Is it me or has the recent trend become to look revolutionary these days?
Increasingly I’ve noticed that the idea of revolution, or being revolutionary, is just about everywhere, and practically any company feels it is capable of using ‘revolution’ to enhance its image to consumers.

A few months ago I started noticing some grainy, low budget, looking posters advertising a supposed ‘information revolution’; sad as it is, I got excited. The justification for their cause was made clear on their poster; “75% of online information goes through one company”…I was hooked. Could it be that there was finally a new search engine specifically set up to enable the web to remain diverse, and challenge Google’s monopoly on web searching?
No, not really.

These posters were a clever marketing strategy employed by the old school ask.com search engine, set up back in the days when Lycos and Mama were still regularly used. Now a dying breed, ask.com had apparently replaced the thirties-esque English butler with some scruffy haired men armed with a loud speaker. What could have prompted such a shift in their image? I mean if they really cared about such a problem, would they not actually start a campaign, hold a conference, begin a petition, or somehow raise the media profile of this issue?

No, because revolt is stylish, and it sells.

Even Pizza Hut has jumped on the bandwagon. Recently, their lunchtime buffet offer is marketed with pictures of fist bearing workers in front of a communist star. Here we have one of the worlds largest companies telling us to ‘revolutionise our lunch hour’, promoting the idea that it’s trendy to think you’re fighting an oppressive power, giving power to the people and generally being a pro-active so and so. Or at least looking like you are.

Perhaps these strategies are playing on a long-anticipated cathartic process, which is in demand by the British public. We couldn’t oust Tony and stop our troops from invading other countries, so instead lets give two fingers to that over priced salad bar and head on down to Pizza Hut. Respect!

It is almost depressing to think that as vast populations continue to live under dictatorial regimes, without the international support they need to obtain self-determination, that here in the UK it is cool to look revolutionary, but not act so. It is cool to culturally appropriate Arab-Palestinian scarves, so long as no-one has to listen to a lecture on Israeli war crimes.

Don’t get me wrong here; I know that images of resistance have always been fashionable. The most common example of this is probably the iconic and endlessly reproduced image of Che Guevara. But maybe its time to actually reflect on the new images of revolution in use. Che Guevara is symbolic of a revolution that happened many years ago. The resistance the Arab-Palestinian scarves represent and symbolise is real to the here and now. It is not some faded struggle of the past, separated from reality by a few decades. Within this very time frame, this very moment, colossal state oppression is occurring. People are being killed. as. you. read. this.

But how many of those trendy-wendy scarf wearers are thinking about this?

This struggle is still raw. Especially for someone, like myself, who has actively been to protests to show solidarity for this cause. So when I’m walking past FCUK and I see a mannequin adorned with a ‘Kuffiyeh’ scarf in their shop window, I feel frustrated. Because realistically speaking, how much do they care about the struggle for resistance and freedom those scarves currently represent?

How much do Pizza Hut and the directors of ask.com care about the fact that we need to apply for a licence to even protest nowadays? And that our civil liberties were slowly being eroded away whilst we were busy enjoying our buffet meal, or feeling revolutionary by using ask.com instead of Google.

What I’m saying is that images are ultimately statements.
So can we please just think a little deeper about what is being stated.

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