Anyone who's sold anything will tell you that, first of all, you've got to find a way to let people know about what you've got to unload. Just as there are "no postmodernists in foxholes," advertisers don't usually hang out in caves. Advertising is public. The purpose has been to inform a buyer that there is something to be had, that some new invention is now a necessity. The problem now, though, is that over time the role of the advertiser has blurred and we no longer fully understand what exactly it is they want us to buy, or, for that matter, how it is that they want us to pay.

Take an advertisement from just thirty years ago and you'll get what I mean. I'm looking at an ad from Boeing Inc. in 1969. The top one third of the page provides us with a black and white image of a helicopter hovering over the desert. The bottom two thirds enlist textual support. Specifically, the image exhibits a Chinook helicopter lifting what appears to be a piano fit for Andre the Giant, and the text lets us know that this is "Boeing's new Chinook CH-47C, the only helicopter available that offers an internal or external maximum payload of 24,000 pounds." The shot is at ground level with the Chinook centered in flight about 25 feet above a man in fatigues waving the cargo off. The event is overseen by another soldier in a military truck who seems to be saying something like, "A little to the right, no left! Thaaat's right." The rest of the text gives an explanation-that the helicopter can be used for "military transport, air-sea rescue, cargo movement or speedy assistance in civil disaster." This allows us to easily assume who the target audience is: search and rescue teams, the military, or humanitarian organizations. Everything is clear, direct, and descriptive. If you're not interested in nabbing the brand new Chinook to show up your neighbor's H2, you can simply flip the page.

A recent (August 2005) Boeing (now merged with Bell) advertisement appears to be similar at first glance. It, too, is black and white, and illustrates a military helicopter dangling uncluttered in the sky. The photograph actually takes up the whole of the ad with the text overlaid. Two vertical ropes hang from the helicopter, an Osprey CV-22, as soldiers repel into a holy mosque. The photo is shot from below with a wide-angle lens, giving us a slightly distorted view of a desolate street, oily smoke billowing from a burning car. Text in the upper right reads, "It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell." This expression sets a very different tone than the prior ad. Text in the lower right informs us that the "CV-22 delivers Special Forces to insertion points never thought possible," allowing us once again to see who the target market is: U.S. Special Forces.

These two ads may need a little context. The first image was an advertisement released in August, 1969, the peak year of the American War in Vietnam. Mass demonstrations had begun decrying the war, protestors numbering in the tens of thousands. In April, 300 students from Harvard had seized the administration building in a widely televised protest against the war, eliciting sympathy as people at home saw policemen blasting student protesters with fire hoses. This exposure was one of the major turning points in shifting the attitudes of mainstream Americans. It was released in July, right before the My Lai Massacre was revealed. Soon war protesters escalated their indignation to rioting in the streets, while the radical group, The Weather Underground, was blowing up statues of police officers and launching bombing attacks on government and military targets.

The recent ad, on the other hand, was published in the midst of the current US war in Iraq. Originally intended to be run in about 30 magazines, it was denied by all but the Armed Forces Journal. Public outcry forced the image's retraction and apology. Perhaps it was because people felt that the evil forces, not us, were charged with traditionally "unleashing hell," or it could be that we didn't feel comfortable publicly stating the same thing Bin Ladin has been yelling: "Jihad!" for--that the U.S. led "liberation" was actually a war on Islam. "Ironically" enough (I think the term is appropriate now), after the initial retraction the advertisement was again seen, in the conservative paper The National Review, only a month later. Being that the public saw the image as potentially offending over a billion people (that's 1,000,000,000), the vice president of Bell quickly tried to assuage public sentiment with the statement, "We didn't actually hover an Osprey over a mosque." Yet, the image continues to elicit a public stir.

A major difference between the two images is the atmosphere. The 1969 image seems accurately set in a dust storm that obscures the background. The recent advertisement pops the heliplane against dodged clouds with rays of light pouring toward it; the plane is indeed heavenly. I say the 1969 image was "accurately set" because a Chinook hovering over desert terrain requires a lot of air forced downward to offset the great weight of the chopper; It's going to generate a dust cloud. Alternatively, the Osprey helicopter seems to defy the laws of physics, clearly revealing that it is a photo-composite, a Photoshopped manipulation: smoke from the car wafts slowly upward-toward the descending troops and their aerial taxi-cab. It seems we didn't need the vice-president's words to know that the Mosque was added digitally to the composition.

We can hardly help to notice that the two images have vastly different intents, one focuses on lifting cargo, while the other "unleashes hell" on a holy site. However, this may be a knee-jerk reaction. Although the current war has met up with far more protest and public disapproval from the outset, it is still nothing compared to the outcries during the height of the War in Vietnam. The older image was set during a time when there may have been 120 bombing missions on any given day, yet the image is innocuous and humanitarian. I would say that the advertisement seeks to color the public mentality, that the Chinook is just as often used for cargo movement or speedy assistance in civil disaster as opposed to what it was primarily geared for: getting troops into combat zones quickly so they could kill Vietnamese. The image seems to be a visual double-speak, as George Orwell identifies, political language which seeks to "make lies truth and murder respectable." The political linguistic morass is essentially an inky octopus, a blurry black blob hiding the thrashing tentacles beneath. We talk about the "removal of unreliable elements" (which means death of "enemy" dissidents), "friendly fire" (killing your own troops), or "brisk fighting" (military lingo which signals 80% of troops were killed in a battle). Double-speak serves to remove us from the reality that human beings are dying. It aims to distance the truth of war from the public, and allows us a much more appealing notion-to automatically equate military action with humanitarian ends.

The contemporary image reacts to public sentiment in a different way. It makes no qualms to agree with Bin Ladin, that the Iraqi conflict is a "War against Islam." There are telephone poles in front of the mosque, aiding the idea that the Helicopter can maneuver troops around in complicated and dangerous areas. But if you look closer you will notice that the telephone lines actually make two stark X's over the mosque, diminishing any subliminal confusion. Like the earlier ad, it is hard to imagine many people rushing out to buy an Osprey. The people that make those purchasing decisions are visited by executives and lavished with expensive dinners accompanied by glossy pamphlets. Both of the ads' purposes are solely P.R. The 2005 advertisement is uncompromising in its mission to glorify war and create images in the minds of the population that the invasion is going well. The 1969 advertisement seeks to make people forget that an invasion is going on at all. The 2005 ad, although pulled quickly from the magazines, allows the pro-war to know the uncompromising stance of government planners. The immediate retraction and refusal to publish allows those against the war to feel secure that the zeal is unacceptable. It dissolves tensions on either end. These ads never had any intention to sell helicopters. If we must pay, it isn't with cash, but with our complacency.