REALITY CHECKS IN AGAIN

• Commercials, like the cinema, are arduous to analyse. They represent complex cultural productions, both societal and personal. Indeed, in most cases, one doubts whether even the advertiser really comes to grips with the total implications of his or her work. And self-examination is not for the poor adman...Escape can be a solution however. Remember the recent commercial for a French internet provider whose (main) selling proposition was a dumb blonde in a bikini on the beach
  
  
• Tongue in cheek this one, but illustrating well the obstacles and traps awaiting agency creatives : too subtle, too cinephile, too arty, they lose audience. Too gross, they... So they go mainstream, that's where the clients are. Hey, throw in a pretty girl for good measure. As Kristina Kockova remarked in a recent ad presentation at IEP, sex/reproduction and survival /escape are the two of the three most elemental aspects of human existence
  
  
• Still today, in post-feminist 2008, at car shows or photography exhibitions, you will see attractive (young !) females adorning car bonnets or performing dances for a mainly male public, see KK above for the why. This elemental side to Life resonates in much TV advertising where adults are concerned (see ads for perfume, cars, clothes, beauty products...)
  
  
• Advertisers must focus in their commercials, independently of other professional factors, such as the client brief, contracts, costs, focus groups, the competition, techniques, programming etc. on the following :

1. the message of the narrative (or non-narrative option) - (what to say)
   
   
2. the massage of the message (how to interest, to flatter, to persuade the audience)
   
   
3. the visible elements of the message (what to show)
   
   
4. the audible elements (what to turn up and when)
   
   
5. the non-visible elements (what to hide)
   
   
6. the non-audible elements (what to turn off or down)
   
   
7. the abstract notions (what to suggest e.g. social class, aggression, smartness, cool...)
   
   
8. the hidden message (what is not said, but suggested, implied, what may be taboo)
   

A note on problems of analysis

• In order to understand ‘animated’ or cinematic advertisements or videos, these must be passed through the eye of the analytical needle. And this process is far from simple.
  
  
• The difficulty is easy to understand, for one must put into thoughts or words, themselves either too fuzzy or too static, a technological process - film or video* - apprehended through the complex sense of sight, of information and peri-information within a given socio-economic and cultural context.
  
  
• For the analyst, moving film must therefore be ‘reduced’ in some way to static words. For make no mistake about it, the way in which we understand a moving-image, fictional clip or message cannot be compared to the way we understand a photograph, the mother medium. Critic Susan Sontag, in her book ‘On Photography’ (1977), wrote that « photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. ». And (…) functioning takes place in time, and must be explained in time. Only that which narrates can make us understand.»
  
  
• It is true that today, photography is making a comeback, even in clips and videos, for the power of the static image in a moving flux can be signficant, 'arresting' we might say. Remember the popularity of the direct-developing Polaroids...
  
  
• The dimension of 'time being displaced' and not 'time standing still' as with a photograph, is essential to a grasp of what TV, cinema and in some cases, web advertising are all about. Indeed, to arrive at the delicious inner fruit of the advertisement, one must penetrate the outer layer, the thick skin of ancient cultural response and heritage.

* video is a different medium, though the responses of viewers resemble those of film ads

Happy New Year to all !

REALITY CHECK

Basic Factoids :

• TV commercials are just that – commercial ; they know that we know that. This explains the multiple levels at which ads are pitched and the presence of humour to ‘defuse the unsaid’ or 'non-dit' (taboos, for example). An example was a funny Spanish ad for an optician, which showed a man in serious need of glasses happily cleaning his teeth in the morning with a cream for piles, instead of toothpaste
  
  
• But the medium via which commercials are transmitted is more often than not a commercial operation in itself, which explains, amongst other things, their persistent ubiquity

• The verbs ‘to watch’ and ‘ to see’ do not have the same meaning : one cannot knit or read in front of TV, otherwise it is just radio. Doing something visual while in front of TV would be like smoking marihuana without inhaling…and look where that led. TV commercials are so placed in the programming schedule as to reach either a specific TV niche audience (the youth slot for Star Academy on French TV, the male, armchair sportsman slot (Eurosport, Turbo etc.), or the vast general public around prime-time programming, such as sporting events, popular series or the news.

• TV commercials, just like society as a whole, function according to social class factors, based on socio-economic reality. The Mercedes commercial will not aim at buyers of basic Opels

• There is no love-hate relationship towards commercials - they are just time-fillers so that people can feed the cat or put the kids to bed. People in France tend to appreciate advertising whilst remaining rather mistrustful and critical of possible abuse

• Members of the general public do not all possess the same gift for understanding a visual message : the young are more au fait visually and referentially-speaking, whereas the older are more cultured, more literary, more 'paper'. In terms of the five senses, some of us are more auditory, others rather olfactory. The plump, gustatory.
  
  
• However, the young tend to manipulate the new media with greater speed and skill than their elders, since they possess the codes to these since birth. Indeed, the new media seem pertinent to the young, even, sometimes, exclusive of all else
  
  
• Certain cosmopolitan groups in society, generally the young, whose networks are more highly-developed, see videos of advertising on YouTube for example, as a source of entertainment, even art, to be appreciated and then shared with friends via the web
  
  
• Apart from pop-ups, Flash and banners, newer forms of participatory, interactive and viral marketing are taking over on the Internet (as in Claudia Droc's recent in-class presentation on Sony, Cadburys and others)

(to be continued)

MORON ADVERTISING

We now have several definitions of the phenomenon of advertising in all its philosophical, socio-economic and psychological dimensions. We know that advertising has been a significant part of our economy and society for many centuries. Most have accepted the globally useful role played by the advertising industry in the consumer society, despite certain drawbacks. Others feel more than reticent about high-growth consumption as such, preferring reasoned development or low-growth scenarios.

Be that as it may, since WWII and more particularly since the advent of the 1980s digital revolution coupled with the multiplication of media outlets, the resources and financial might of this informational tool have grown to such an extent that citizen, student and intellectual must now urgently examine where they stand today regarding the ugly face of the industry and its increasingly unacceptable practices throughout the capitalist world, in terms of ethics, ecology and culture.

While advertising remains a useful activity, surely people in the West can see the damage caused by the excessive volume and invasive practices of advertising, to the extent that it has come to resemble criminal practice, especially on the Internet. People's personal details are routinely hacked, stolen and sold to unscrupulous companies, while others robot-spam mail accounts by the million. Adware pop-ups and pop-unders proliferate on the web to such an extent that they will slow down or block all use of a computer. The web experience can indeed elicit a sobering reflexion on the role that advertising plays in our lives today and this cannot be an intelligent, citizen-friendly or even consumer-friendly role for the persuasion industry.

Again, huge billboards contaminate a countryside drive and destroy many town approaches. An unthinking Americanisation of minds has dragged architecture and town planning down to a new low in terms of urban architecture and street furniture. No one complains. Have the French, for example (note that this is written from France), taken leave of their senses and abandoned their superior taste ? The architectural uglification of many newer suburbs, outer town areas and especially major roadsides and motorways has become a national embarassment. It is no excuse to say that the situation in the USA or Australia, for example, is just as bad or worse.

Work and reflexion must be carried out on the surplus of volume and the increasingly dangerous ubiquity of advertising in our societies. As with the recent financial and banking crisis, there is a definite need for serious regulation of the industry by governments and in the near future, by international bodies. Otherwise, tomorrow will become a brave, new, moronic world...

At the moment however, we must examine the reason why advertising permeates to such an extent the collective unconscious throughout the 'developed' world. Aside from the obvious macro-historical, economic and ideological reasons which have been examined elsewhere, it seems urgent to understand why the micro-effects of the advertising message do in fact function. This aspect has been less examined.

In brief, advertising's power is derived from :

A. (pre-existent)

• human gregariousness (desire to communicate with others)
• human behaviour (egotism, ignorance, greed...)

B. (macro)

• historical, linguistic and cultural references (the national framework)
  
• accepted dominant ideology (at present, American, the global framework)
• capitalistic motivation (profit first)
  
• industrial clout (as lobby and economic locomotive)

C. (micro)

• exploitation of language, symbols and images to an end
  
• exploitation of basic human urges (survival, sex, community)
• exploitation of technology to hide/show messages
• high volume of dissemination (propaganda)
  
• lack of intelligent dissidence in society (conformism)

Can more be added to this list ? Let me know if so. More soon.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ADVERTISING ?

One might tend to think that this question is not worth addressing, for the answer seems so obvious.

Why, advertising is simply the commercials , billboards and print ads we hear and see every day. The messages sewn onto clothing and footware, the ads in magazines, the banners towed by planes at summer beaches, the ‘advertorials’ in magazines, the banners and pop-ups or unders on websites, the ads integrated into street furniture like bus-stops, public toilets, buses, or in the tube on the walls and in the trains, the free newspapers relying on advertising, the product names stamped industrially on cars, motorbikes, stereos and TV sets, the ‘free’ gifts distributed at fairs or in the street, the samples in packets, the coupons in supermarkets, the sponsorship of yacht races, cricket matches or art exhibitions, the station identification on radio and TV, the fliers distributed at traffic lights, the junk mail in our letter-boxes and our e-mails, the product placement in movies (007 movies especially), the testimonials of stars, the T-shirts, the buttons, baseball caps, bumper-stickers, complimentary watches or umbrellas, journalists’ plugs on talk-shows or even during news bulletins, comic-strip references, cinema ads which have replaced the second feature, free game tickets – you name it, we in the West are on the receiving end of a humongous mass of promotional, sales and marketing gunk much more frequently and in more places than one can imagine ! What about supermarket trollies ? Been there. Inside toilets ? Done that. Our visible skin ? Been tried in Britain and the U.S.A on students. In kids’ schoolbooks ? Old hat already in the States. So far, only sleep, which represents approximately 30% of our lives, has escaped the clutches of advertisers, doubtless causing much counting of sheep and frustration for marketing men, poor things. However, they might just find a solution in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’…why not just make it cool to somatose us all ? Here are a few interesting quotes from Huxley’s 1932 satirical work (soma= some sort of mescalin) :

• ‘I wish I had my soma !’ (Lenina, a character) ‘The holiday it gave was perfect…greedily she clamoured for even larger, ever more frequent doses.'
  
  
• 'Every soma holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.’ ‘What you need is a gramme of soma.'
  
  
• 'Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today ‘ (Lenina)
  
  
• ‘Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry…’
  
  
• ‘ I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love…’ ; ‘Ending is better than mending.’
  
  
• ‘In [Orwell’s] ‘1984’, the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain ; in ‘Brave New World’ by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.’ (soma tablets, legalizing of sexual freedom, orgies, abolition of the family). (A. Huxley’s later work, ‘Brave New World Revisited’, 1958)

More coming soon.

MORE QUOTABLE QUOTES

This weekly blog is in its early stages. We are at the point of defining the terminology, before proceeding to rip the subject wide open ! With your help if you wish. Note that students can follow this blog anonymously, so have no fear. I know that writing comments in English isn't so easy, but if need be, I can embellish any contributions students make before publishing.

Here, anyway, is a selection of quotes on advertising (source anonymous, but this can be updated) extracted from the web by a former student :

• "Advertising is the lubricant for the free-enterprise system." Leo-Arthur Kelmenson (1976) quoted in 'The Stein & Day Dictionary of Definitive Quotations' (M. McKenna), 1983, N.Y.
  

• "Advertising is what you do when you can't go see somebody. That's all it is." Fairfax Cone (1963), quoted in 'Contemporary Quotations' (James Simpson), 1964, N.Y, Vail-Ballou Press.

• "Advertising is the life of trade." Calvin Coolidge, quoted in 'The International Dictionary of Thoughts' (Bradley, Daniels & Jones), 1969, Chicago, Ferguson.

• "Advertising, a judicious mixture of flattery and threats." Northrop Frye, quoted in 'The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations' (R. Fitzhenry), 1993.

• "Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation." S. Hayakawa 'Language in Thought and Action' (1964), N.Y., Harcourt.
  

• "Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it." Stephen B. Leacock, quoted in 'Crown's Book of Political Quotations' (M. Jackman), 1982.

• "Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century." Marshall McLuhan, 1976, 'The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations' (Robert Andrews), 1987.

• "Ads are the cave art of the 20th century." idem, in The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations' (Robert Fitzhenry), 1993.

• "Advertising is the 'wonder' in 'Wonder Bread'." J.I. Richards, 1995, Professor of Advertising, Uni of Texas, Austin.

• "Advertising is the modern substitute for argument ; its function is to make the worse appear the better." George Santayana

• "Advertising is legalized lying." H.G. Wells, quoted in 'Crown's Book of Political Quotations' (M. Jackman), 1982, N.Y.

By the way, on the global power of the brand, check out, if you haven't already, 'No Logo' by Canadian Naomi Klein, on globalisation's dramatic consequences (way before the recent sub-primes crunch !). Worth seeing on DVD are Michael Moore's documentaries on multinationals and U.S. society's ills ('The Big One', 1999 on Nike, 'Bowling for Columbine' 2002 on firearms...), as well as 'Supersize Me' (2004) by American Morgan Spurlock, in which the film-maker risks his health by eating hamburgers and fries for a month...

Then we have the rather (!) critical stance on advertising taken by Kalle Lasne, founder in 1989 of the Vancouver-based operation, Adbusters, magazine + website, which he sees as a counter-attack on the advertising industry, accused of, as he says, a "mind-fuck" on citizens by advertisers. Here is some of their self-promotion (!) (see website/about) :

• "Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has been featured in hundreds of alternative and mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television and radio shows around the world."

• "Adbusters offers incisive philosophical articles as well as activist commentary from around the world addressing issues ranging from genetically modified foods to media concentration. In addition, our annual social marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week have made us an important activist networking group."

• "Ultimately, though, Adbusters is an ecological magazine, dedicated to examining the relationship between human beings and their physical and mental environment. We want a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance. We try to coax people from spectator to participant in this quest. We want folks to get mad about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons."

Lasne says that we should make up our own minds about what we like and get back to our cultural roots. We have been totally 'spoon-fed' by the industry and the culture of brands. Ours is a ready-made world, a fake world of constructed "cool", which must be resisted. We must move towards a more ethical stance, to work, even from within the profession, for a better world. He proposes the concept of 'culture-jamming', using the power of subversion and parody on the Adbusters website to change the way internauts see the consumer 'experience' and to counter-balance the industry-speak, information/propaganda flow. He says, "Do multinationals have the right to shape the world we live in ?" (2005).

And us ?

Our role in 2008 as students and teachers is first to remain informed as to the extent of the 'mind-fuck' going on (if it is) and then to offer a critique of advertising discourse, which does in many circumstances, don't get me wrong, play a useful social and societal function. In the end, as citizen, he who speaks not, consents, as the French have it, so it is up to us to be :

1. informed on the major trends in the PR and advertising industries (e.g. storytelling)
   
   
2. vigilant as to the acceptability of new forms of persuasion affecting us (as citizens) and our children/family (e.g. wearing ads on one's skin, accepting voluntarily advertising on one's blog, accepting passively huge street hoardings in one's district or advertising in our kid brother's schoolbooks...)
   
   
3. active in our non-acceptance of deviations from ethical principles by the transnational status quo boys, by writing to the competent authorities (Town Hall, pressure groups, M.Ps., the BVA in France, the media... ), complaining in shops when no choice is offered (e.g. caps/clothes without brands), photographing incriminating hoardings and denouncing scurrilous commercial practices, joining groups (e.g. Paysages de France) of like-minded people to this end, etc... In short, act responsibly !
   

More coming up next week !

QUOTABLE QUOTES ON ADVERTISING

• « You can fool all of the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time »
  Abraham Lincoln, 1856

• « You use it once and throw it away »
  slogan in ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley, 1932

• « Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months »
  Oscar Wilde, quoted in Vance Packard’s ‘The Wastemakers’ , 1957

• « Commercial speech - advertising – makes up most of what we share as a culture. No one is happy about this, not even the the people who make it. (…) And it’s not going away »
  J.B. Twitchell, Professor of Literature, University of Florida, 2000
  

• « S’étonnera-t-on que ce soit surtout la publicité qui ait compris que l’image est aussi un objet, et un objet de désir ? » (Will it surprise to note that it took advertising to understand that the image is both an object as such and an object of desire ?) Christian Zimmer ‘Le Regard sans objet’, in Esprit 02/1994, 81

• « We do not see the world as it is, but as WE are »
  Anaïs Nin

If anyone finds another interesting quote, let me know and we'll publish it here.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

A brief summary of the Christian Salmon book (in French) :
"Storytelling" - La Découverte 2007

Note that Christian Salmon also writes each week in "Le Monde du Weekend", concentrating on the subject of storytelling, corporate and political.

Storytelling is a relatively new concept in France, but upon reflexion, proves as ancient as time itself, for one has only to open the Old Testament to see its relevance... Still, the ramifications of storytelling + technology (advertising discourse, internet buzz, ) + knowledge management (KM) (for-profit research, corporate applications) might be seen, with hindsight, as having been powerful tools in the persuasion industry.

In any case, the adwars continue whatever the name, whatever the form... beware dear citizen, for the end is (programmed to be) nigh (near) !! Butt-chips, neuro-advertising and nano-brandbots are the coming thing, say certain well-informed paranoidals. So don't get rubber-ducked !




'STORYTELLING, The Narrative Turn '

Initial notions

• Evan Cornog (Professor of Journalism) : ‘ Without a good story, there is neither power nor glory. ‘
• Gilles Deleuze : notion of national ‘narrative of history’ (USA : how the West was won)
• Roland Barthes : ST = one of the major categories of knowledge. Every people has its national narrative.
• ST (storytelling) = an artificial viewing of reality, ordering the emotions, creating identification on the part of the receptor (e.g. Walt Disney films, Nike, Coke, Apple, Volvo…)‏
• Tristan Todorov : la narratologie = science of ST

Origins

• Appeared in the early 1990s in the USA
• Concept began to have some success from 1995
• Taken up by marketing people in USA, in order :
  - the product
  - the logo (esp 1990s – the swoosh)‏
  - the brand (even before WW2)‏
  - the brand image
  

• Nike already began to recruit anti-Nike youth from the streets in 1999
• In 2000, consumers were becoming ‘brand fickle’ (consumer scepticism, consumer expertise, pseudo-innovations)‏
• Also, ‘No Logo’ (NK), the rise of the street, Michael Moore, sweatshops, Nike…)‏
• 2000 : branding became ST e.g. Chivas created ‘The Chivas Legend’ in 12 episodes

• 3000 messages/day in West
  
• Brands and myth (G. Lewi, HEC) in 3 stages :
  - heroism (difference)‏
  - wisdom (value)‏
  - myth (conscience)‏
• Stories, like jokes = fascination in the receptor
• New : the ’narrative universe’;
  
• Rolf Jensen : invented the ‘Dream society’, based on emotion
• Seth Godin : ‘it’s not the product, it’s the story people like’ (faith, not information ?)‏

• Narrative marketing : proposed a ‘vision of the world’, convergence conscience/product
• Seen as a managerial discipline, not a gimmick
• However, ‘tout est récit’ (CVs, canteen conversations, rumours…)‏
• Stemmed from the ‘culture of secrecy’ revealed in firms in USA by early ‘storytellers’ who spoke to employees of firms to encourage them to express themselves
• This became an identification of ‘plots’ within the firm : ‘organisational storytelling’ (1991) ; see also case of Renault
  

• Rumour, chatting in firms seen as substance (M.Foucault ‘Les Mots et les Choses’)‏ ; See also role of gurus, ‘griots’ in Africa (Mali)‏
• In France, ST arrived late, till then it was :
  - the manager, then
  - the leader, then
  - the coach
  
• Also, metaphor of ‘team’ ; Renault : firm seen as having ‘narrative capital’, employees as heroes… Danone and IBM
• France also : ‘personnaliser les parcours’, ‘contextualisation’

• Move began from ‘industrial capitalism’ to ‘emotional capitalism’
• New management mode = ‘neo-management’, more creative, inventive, loving, sympathetic, authentic, even noble, heroic…
• The end of ‘Fordism’ (= accumulation, hierarchy, paternalism…)‏
  
• 1990s = with globalisation, search for a new paradigm (ref : fiction by Don de Lillo ‘Players’, 1977 )‏
• But restructuring of firms = disorder, so rejection by workers, unions…
  

• Neo-management = fast, light, exact, multiple, 21st C…
• Firms seen as ‘storytelling organisations’ (Boje)
  
• But, some saw ST as a ‘prison’, a ‘collective, restrictive myth’, something ‘cosmetic’
• Hollywood / Enron : producers of illusion in entertainment and finance (cosmetic, hypothetical values, magic of the market)‏
• New capitalism, through ST, seeks ‘to saturate the production zone and the symbolic area’

• ST as a :
  - marketing tool
  - HR tool
  - regulator of industrial relations
  - transmitter of knowledge
  - crystalliser of brand image

Economic Fiction

• Arrival of the ‘mimetic economy’ with the production and circulation of models of behaviour
• 11 centres (CC) in India : employees require ‘accent neutralisation’ + ‘cross-cultural sensitivity’
• Towards the anglo melting-pot’ (350,000 in CC in India)‏
• Arrival of the ‘mimetic economy’ with the production and circulation of models of behaviour

Politics

• USA 2004 : manipulation of an image of GWB hugging a young woman called Ashley, a post 9/11 story, used by W in electorally uncertain states, broadcast on the the web as a 60’’ clip (ref. James Carville)‏
• The term ‘spin doctor’ came from RR’s election in 1984
• Kerry 2004 : lost because his stories were too weak, too intellectual
• Remember : ‘Facts speak but stories sell’
• Democrats = litany ; Republicans = stories (e.g. GWB 2004 as alcoholic/Jesus/redemption)‏
• Evan Cornog : all Presidents have to ‘sell’ their stories to the people
• RR as ‘conteur’ : anecdotes, jokes, one-liners, but Clinton = spinner
  

• R.Nixon (Tricky Dick) : anti-Press, tried to manipulate public opinion using TV
• 1990s : the PR of the Whitehouse, created under RR, invented the ‘soundbite’ and the ‘story of the day’
• Dick Cheney : aimed to ‘control the agenda’ of the Prez
• Aim to ‘impose a story’, ‘spin the story’
• Good PR = plausibility, not pertinence

Storytelling War

• Collaboration between Hollywood (HW) and the U.S Army via videogames (Institute of Creative Technologies) – ref. Steve Silberman in ‘Wired’ magazine 2004
• Began in 1996 : a National Research Council colloquium hi-tech with Dept. of Defense (DOD) and ILM (Industrial Light and Magic)‏
• Notion of linear storylines, credibility of story (for soldiers)‏
• Post 9/11 : meetings HW scriptwriters/DOD heads on possible terrorist/DOD options. Mix fiction/reality sought
• Don de Lillo (writer) : U.S society as ‘saturated by fictions’, linked to erosion of values (TV series ‘24H’ and torture)

Propaganda Empire

• ‘Realpolitik of fiction’ : Bush advisor 2002 : « We are an empire and we are creating our own reality »

• Journalists seen as merely ‘reality-based’…towards the end of investigative journalism, the ‘defeat of empiricism’ (Ron Suskind)‏
• Propaganda became ‘infotainment’
• Seeds of this by 1918 (Gustave le Bon and mass psychology, Clausewitz, Freud), also Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the father of PR (see web soon in class)
  
• TV, internet being taken over by entertainment industry giants via consolidation (Disney, Viacom, TW)‏

• Also, simplistic 24h information (CNN, Fox) where reality and fiction are mixed ; also as in ‘reality shows’ (infotainment)‏
• Seth Godin (U.S marketer) : journalists seek info which will sell the advertising
• Fox’s aim :
  - to tell a story
  - to stress personal responsibility, conservative, Republican values
  - to supply news which appears impartial
  

• Fox : decides on the next day’s news (‘The news is what we want it to be’ D.Boyles, Fox)‏
• Fox : use of ‘embedded journalists’ (500 in Iraq = fake journalists ?) – fake articles supplied for local Iraqi press (‘Lincoln group’) acc to ‘L.A Times’ in 2005
• U.S govt bought a paper and a radio station in Iraq as prop mouthpiece (ref. ‘The Greatest Story ever Sold’ by F.Rich)‏
• Influence of the ‘religious right’ in information (Pat Robertson’s network)‏
• Use by GWB of decorators, banners for his speeches (‘Mission accomplished’ with GW in aviator’s jacket, see HW's ‘Top Gun’)…Tom Cruise fiction evoked
• Basic staging : iconography = Statue of Lib, U.S Prez, warship
• 2001 : Colin Powell saw State Dept as brand. Foreign policy to be ‘marketed’. Charles Beers (CB), brand-obsessive adman, took over this role
• CB : used the internet + videos to reach youth ; said facts counted less than emotion
• Reality-based vs faith-based system. Note that etymology of ‘Propaganda’ = faith of RC church
• See also J.Billington’s book (neocon) on religion and revolution. Link between neocon rev'n and nihilists of past ?

Conclusion

• The ‘new narrative order’. Since 2000 in USA, see now H.Guaino in France
• Ségo as ‘lovemark’
• Sarkozy : recourse to Boston Consulting Group which proposes an ideological template for world politicians (world as regions)‏
• ST (CS) = a new form of symbolic violence weighing on people, influencing their opinions, transforming and exploiting their emotions, taking away their ability to think critically
• The need (see RR’s ’counter-reality’ in 1984) for a ‘counter-narrative’ in 2007...

Note : Could not upload this as a Powerpoint doc

WAR AND PEACE 4

Part 4/4 : War and Peace in the Global Village

(McLuhan, Fiore 1968)

• Space-race : 'Projecting missiles into outer space is no different from the activities of Columbus and Magellan' (Note : rear-view mirror again)
• War = 'quest for recovery of identity and respect' (Note : WW2 looked back to WW1 and German defeat)
• America (Note : 1968 here) : the rise of 'electric technology' upset those countries which had 'had a 19th century', the new tribal boys on the block accelerating their development thanks to this
  
• WAR : American Civil War = 1st railway war
  
• WW1 = railway war too
• WW2 = an industrial and radio war which woke up the tribal past of Europeans (Note : Hitler's effective use of radio); not in USA, 'the most visually-organised country in the history of the world', where everything is based on 'goal-oriented' phonetic literacy (except 'negros', jazz)
  
• 1930s : Radio was a disaster for a goal-oriented America (need for simplicity, not the complexity of radio)
• With the spread of T.V., we are entering an invisible environment and the Vietnam war is 'being fought in the American home itself'. (Note : compare and contrast with embedded journalism in the Fawkland and Iraq wars of '80s and '00s)
• To youth, all wars are anathema; preference for the non-rational, non-melodic (John Cage) (Note : hippies, freaks, drug culture...)
  
• The individual is helpless to change the effects of new environments (Note : mobile phones rule)
• Read (as I did in my youth), 'Siddharta', by Hermann Hesse (Note : or any Carlos Castaneda book)
• Education = aggression
  
• Children can learn a language in 1 or 2 years because it is an environment ('total field approach')
• Advertising = declaration of war against customers, a ' massive barrage against human sensibilities'
• "Finnegan's Wake" (JJ) : 'Love my label like myself'
• Fashion = 'the Bore war' ? Clothing as power. No fashion in native societies (group, not individual)
  
• Importance of 'tactility', anti-fashion of the Hippie (Note : and the mini-skirt, McLuhan ?)
  
• Nudity = sculptural, tactile
  
• Tribal societies avoid anti-environments, living in a form of collective dream
• Fish know nothing about water, for there is no anti-environment to compare it to. A fish is a fish in water.
• 'Unlike animals, Man has no nature but his own history'. Nature has become content (of the man-made environment)
• We live in a 'highly individualistic and literate society' in which only the artists see the environment
• Quotes : 'Stock exchanges will disappear under the impact of the computer in a few years', or 'Within 10 years New York will have been dismantled'; Only anti-gravitational transport will exist (Note : !)
  
• The USA 'is a grossly underdeveloped country' (productive power aside)
• 'To the pre-literate man...a fable is what we would call a major scientific truth'
• The 'self-amputations of man' are the extensions of his body...and his nervous system, which we call technologies
• 'All media or technologies, languages as much as weaponry, create new environments or habitats, which become the milieux for new species or technologies'

END

WAR AND PEACE 3

Part 3 : Paw and Peace in the Global Village
(McLuhan, 1968)

• In the early 20th century, the Russian scientist Pavlov revealed to the world the 'conditioned reflex' in dogs - Pavlov learned the importance of the (laboratory) environment
• Read the poem "The Waste Land" by T.S.Eliot on conditioned man
• TV = air, it's like an invisible environment. We are like 'non-perceptive somnabulists'
• 1968 : 'A growing number of America's elite are quietly turning on' (Note : taking drugs) and 'Many students now regard marihuana as a part of growing up' (New York Times)
• Hallucinogenic drugs = involvement in new electric environment
  
• The Death of God = 'transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian imagery' (Note : E's non-linear concept of 'curved space')
  
• The biggest (show) business in world = education
• The computer = extreme decentralising power
• As the power of the computer affects the community (Note : as new technology), the 'feedback in information from the muscles' is as with a spastic (deficiency of info) ; the computer is at this stage
• Feelings of confusion : 'When our identity is in danger, we feel certain we have a mandate for war' (Note : technologies are largely invisible in their effects on us)
• Napoleon the semi-literate : war as education, tribalism as natural (N appreciated Rousseau)
• Time was of the essence for Napoleon : 'I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute' and 'Strategy is the art of making use of time and space' - N was a 'child of specialization and the industrial revolution'
• 'War is the principal motivational force for the development of science at every level, from the abstractly conceptual to the narrowly technological' Report from Iron Mountain, 1967 (Note : weaponry as motivator- e.g. L. Da Vinci, assembly lines, the Space Race...)
• Violence = an involuntary quest for identity, a form of 'accelerated education for the other party'
• See what Alexander Pope said about vice (substituting 'war' for 'vice') : 'War is a monster of so frightful mien, ...Google this ?
  
• War requires scholars, linguists, historians...war as 'the little red schoolhouse of the global village'
• 'When a new technology strikes a society, the most natural reaction is to (...) look in the rear-view mirror...for familiar and comforting images'.

(to be continued)