Back in 1939 there was a World's Fair in New York. One of the star attractions of the show was General Motors' "Futurama" exhibit, a detailed vision of the world 20 years hence. The main focus was how science and technology would make virtually every aspect of day-to-day life safer, faster, and better. Here is the film shown to the Fair's visitors, describing GM's vision of the future (in two parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74cO9X4NMb4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU7dT2HId-c
Not surprisingly, the most prominent feature of GM's pitch were massive, multi-lane, controlled-access freeways, virtually unknown in the 1930s. These, it was claimed, would enable people to live far outside of the city, yet travel quickly and safely to the city when necessary. It would also allow for the complete separation of industrial from residential areas, which was also rare in the 1930s. (Of course, it would also require everyone to own cars, which was the actual underlying message.) The most astonishing part of this 1939 fantasy, is that it came true almost in its entirety (except for the part about universally clean, safe, beautiful, livable cities). The Futurama exhibit was, in fact, a key part of a coordinated propaganda and lobbying campaign by the US car companies that ultimately resulted in governments of all levels spending enormous amounts of public money to create an integrated system of highways, which enabled (or forced, depending on your perspective) many people to leave the cities for the new suburbs. What does any of this this have to do with psychology? The "messaging" (as we would now say) was engineered by Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, who virtually invented the field of "public relations" (which was originally his phrase, to replace the less attractive "propaganda"). Bernays claimed that he was applying Freud's psychological discoveries to business and politics, replacing ads that simply list a product's features with ads that appeal to people's deep-seated aspirations, and which suggest, though rarely claim outright, that the product being pitched will help one to reach one's goals. Freedom was typically a key component of Bernays' messages. Bernays was also responsible for the "Torches of Freedom" campaign that convinced women that smoking cigarettes is a sign of liberation. In addition, he was the man behind that clever bit of frequently-heard political cant that connects "economic freedom" (from gov't regulation, from taxation, from guilt about wealth and profit, no matter how gargantuan) to the political freedoms promised by the US constitution. Given the current economic situation, the reasons for its arrival, and the arguments currently heard against the gov't doing very much about it, I thought the origins of the debate might be interesting to you. If you want to know more about Bernays' extraordinary (but almost unknown) life and career, there is a one-hour documentary about him on YouTube (in six parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rmC_rvPsPQ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
