During a visit to Dundalk, we took photos of the Occupy May Day posters affixed to various walls and telephone poles around town. Dundalk is a working class suburb of Baltimore -- and by "working class," I mean very working class. When I lived in southern California, everyone made fun of the proles living in Sylmar -- but Dundalkians make Sylmarians seem like Yale graduates.
Many dockworkers live in Dundalk, and a surprising number of them sound like Popeye. I'm not kidding: Popeye. If you think that voice was invented for the cartoons, think again. Some Dundalkians even kind of look like Popeye, except not as thin.
There hasn't been a bookstore in this burg in decades. Them newfangled computer thingies are objects of wonder and awe.
Everyone smokes -- all the time. In the morning, you can see all the cute little boys and girls walking to Dundalk Elementary, and they're all holding cigs between their stubby little fingers. Squirrels and puppies and cats all smoke. Birds swoop down from the trees to steal cigs from the squirrels.
In Dundalk, young women never talk about their husbands or their boyfriends: They talk about "My baby's daddy." As in: "Me and my baby's daddy went to the movie show last weekend."
The last time anyone in Dundalk made a clever remark was 1965. The last time any Dundalkian comprehended a clever remark was 1983. A monument in Freedom Park commemorates the occasion.
You occasionally see Dundalkians rolling around the pavement because they've forgotten the technique of upright walking. You occasionally see Dundalkians choking to death because they've forgotten how to breathe. If the Hulk lived here, he'd be the superintendent of schools.
Get the picture? This is the audience that the Occupy forces hoped to reach when they placed posters throughout Dundalk.
I will now present to you the words and images that the Occupy organizers thought would go over huge with the chainsmoking, Popeye-voiced dockworkers:
Ah yes. Minimalist surrealism. Bewildering non-sequiturs. If that don't fetch 'em, I don't know Dundalk.
This is good. Everyone knows that Dundalkians are big Erich Fromm fans. And it's not as though you need to give anyone a reason to get up off that couch.
Absolutely nobody reading these words felt any compulsion to strike. Nothing in these posters offered any reason for doing so. There was no appeal to the hopes, dreams or fears of the target audience.
Not pictured here: The poster that featured nothing but that fucking Guy Fawkes mask -- as if we haven't had enough of that.
I can just picture the arrogant pseudo-Marxist college kids who dreamed up these images. They probably dress in black and eat vegan meals and hang out at Red Emma's bookshop, if that place is still open. They would, no doubt, offer endless justifications for their inane and otiose approach to the ancient art of the propaganda poster. The smirky young fucktards who like imagery of this sort are usually too damn smug ever to admit making a miscalculation.
Get a clue, fetuses: You have to know your audience. You have understand what motivates people. You have to speak to their concerns, in a striking and memorable and inviting fashion. If you're talking to dockworkers, speak their language.
The Dada imagery that appeals to your two or three closest college buddies may not appeal to people who work in crummy jobs.
Yeah, this post opens me up to charges of snobbishness. Yeah, I've had some fun at the expense of the hard-working people who call Dundalk home. To be fair, Dundalkians have a good-natured tendency to kid themselves, and they often call their home town "Dumb-dalk." (If you wanna hear vicious, ask 'em about Essex.)
That said, I gotta tell ya: The proles who work in Dundalk -- and Essex, and Sylmar, and any other Proleburg you can name -- are freakin' geniuses compared to the idiotic kids who cobbled together Occupy May Day.
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