Paul Rutherford

WEAPONS OF MASS PERSUASION

Marketing the war against Iraq

ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΥ

ΕΤΟΣ ΕΚΔΟΣΗΣ2004
ΣΕΛΙΔΕΣ226
ΙSBN0-8020-8651-9
ΕΚΔΟΤΗΣUniversity of Toronto Press

In this engaging and disturbing book, Paul Rutherford shows how the marketing campaign for the war against Iraq was constructed and carried out. He argues that not only was the campaign a new chapter in the presentation of real-time war as pop culture, but that its deeper implications have now come to constitute part of the history of modern democracy. Situating the war against Iraq within an existing tradition of war as narrative, spectacle, and, more broadly, commodity, Rutherford offers a brief overview of the history of civic advertising and propaganda, then examines in detail the different dimensions of three weeks of war presented to North Americans as it became a branded conflict, processed and cleansed to appeal to the well-established tastes of veteran consumers of popular culture.