fear and pain it presents—shows how, biologically, ideologies are formed because of how people perceive the same things differently. While fear and pain can motivate frames, so can other emotions. You might have seen the viral video wherein Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke muses that athletes who kneel during the national anthem reflect the peaceful protestors of the Civil Rights Movement because “freedoms were not just purchased by those in uniform… but also those who took their lives into their hands, riding those Greyhound buses,” and that he can “think of nothing more American than to … take a knee for your rights.” He creates a frame that kneeling is patriotic because it is a form of protest by American people, countering the largely held frame that kneeling is anti-American. O’Rourke uses this frame to push voters to question how deeply their assessment of events is partisanly informed. Patriotic framing doesn’t stop there: At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, pundits were stuck on one thing with the Democrats’ tone: their patriotism. Between Vice President Joe Biden declaring that America “[owns] the finish line,” First Lady Michelle Obama calling it the “greatest country on Earth” and the multitude of “America is already great” lines in between, Democrats employed the feeling of patriotism to define their tone, rally voters and illustrate their platform. New York Times columnist David Brooks even went as far as to say that “if you were a martian and looked at [the Democratic and Republican National Conventions] and someone asked you which of the two parties is the most overtly patriotic, you would say the Democratic party,” implying that the Democrats’ patriotic tone was completely foreign to the current American body politic. Republicans are supposed to be the patriots, right? But, how can Democrats, who prioritize investing in American public goods and services, be classified as anti-patriots? How can Republicans—who have been condemned, since their contemporary creation, for seeking to reduce voting rights of the same people O’Rourke praised for building the nation—even be considered patriots? How parties choose to narrate patri-
otism is a frame. Politicized frames can do more than invent narratives; they can destroy them as well. Frames can be manipulated, weaponized and pruned to destruct or construct certain beliefs, as Western Michigan University Communications professor Dr. Mark Orbe exemplifies in his work on competing hashtag rhetoric. “Changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter is a demonstration of how we don’t actually understand structural racism in this county,” according to Orbe. When the the phrase “lives matter” is re-framed to be an uncontextualized, blanket statement, its political and historical circumstances are abandoned and the message it carries becomes disrupted. #AllLivesMatter becomes a frame that is used to destruct the #BlackLivesMatter narrative. This is a major implication of frames; they treat perceptions as reality and, as social constructions, can intensify political division. Other implications aren’t hard to calculate: Inability to comprehend each others’ perspectives leads to an inability to attain common goals. In 1990, the Benetton clothes company released an ad capturing the final moments of AIDS patient David Kirby, surrounded by his visabally distressed family, to promote their brand. The creative director of Benetton described this as a mission to introduce consumers to “meaning and issues that advertisers don’t normally want to deal with.” The photographer supported this, and even Kirby’s family liked the way their story was utilized to encourage conversation. Many AIDS advocates, however, felt this was an inappropriate, objectifying use of Kirby’s life and the epidemic. Benetton framed the ad as a tool for dialogue; opposers framed it as an exploitation of AIDS patients. Both sides wanted a conversation and cure for the pain Kirby felt, but their different frames hindered this. But frames don’t simply have to cause culture wars, pander to our tribalism and reflect our myopias: They can alter the precedent of our national discourse and typecasts. In his op-ed “Where Do Christians Fit in the Two Party System? They Don’t,” Redeemer Presbyterian Church founder Timothy Keller belabors his title and explores how the partisan frames surround-
Fall 2018
14