It didn't look particularly creepy to me to begin with. I linked to the wider-angle photos to show what the overall lighting of the building was designed to look like. The close-up video of Biden speaking is pretty standard, I agree.
I looked at the C-SPAN video and saw the same crappy background lighting and the same on-the-fly attempt to fix it, along with occasional crowd shots of people in folding chairs politely applauding.
I think you are overestimating both how much thought the people who prepared this scene put into the visuals and how much control they had over the setting. In order to believe that something sinister is going on, I would have to believe that:
1. The Biden team (or whoever did the lighting) was "obsessed" with the visuals and highly competent, but changed their minds about the lighting two minutes into the speech.
2. The Biden team intended to produce fascist-style visuals for the speech, but instead of having the audience be rows of soldiers they put a bunch of ordinary-looking people in lawn chairs around a circle.
3. CNN is in the tank for Biden, but decided to suddenly ignore his "clear intent" and "fix" the visuals twelve minutes into the speech.
4. Biden decided to use Nazi imagery in a speech opposing fascism and supporting pluralistic democracy, for... some reason?
5. Anyone, anywhere, could ever see Joe Biden (of all people) as a fascist Great Leader figure.
I think you are looking for conflict and complexity where there is none. The simplest and most plausible explanation for the visuals is that someone did a crappy job on the setup.
I'll close with one final note. Try to imagine this was otherwise identical setup, and even an identical speech. The only thing we'll change is that instead of the speaker invoking 1 day of riots in an effort to demonize his political opponents, it was instead a Republican speaker invoking the years of riots prior with the same motivation.
If you genuinely believe what you're saying here, then you would hold those exact same opinions in such a scenario.
I looked at the C-SPAN video and saw the same crappy background lighting and the same on-the-fly attempt to fix it, along with occasional crowd shots of people in folding chairs politely applauding.
I think you are overestimating both how much thought the people who prepared this scene put into the visuals and how much control they had over the setting. In order to believe that something sinister is going on, I would have to believe that:
1. The Biden team (or whoever did the lighting) was "obsessed" with the visuals and highly competent, but changed their minds about the lighting two minutes into the speech.
2. The Biden team intended to produce fascist-style visuals for the speech, but instead of having the audience be rows of soldiers they put a bunch of ordinary-looking people in lawn chairs around a circle.
3. CNN is in the tank for Biden, but decided to suddenly ignore his "clear intent" and "fix" the visuals twelve minutes into the speech.
4. Biden decided to use Nazi imagery in a speech opposing fascism and supporting pluralistic democracy, for... some reason?
5. Anyone, anywhere, could ever see Joe Biden (of all people) as a fascist Great Leader figure.
I think you are looking for conflict and complexity where there is none. The simplest and most plausible explanation for the visuals is that someone did a crappy job on the setup.