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The Party
claimed, of course, to have liberated the proles from bondage. . . . In reality
very little was known about the proles. It was not
necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their
other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle
turned loose upon the plains of
—George Orwell, 1984
BRAINWASHING
"The fact that TV is a source not
actively or critically attended to was made dramatically evident in the late
1960s by an experiment that rocked the world of political and product
advertising and forever changed the ways in which the television medium would
be used. The results of the experiment still reverberate through the industry
long after its somewhat primitive methods have been perfected.
"In November 1969, a researcher
named Herbert Krugman, who later became manager of
public-opinion research at General Electric headquarters in
"Flicking on the TV, Krugman began monitoring the brain-waves of the subject What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the
brain-waves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and
conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused,
receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below
the threshold of consciousness. When Krugman's
subject turned to reading through a magazine, beta waves reappeared, indicating
that conscious and alert attentiveness had replaced the daydreaming state.
"What surprised Krugman,
who had set out to test some McLuhanesque hypotheses
about the nature of TV-viewing, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged.
Further research revealed that the brain's left hemisphere, which processes
information logically and analytically, tunes out while the person is watching
TV. This tuning-out allows the right
hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and noncritically, to function unimpeded. 'It appears,'
wrote Krugman in a report of his findings, 'that the
mode of response to television is more or less constant and very different from
the response to print. That is, the basic electrical response of the brain
is clearly to the medium and not to content difference.... [Television
is] a communication medium that effortlessly
transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of
exposure.'
"Soon, dozens of agencies were
engaged in their own research into the television-brain phenomenon and its
implications. The findings led to a complete overhaul in the theories,
techniques, and practices that had structured the advertising industry and, to
an extent, the entire television industry. The key phrase in Krugman's findings was that TV transmits 'information not
thought about at the time of exposure.'" [p.p.
69-70]
"As Herbert Krugman
noted in the research that transformed the industry, we do not consciously or
rationally attend to the material resonating with our unconscious depths at the
time of transmission. Later, however, when we encounter a store display, or a real-life situation like one in an ad, or a
name on a ballot that conjures up our television experience of the candidate, a
wealth of associations is triggered. Schwartz explains: 'The function of a
display in the store is to recall the consumer's experience of the product in
the commercial.... You don't ask for a product: The
product asks for you! That is, a person's recall of a commercial is evoked by
the product itself, visible on a shelf or island display, interacting with the
stored data in his brain.' Just as in Julian Jaynes's
ancient cultures, where the internally heard speech of the
gods was prompted by props like the corpse of a chieftain or a statue, so,
too, our internalized media echoes are triggered by products, props, or
situations in the environment.
"As real-life experience is
increasingly replaced by the mediated 'experience' of television-viewing, it
becomes easy for politicians and market-researchers of all sorts to rely on a
base of mediated mass experience that can be evoked by appropriate triggers.
The TV 'world' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mass mind takes shape,
its participants acting according to media-derived impulses and believing them
to be their own personal volition arising out of their own desires and needs.
In such a situation, whoever controls the screen controls the future, the past,
and the present." [p. 82, Joyce Nelson, THE PERFICT
MACHINE; New Society Pub.,
1992, 800-253-3605; ISBN 0-86571-235-2 ]
"Women are carefully trained by
media to view themselves as inadequate. They are taught
that other women—through the purchases of clothes, cosmetics, food, vocations,
avocations, education, etc.—are more desirable and feminine than themselves. Her need to constantly reverify her sexual adequacy though the
purchase of merchandise becomes an overwhelming preoccupation, profitable for
the merchandisers, but potentially disastrous for the individual.
"North American society has a vested
interest in reinforcing an individual's failure to achieve sexual maturity. By
exploiting unconscious fears, forcing them to repress sexual taboos, the media
guarantees blind repressed seeking for value substitutes through commercial
products and consumption. Sexual repression, as reinforced by the media, is a
most viable marketing technology.
"Repressed sexual fear, much like
all types of repression, makes humans highly vulnerable to subliminal
management and control technology. Through subliminal appeals and
reinforcements of these fears, some consumers can be induced into buying almost
anything." [MEDIA SEXPLOITATION, Key, 1976]