Mediated Politics: the politics of the image

As one key element in building the discourse of the imagined community of the Arab political Nation, posters, art, cinema or political, all participated in the cultivation, institutionalization, popularization and mediation of the image of the Arab Nation, and specifically of its Leader(s). This image would of course change depending on the sociopolitical and historical contexts, but a constant interchange of communally relevant facts, symbols, emotions, desires, hopes and dreams, were constantly tapped into, in an attempt to appeal to and mobilize different groups at different historical junctures. As such, posters helped to frame, reinforce and create new ways of seeing various socio-political issues facing the Arab nation, at various important junctures in its history: communal symbols of the earth, of Mother Nature, of the steadfast leader, of resistance, struggle, continuity and change, were employed to different ends at different junctures in our socio-cultural histories. It is striking to see many of the same slogans and symbols, the same iconography deployed to similar or sometimes different ends, across political and art cinema posters. Notice the exact parallel between some of the titles and iconography of the political and cinema posters displayed here.