The Propaganda Cycle
Nikolai addresses an Institute conference, Autumn 2810
Nikki paused, surveying his audience. The militant butterflies in his stomach had subsided as he worked through his opening remarks and offered heartfelt thanks to Aunt Helen and the Institute staff for their work of organisation, then to the honoured, honorable, noble, and common delegates for attending, including those many children in both imperia who would be watching this historic (and historical) event. So there! From His place of honour in the front row Riahir winked fractionally at him, but the rest of the glittering imperial party and the high Vor guests surrounding his parents wore attentive, serious looks, so he took a deep breath and launched in to his speech proper.
"It is no secret that successive Adventures of Lord Vortalon! were among the great joys of my childhood, as for many Barrayarans of my generation. But while that warrants my own attention, and perhaps that of sociologists and students of culture, the greatest enjoyment could not in itself justify this conference, in all its expense and dignity. So let me first ask, not least for the benefit of the sceptics among us, exactly what does rightly occasion this meeting of minds, and its inaugural broadcast on the Joint Imperial Schoolnet."
Uncle Fletchir's agreement to that had taken Nikki and Riahir full drafts and a complete, bi-imperially observed delivery of their speeches followed by some close questioning and subtle editing. But they had won not only Celestial consent but amused approval, and both of them had worked extremely hard with his Da on how to address those physically present and the great frames on the chamber-walls with equal intensity and clarity.
"The short answer is that the degree to which successive seasons of the show were joys of childhood has made them also a most interesting guide in adolescence, and beyond. Given the belligerent history of the Barrayaran and Cetagandan imperia it was perhaps inevitable, though not necessary, that the slant of Lord Vortalon! should have been so persistently propagandistic, in ways we shall hear analysed and assessed from many perspectives during the coming days. And given that, it was certainly inevitable that among Barrayar's children the series should have informed widespread surprise at, and some emotional resistance to, the Alliance of 2804.
"Yet from His Imperial Majesty's first public bruiting of the possibility of alliance, which I was privileged to witness in the square at Vorkosigan Surleau and the record of which all may now consult in the Institute Library, Lord Vortalon! has played a productive role in the rapprochement of the imperia—which means both our various official negotiations and the growing friendships between individual subjects of each imperium. And those propagandistic slants that helped to make the series popular with Barrayarans, compounding its just indictments of ghem strategy during the Occupation with demeaning slanders of ghem courage and intelligence, mean that every actual encounter by fans with newly allied ghem exposes the discontinuity between holovid fiction and cultural reality."
Aunt Helen and his Da had both assured him that early, unapologetic, and uninflected mention of the old, bad history and the rhetorical excesses of Lord Vortalon! would not disturb but settle audience nerves, and the relief in his gut as he saw that they had been right told him that despite everything he hadn't quite believed them. He had felt tension fizz as he spoke of past belligerence, but also felt it vanish into concentration and interest as his careful sentences began to command thought. The slight smile on Grandma Cordelia's lips was also an assurance that the tactic had worked, and the look of engaged interest on Gran'da Aral's face, as if he had never heard this speech before, roused a bubble of pure gratitude in Nikki's heart. Confirmation of the Viceroy's attendance, not only as a delegate but as a panel-chair in the military stream of conference sessions, had pushed attendance on both sides from fair to overflowing, bringing in a large military group from the Joint Imperial Services Academy on Aralyar Ceta and a clutch of other senior figures from both imperia, each with his or her own entourage, so what he and Riahir might do for Gran'da Aral in return was at the top of their post-conference agenda.
"Though modesty becomes all speakers before the delegates and guests assembled here, I can claim one personal credit, for it was I who introduced to the series His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince the haut Riahir ; as it was he and I together, with the help of my stepfather and ghem-General Benin, who persuaded His Celestial Majesty to permit its wider release within His imperium. And that led to the second, compelling reason for this conference, for the ghem children who saw it, and through the schools exchange and holopal programmes began to discuss it with their Barrayaran peers, were so plainly puzzled by their representation in it—so unable to identify with the figures they saw who purported to be military ghem but could not even apply their own face-paint correctly, nor remember their own ranks—that the gulf between holovid fiction and cultural reality was again most productively underscored."
As the crafted phrases went home, underscored with gesture, murmured laughter was heard when it ought, and Nikki felt for the first time in his life what he had heard his Ma wonderingly describe, the approving support of a public audience. Exposure to Uncles Gregor and Fletchir, and sometimes to other senior alliance personnel in their company, had taught him long ago what it was to be listened to seriously by adults who embodied and wielded political power, but there was a different and in some ways greater satisfaction in being the focus of this far wider and (beyond the Institute) less privileged attention, and he leaned in to the rapport he was building.
"The simple fact is, of course, that propaganda typically caricatures as it condemns, exaggerating one and omitting another feature to appeal to prejudice, play on fear, and deny complexity of motive and common emotions. Such denigration may be wilfully crafted in malice or reflect false perceptions—examples of both may be traced across Nexus history to pre-diasporic Terran conflicts—but the distinction is not so easy to maintain, for even among the malicious what is initially known inwardly as calumny passes insensibly into received truth. In consequence one natural cycle of propaganda is often, even typically, self-defeating, for the more successful a misrepresentation is in generating false beliefs, the more powerfully it feeds back into misunderstanding, misprision, and missteps, errors upon which correction rides. As an old Terran saying has it, 'error in, error out'—and if we do not all learn the dire lessons of what happens when intelligence, civilian and military, is corrupted by its own propaganda, history will teach them to us again in ways we would all avoid."
His gesture pointedly encompassed the frames as he spoke, reminding those present of the younger audience beyond, and he again felt their approval and support as he was understood.
"So there are both good and pressing reasons for our collective attention to Lord Vortalon! In the widest sense the purpose of this conference is to accelerate and short-circuit the propaganda cycle, and the use of the Schoolnet is not only a means of distributing our analyses but a reminder to us all, as we analyse, for whose benefit we are doing so. So I begin my own analysis with a distinction, for the experiences of Cetagandan and Barrayaran children confronted with Lord Vortalon! have not been identical, or even similar.
"The greatest uncertainty in my analysis concerns the haut, both because I have had less contact with haut children and because the haut themselves, though mentioned in dialogue, are never directly represented in the series. Historically, as documents in the Institute Library make clear, the ghem command, however permitted or encouraged to begin their invasion, was on occupied Barrayar its own authority, and evn on Eta Ceta the chain of command operated within established ghem military structures without close haut supervision. The haut are therefore effectively unknown quantities within the drama and narratives of the series ; and as time passes it will become increasingly necessary to remember, and explain to younger viewers, that this all occurred before frame-technology, when nothing could be referred back to Eta Ceta if an answer was needed within the fortnight."
That produced some frowns, and Nikki mentally grinned. Just you wait. When his Da had ironically remarked the speed with which any radical new technology seemed to banish even in thinking adults all memory of how things had been beforehand, Nikki's questions had elicited the thoughtfully meandering observation that Uncle Dag's instantaneous appreciation that frames could tightly circumscribe the military ghem, a critical factor in the first pre-summit contact, dovetailed very interestingly with Uncle Fletchir's attitude to events on Dagoola IV. Nikki had pursued the matter directly with the relevant uncles, and now omitted to unpack the matter of the haut any further until Riahir did so on some very carefully vetted lines in closing the conference. Onward.
"The occupying ghem were thus, in a real sense, isolated here, and this simple fact must command our attention, for it both asks how different from other ghem they became in that isolation, and figures prominently in the thinking of ghem children today. Their experience of the series involves a gap between the version of the ghem they see in Barrayaran propaganda and what they understand themselves as modern ghem to be—and if the cruder errors of the series in the details of ghem culture allow for laughter (to which I shall return), there is neverthless a genuine puzzlement that is far from childish, and that the isolation of the occupying ghem seems handily to explain. Error should be prevented here, and I particularly draw the attention of the teachers attending to the 'Genetics and Cultural History' thread among the panels."
He felt the intensity of thinking in the audience increase, noting with particular pleasure haut Auselon's furrowed brow. Lord Vortalon! might be rather crude in some respects but that didn't mean its implications were, and making careful, impeccably polite presentation of awkward facts to the rude haut was fast becoming something of a hobby.
"Correspondingly, the experience of Barrayaran children is not of a difficulty in self-identification—all narrative propaganda invites heroic fantasies—but in other-identification ; they may each be Lord Vortalon or his brave bride or faithful friend, but the ghem they have the fortune to meet in reality do not well correspond to the villains they see on screen. In some respects this is simply the propaganda of conflict running up against renewed civilities, with a proper reduction of distorted features and upgrading of 2-D to holovid images. But there are complex matters that swirl within that process.
"The egregious face-paint, for example, arising from the producers' decision to allow their make-up artists a free hand in creating fictional clan-emblems, has for Barrayarans a distinct underlying flavour of clowning, of slapstick and fun, while for ghem it is a serious and normative aspect of public life, as well as a public emblem of inner devotion. Thus the invalidity of the clan-emblem designs, a falseness unknown in their own dramatic fictions, for ghem distances the series from the historical status it claimed in its publicity. This is, I believe, actually a key to the series' success in both imperia, for Cetagandan and Barrayaran children alike register that at heart the drama is action comedy, a story of victorious survival, and without personal knowledge of the events portrayed the villains are in important measure unreal.
"With one great exception." The audience tensed satisfactorily. "The ghem clan-emblems are indeed fictional, and while a broadly historical outline of events is observed, there is similarly limited correspondence between the ghem commanders and troops portrayed and those who genuinely lived and died here all those years ago. But the Barrayaran emblems that are used are, save for Vortalon's own, very real, as are the hybrid emblems that the major collaborating families wore in protection during the Occupation, and paid a mortal price for after it ended."
Some Barrayarans winced and he met their gaze squarely but gentled his voice a shade. "There were in truth remarkably few such families, and little if any collaboration that was not in some measure coerced, but just as the ghem must confront the truths of what happened here, truths that Lord Vortalon! reflects however it may otherwise caricature the ghem, so Barrayarans, Vor and common alike, must confront the facts and not the caricatures of collaboration. We might well reflect on the fact that the most intense and extended hostility towards individuals explored in the series is not against ghem but against fellow Barrayarans, and we must remember that much of the most active resistance also involved everyday normality, that life went on, culturally and economically, throughout the Occupation, and that in most places that involved dealing with authorities that were, if not themselves ghem, then ghem-controlled. Several of the most prominent narrative threads in the series touch on this cluster of facts, and the motives of Lord Vortalon's murderous cousin deserve particular thought—for while his means of treason were provided by the ghem, the issue that most fundamentally drove his situation, the disinheritance of his father, was a purely Barrayaran matter."
He allowed what Riahir called his bleak smile onto his face and nodded formally to his Grandma. "Many of you will know that the Vicereine of Sergyar commonly remarks that Barrayar eats its children. And so it does : I can attest it myself, from experience and observation, and I understand very well that our history otherwise since the Time of Isolation began has barely begun to allow otherwise. But it need not, I believe, always be a Greek tragedy and a cannibal feast. In those same tragic myths that ancient Terran texts record, the children whom the Titan Cronus ate were later disgorged alive to resume their enjoyment and care of the world." He let his smile warm, saw the audience lighten, and for the first time since beginning properly opted for a more conversational tone. "I don't recommend the mixture of mustard and wine that was used to, um, purge Cronos of his diet—it gives a whole new meaning to 'bitter experience', I assure you—but we do need to remember that we are each and every one now cast in a comedy of midwiving and delivery, with rewards unhoped for coming to all."
Grand'ma Cordelia's smile was dazzling.
"I will end with one further example of a thread in the series that should command our attentions, both for what it sought to portray and for what it actually shows—the penultimate episodes in which Lord Vortalon participates in the attack on ghem-General Slayer's intelligence staff, as an immediate prelude to the final assaults that effectively ended the Occupation.
"The basic thinking of the writers and producers was certainly sound. The fundamental importance of military intelligence can hardly be disputed, and there were historically comparable and strategically vital assaults by Vorbarra and Vorkosigan commando-units on the intelligence staffs of Clans Erth, Varrak, and Hasman as well as on General Staff's Central Intelligence division. But besides the interesting and equally historical absence of any ghem civilian intelligence staff, it is for anyone with the slightest military competence plainly and painfully the case that Lord Vortalon and his comrades were exceptionally fortunate in their scriptwriters." He saw Uncle Gregor smile slightly as he quoted Uncle Fletchir, who had himself smiled and asked in this instance not to be named. "On the one hand, the methods of those commando-units in gaining access, and in turning terrified collaborators who could see the end coming into agents and moles, were not things the scriptwriters wished to recall. And on the other, the heroic comedy of the series was by then in climactic overdrive, inevitably inducing tunnel vision and slighting historical reality ever more severely. The result is as broad a historical travesty as it is a narrow narrative satisfaction, and yet that unreality is for us today, like the fictional clan-emblems, a marvellous opportunity more intelligently to investigate the misprisions of self and other that the series brings into general focus ; to ask ourselves, as allies, and to ask one another, as friends, about the past before and after we met ; and so to learn from our mistakes and grow out of our isolations. It is in that spirit that I am as delighted as I am honoured to declare this conference open, and to commend to you all as most exemplary propagandaThe Adventures of Lord Vortalon!"
The sincere applause, Nikki decided, smiling as graciously as he could, was actually very pleasurable, and brought with it gifts of energy and power he had not anticipated ; but he was still impatient for Riahir's closing address and sight of the producers' and actors' faces when they realised they were going to have to do at least one further series—and a lot more than one, if he and Riahir and their way, which they would. Lord Vortalon, Joint Fleet Officer. Series Twelve. Heh. When he'd told his parents, more than a year ago, that his chosen graduation project in the family seminar was to get more and betterepisodes of Lord Vortalon! made, with ghem sponsorship, his Da had wound up waving his arms about and thumping the arm of his chair, so helpless was his laughter, and he'd later undertaken all the aunt- and uncle-wrangling that was asked of him with barely concealed glee. But the look in his eyes now was pure pride, and Nikki drank it in as the balm it was.