Military identity

A new radio station started broadcasting here in Iceland this week, Kaninn FM (91.9). The name means "The American" and it is run by the same guy that also runs "Officersklubburinn" (The Officer's Club). The logo for the radio station is a military insignia, and in both cases, photos of men in military uniforms are used in advertisements. For the Officer's Club, this made some sense to me, I mean, afterall, the establishment is in the old military base and was actually the old Officer's Club. But the Kaninn radio station, though using I guess the old tower from the old U.S. military radio station, does not really have anything to do with the military. The old radio station was a way for the military men to forget about all of that, and just relax, enjoy themselves. It seems everything the Americans did here in Iceland is somehow seen as militaristic, no matter if they are just trying to sit back and listen to music.

I hereby propose an initiative to try to disassociate the image of Americans from the image of the military. Afterall, in Icelandic, the word kaninn is quite close to kanína, bunny rabbit.

Bunny-Rabbit.<span class=jpg


And Bugs Bunny is really the quintessential American.



Comments

Anonymous said…
but it WAS run by - well maybe not the military, I'm not quite sure about that, but definitely some governmental agency. And it was of course meant for the military people and their families. So I think the connotations to the military aren't really out of order.
September 3, 2009 at 5:23 PM
Lissy said…
It is just so strange though, on so many levels, the way it is being advertised. As if there is a desire to have the Americans back? Or to make caricatures of them (me)? My problem is with the fact that it is called "The American" and the adds show nothing but military people (and one nurse in a tight white dress). Like I said, Officers Club, OK, but why the radio station?

Then the Icelandic half of me wants to chime in here that something else is also going on. The military left here in 2007, when things were good, when everyone thought Iceland had so many jobs it would not matter one little bit. Living here at the base, I can tell you, we were just starting to get our feet under us, figuring out what was going on with the buildings here and how to deal with all this stuff, when boom, the financial collapse hit. In all honesty, the bank collapse got sort of in the way of people dealing with the loss of the US military here. There had been a traveling exhibition done by the library on the subject, there was the start of a dialogue about that part of the past, and then suddenly it was very hard to talk about it. It did not fit in with the discussion of the bank collapse. So I guess I wonder if this add campaign is a way to get people to stop thinking about the bank collapse, and instead go back to thinking about those damn Americans.
September 3, 2009 at 6:40 PM
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