Politics Gets Animated
Politicians are always looking for clever ways to reach voters during campaigns. Now, they have found one that is more Southpark than senatorial, more Simpsons than stately: cartoons.
Across the United States, animation laced with humor has become the latest weapon of choice for politicians looking to get their message out.
"They are magnets for attention and that's the name of the game in political advertising," said Martin Kaplan, an associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
When Fernando Ferrer's election campaign wanted to attack Michael Bloomberg's formidable media machine in their New York City mayoral race, he paired the mayor with President George W. Bush in a silly spoof that hit the airwaves this week and made the front page of The New York Post.
The two Republicans are riding a horse as somebody sings: "There's one thing for certain, I'll love you until I die." Then, Mr. Bush plants a kiss on Bloomberg's cheek.
Phil Angelides, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the 2006 California governor's race, wasted little time deploying his own cartoon that beseeches residents to take back their state from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's right-wing friends. The skit takes place on "Schwarzenegger Street" and features a "Cheney Monster" who gobbles the U.S. Constitution.
Syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington deployed "The Hybrid versus the Hummer" in the 2003 recall election, using it to poke fun at the action star's penchant for driving gas-guzzling Hummers. The cartoon shows Schwarzenegger's Hummer wrecking the environment as President Bush fills it with gas.
Along with others, these cartoonish tactics have received plenty of attention, raising the candidates' profiles and perhaps even irking their intended targets who are constantly trying to stay on message.
"I don't know that comic books really are very important in this election, we should be talking about real issues," Bloomberg said in a recent debate with Ferrer.
These latest satirical caricatures are descendants of the wildly and unexpectedly popular "This is Your Land" cartoon that was unleashed by JibJab Media in the 2004 presidential campaign.
For better or worse, the famous ad that skewered President Bush and Sen. John Kerry may have spawned a new generation of political advertising in the 21st century. In it, the candidates' faces take shots at each other, with Mr. Bush calling Kerry "a liberal sissy" and Kerry branding the president a "right-wing nut job," among other humorous insults.
"We've created a monster," said 34-year-old Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab Media, an online animation outfit in Santa Monica, California, that created the parody.
Action groups like gbjab.com and spinion.co.uk are also using animation to make their spirited points.
Spiridellis said politicians were copying JibJab for several reasons that included reaching an unlimited audience and doing it inexpensively. It's an easy way to cut through the clutter of a campaign, he said.
"This is Your Land" only cost a few hundred bucks, he said, but tallied 80 million hits along with "Good To Be in DC" in the run up to the election, making them an unparalleled Internet phenomenon.
"A lot of political campaigns on limited budgets may not have the funds for big media buys so they look at the Web and put this out there," Spiridellis said. "If you make something good and put it out there, people will pass it along."
JibJab has begun collecting the worst rip-offs — especially the political ads — and will soon post them for all to judge.
"Just cutting out a politician's head and putting it on a colorful background isn't going to make for inspired content," said brother Evan Spiridellis, 31.
Professor Paul Freedman, an expert on campaign advertising at the University of Virginia, said animation is just the latest evolution of political attack ads.
In the past, campaigns have wielded everything from farm animals to jingles to hand puppets to belittle adversaries. In fact, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson each deployed primitive black-and-white cartoons in their 1952 presidential race.
All of them, Freedman said, have been "efforts in an ongoing battle to be heard."
Freedman wasn't sure how effective animation has been in races. They might produce chuckles — but will they turn a race?
"It's effective in the sense that it's created a lot of attention and people are talking about it," he said. "That's not ideally the effect they are going for. They want to effect votes."
If animation does survive, don't expect it to supplant all those visceral attack ads that dominate the airwaves with their deadly serious narration.
"I could never imagine doing an entire campaign with animation," said Jonathan Prince, who helped create Ferrer's ad. "But if I was running a race in Southpark it might work."