stickers, within the realms of politics. Here is the interview:

What kind of conversation are we having on our cars? Most messages are aggressive. There’s this sort of screaming back and forth, and you’re much more likely to scream “Your candidate is lame” than “My candidate is good.” Anyone with a sticker is the type of person who wants to be heard.

Is it dangerous to engage in political debate on the highway at 60 miles per hour? There was a 2008 study by Colorado State University that showed drivers with bumper stickers displayed more road rage than those without any stickers. More interesting to me is that it didn’t matter what the bumper sticker said ­ — all of them were connected with road rage. The people who had “Practice Random Acts of Kindness” bumper stickers were just as likely to rage as the “My Student Beat Up Your Honor Student” people.

Are bumper stickers, as a folk art, on the decline? Yes — in fact, a lot of luxury cars don’t even have bumpers anymore. That’s almost sending a message in itself: “Don’t put a bumper on my car. I’m not going to be bumping into things.”

Notes on Jack Bowens' talk about his book and bumper sticker slogans with Google:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9ZVDWtZI8I

- Bowen spent time averaging 2200 bumper sticker slogans, discovering that bumper stickers have an average length of 8.1 words.

- During teaching his university class, Bowen used a bumper sticker quote to engage his students with philosophy. The quote was "Why do we kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?"

- Bowen talks about how bumper stickers have this great notion of tearing down fears about certain conversation topics; they are out in the open and push conversations in philosophy. They engage people.

- The book was actually written to engage people with philosophy without being too explicit; Bowen writes about bumper stickers to then in turn write about philosophy. Its a way of engaging everyday people with philosophy, without them realising it; Bowen speaks about how the book is written for 'everyone'. 

- An example in the book is the bumper sticker "bottled water is for suckers". This quote discusses how humans are gullible; most Americans consumer bottled water year after year with the conception of it being cleaner, whereas tap water is actually more regulated in America so is actually probably cleaner. Bowen discusses the example of the Fiji water company; due to the volcanic soil in Fiji, most of the population don't have access to safe drinking water, yet the company Fiji focuses its brand and boasts about the cleanliness of Fiji and its water - "when it comes to drinking water, remote happens to be very good" (from Fiji waters website).  




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