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)

WAR AND PEACE 2

Part 2 : summary of "War and Peace in the Global Village"
(McLuhan, 1968)

• 'With the electronic revolution, we rediscover a tribal, integral awareness...a complete shift in our sensory lives'
• The Romans out-distanced the Greeks in 'visual specialism' (see the Roman arch, which encloses space); they had an 'obsession with visual organization of space'
• Papyrus + the phonetic alphabet + the Roman military = Romans' huge road network (papyrus = light material)
• Due to the Egyptians, Roman access to papyrus dried up, the Roman road network fell into disuse and the empire collapsed
• Long after the Roman chariot had disappeared, the stirrup was introduced to the West (8th century), making it possible for soldiers wearing heavy armour to mount horses
  
• The expense of this new form of combat required a new, professional aristocratic 'military class' able to support the costs involved.
  
• Stirrup + armour ='fighting organism' and abolition of the small landholder, in favour of the 'lordly domain' (chivalric class, fighting elite) (L.White)
• 'It is impossible to be chivalrous without a horse' (Denholm-Young)
  
• The vassal class became 'the ruling element of European society' for generations
  
• The stirrup + the bow (11th century technology) gave William the Conqueror his victory over the English (7th century technology) in 1066
• The invention of gunpowder then blew away the entire feudal system (Note: although old technologies overlap the new ones for a time )
• Gunpowder + firearms = end of armour (Note: early gunpowder was weak, so the transition was slower)
  
• Computers = today's technological clothing
• Computer + Sputnik = 'end of Nature' (Note: Space becomes man's thing)
• Our new technologies imply that we have 'bypassed the Newtonian age' (our values, goals and objectives change)
• This anxiety results from the 'interface of a declining a mechanical culture, fragmented and specialist and a new integral culture that is inclusive, organic and macroscopic'.
  

(to be continued)

WAR AND PEACE IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

"War and Peace in the Global Village"
Bullet point summary of a funky book by Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel, Bantam, 1968
Full of unusual photos, academic quotes and citations from James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake", this book challenges many of our assumptions about the media. It should be the follow up to a reading of "The Gutenberg Galaxy" (also by MM), which will be the subject of a coming presentation in our Sciences-Po advertising class.

Bear in mind that McLuhan's insights date back to the 1960s, when the media were less developed than today.

• He claims that JJ's book, "Finnegan's Wake" (FW) was really about the 'electric retribalization of the West', the meeting of East and West. Joyce discovered that 'all social changes are the effect of new technologies (self-amputations) on the order of our sensory lives.'

• Great changes have taken place since the industrial revolution - mechanisation, the press, highways, postal routes, steam, railways...
  
• 'We now live (note: in 1968) in an electric environment of information coded not just in visual but in other sensory modes'
• Highly educated people, i.e. phonetically literate, live in a 'rational' or 'pictorial' space. They are specialists.
  
• New environments 'inflict considerable pain on the perceiver.' Hieronymus Bosch depicted this 'pain' in his paintings in the post-Gutenberg 16th century
  
• 'Man-made environments are always unperceived by men during the period of their innovation' (note: we did not question our book culture before the computer). When that environment is superseded by the new one, then it becomes visible
• As the wheel is a technological extension of the foot, so electronics are an extension of our central nervous system
• Fashion : of great interest to many in the alphabetic West, it does not exist in the tribal or oral world
• Civilisation : 'Civilisation is entirely the product of phonetic literacy'

(to be continued)
(Photo courtesy eqqman, www.flickr.com)

LET'S HEAR SOME MORE DEAF-INITIONS

David Ogilvy, British advertising supremo, was a man from the old school (1950-60s). He said : « I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information». Definitions of advertising have become increasingly sophisticated in moving away from the product, to the brand and the brand image. When we buy a Gucci bag or a Jaguar car, we are first buying Italian luxury or English quality and class. To go to Club Med will also speak for you, as will a Tati bag in the Paris metro or an impressionist print in your living-room.

Mediologist Régis Debray claims that « if publicity promoted the qualities of an object, then its successor, advertising, flatters the desires of a subject ». Marshall McLuhan,1960s Canadian media guru, believed that « ads are not meant for conscious consumption. They are intended as subliminal pills for the sub-conscious…». Or : « They are quite in accord with the procedures of brain-washing ». And, « any acceptable ad is a vigorous dramatisation of communal experience », as (expensive) ads are « carefully built on the tested foundations of public stereotypes or ‘sets’ of established attitudes…».

A Frenchman, Armand Dayan, cites sociologist Edgar Morin, for whom « (advertising) consists of transforming a product into a minor drug - its craving stimulating the purchase of the product/service which procures the effect of relief and, ultimately, slavery to the same ». For French advertiser Bernard Brochand, « advertising nourishes the body social in its entirety with an ethical system of moral values, in effect, with a culture ». In the same book, the advertiser and author Bernard Cathelat, states that « the content of the advertising message is quite clearly cultural, civilisational, a statement of faith and morality, a semi-official standard-setter of aesthetics and good taste, in a word, a lifestyle model ». In addition, « advertising is an interface between economic reality and dream », according to Cathelat.

For Briton John Berger, in his book ‘Ways of Seeing’, circa 1970, « publicity is about social relations, not objects ». ‘Publicity’, as he calls it, creates envy, and the state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour ». And again, « The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life » ; « All publicity works on anxiety ». In conclusion, Berger states : « …without publicity, capitalism would not survive… Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible…by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable ».

If advertising exists to sell, it exists first to persuade. The great American advertiser, Rosser Reeves, was claimed to have said that advertising « was the act of moving an idea from the head of one man into the head of another ». The writer H.G.Wells believed it was « the art of teaching people to want things ». Eric Clark, in the same book, says that « advertising has become far too important to be left to the advertising men », for it has real power, « the power to prevail » over the consumer through high volume and ubiquity. For the philosopher Malcom Muggeridge, advertising was a « real evil ».

A final comment from semiologist Roland Barthes in 1964 : analysing a print advert for Panzani pasta, he made the following remarks on meaning and image : « Let us study an advertisement…because in advertising, the meaning of the image is certainly intentional…its signs are clear and straightforward, even emphatic. » (translation by WS). Here indeed lies the advantage of commenting print adverts, for their stability and accessibility.

The same cannot be said for the moving image, far trickier to analyse by its very nature. To grasp the linguistic and meta-linguistic message as Barthes did with his pasta ad, the moving image must ideally be recorded and watched closely a hundred times by several media specialists, then analysed, for it to reveal its deeper meaning. Clearly, and this has massive implications for the viewing public, when attempting to understand a television commercial, it is impossible, for a deeper analysis, to rely simply on one’s superficial memory. It must be said that advertisers play on this difficulty of apprehending the full sense of the moving image, especially given that the general public is no collection of Roland Barthes.

Indeed then, what is the hidden message, the hidden intent behind commercials and adverts ?

PAIN IN THE BRAIN

Definitions of advertising

The concept has many definitions, some purely functional, therefore of lesser interest. In his work on the consumer society, Jean Baudrillard says advertising is « the industrial production of differences » within a society, in which advertising is neither true nor untrue, but existing in a referential "neo-reality" (Baudrillard/Boorstin).

Another fairly objective definition of advertising might be that of R.R. Walker. It is « the use of signs for the exchange of values ». He also states, quite reasonably, the following : « (…) advertising is part of marketing. Marketing is part of manufacturing. Manufacturing is part of business. Business is part of life. » Simplistic or pragmatic ?

If we accept its pragmatism, this view implies a ‘take it or leave it‘ attitude. Are we then to accept or reject advertising en bloc ? If so, by what would it be replaced and what would be the implications of such change ?




Soon : more definitions

HOTTING UP

"The best way to cook a lobster so that it won't protest is to to place it, live, in a pot of cold water, then to heat it." (Anon)

As we know, the term 'advertising' covers a multitude of sins, but it does still deserve to be defined today. However, let us first consider the history of this informational process, which existed probably as long ago as 3000 B.C., with 'advertising' for Theban slaves and later for Roman games, in the sense of purpose-based public information. Town criers (think of the sandwich-boards of today) were to follow over the centuries, communicating others' pronouncements verbally and directly to the populace.

After the age of manuscripts, we also know that, post-Gutenberg (circa 1450), posters and print appeared, notably in15th century England and France. Catalogues followed in Venice, 'bureaux d'adresse' in 17th century France (Th. Renaudot) and press advertising in England (1622).The Great Fire of London in 1666 ultimately served to stimulate local shopkeepers' need to re-establish contact with their customers in the wake of the disaster.

The 18th century was witness to the iniquitous slavery posters of America e.g. for '30 strapping males under 20', or 'To be sold. . .a cargo of 170 prime young likely healthy Guinea slaves, Savannah,1774.' (2) This same century also witnessed the development of newspaper advertising in America and England, as well as street poster advertising in France (J-Michel Papillon, 1744). It is interesting to note also that the 1789 French Revolution was to encourage an explosion in communication of all sorts, the pamphlet and the poster in particular.

The first advertising agency was created in England in 1812, although Montaigne's1580 idea (in his 'Essais') of bureaux d'adresse could be considered as a forerunner. These same places were later to be banned, qualified as 'places of vice and iniquity'.

America's first ad agency (Palmer & Hooper) opened in 1840, J. Walter Thompson's in 1864. The famous French 'colonnes Rambuteau', for street advertising, appeared in 1842 in Paris. (1)

In 1868, the painter Manet did his first advertising poster (Champfleury), Jules Chéret (Parfums Roger et Gallet, 1875) followed, as did Toulouse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge, 1891) Mucha (Bières de la Meuse, 1897) and Bonnard ('L'Estampe', revue d'art, 1897).

1922 saw the first radio advertising in the USA, 1930 in France on Radio Normandie. Motivation research began in the USA in 1943 witnessed the first TV advertisements in 1947, 1955 in the U.K. The French are still arguing about this question...

In 1955, CBS in America became the largest advertising medium in existence, the Marlboro Man appeared and in 1957, Vance Packard's 'Hidden Persuaders', an all-out attack on advertising, was published. Subliminal advertising was banned and Bill Bernbach's famous VW Beetle print ad was created. In 1966, the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) came into being (Rosser Reeves). Saatchi and Saatchi was created in 1970. Congress in the USA, in 1971, banned broadcast advertising for cigarettes. Ted Turner's CNN came on air in 1980 and MTV in 1981, creating a whole new visual youth medium. (3)

Finally, the Internet appeared on the radar in 1993 in the USA (2015 in France). By 2000, in the USA, this new medium was already worth almost 3bn dollars in advertising (9.50FF in France).

NOTES :
(1) in 'Histoire de la Publicité', Ph. Schuwer ;
(2) Library of Congress website ;
(3) see the Musée de la Publicité website ;
(4) consult Advertising Age's website, History Timeline ;
(5) photo credits : 'Lost in minefield'/www.flickr.com




Next : an attempt at a definition