Maybe it’s just a
result of getting older and (even) more cynical, but it struck me recently that
it has become impossible for politicians to make an outdoor visit to anywhere
without finding something to point at for the cameraperson. The picture heading
up this
story (taken when the two actors politicians concerned visited our
local windfarm a month or two ago) is a case in point. It doesn’t take a lot of
searching to find a host of similar examples where one politician or another is
looking very earnest and serious whilst pointing at something out of shot. That
‘out of shot’ is important as well – in not one example of the many I’ve seen
is the object being pointed at either shown or explained in the accompanying
text, but the earnest face, and obviously serious conversation whenever more
than one individual is involved, are essential prerequisites.
Even assuming that
they’re pointing at the same thing (and it isn’t always clear to me from the
photos that they are), why would two people find it necessary to draw each other’s
attention to the same thing at the same time, each explaining earnestly to the
other exactly what it is that both of them can plainly see? My suspicious mind
wonders whether there’s actually anything there at all, or whether the cameraperson
has simply concluded that two people standing by a road, or a fence, or a
building, or a wind turbine is too boring for words and what (s)he actually
needs is an ‘action’ shot. Maybe, “Just point at something over that way and
talk to each other with serious faces” is the best that they can come up
with. Or maybe the main point of some politicians these days really is simply to
travel around pointing at things.
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1 comment:
It may be a habit they've copied from Mr Trump. He has for a long time seemed incapable of walking onto any stage without pointing, as if to pretend that he's recognised some individual in the audience. It's not the most annoying thing about him by a long way, but it's still pretty annoying.
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