On 14 January 2009 Chris Green wrote: >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
And Mike Palij wrote that >I have to admit extreme skepticism >about the influence of Edward Bernays... I saw the above-cited documentaries on Bernays on a British TV channel, and was not impressed by the sensationalist techniques of the film maker, Adam Curtis. (I would say they come into the category of propaganda. -:) ) He also made a series called "The Power of Darkness", of which I saw two out of the three parts. Curtis's basic technique is to insinuate links between disparate items merely by juxtaposing them. Here is a parody (all too accurate) of his film-making technique posted on a blog: A sneak preview of the next award-winning Adam Curtis documentary series - 'The History of Darkness' [Shots of TV centre, intercut with B&W images of piles of money falling over, flocks of penguins diving into sea, H bomb mushroom cloud explosion] Voice over (whispered): In the early 1990s, a seemingly insignificant group of documentary film makers stumbled upon a series of techniques which would enable them to re-write the history of the world. [Shots of cigarettes being stubbed out, large room filled with women operating adding machines, Adolf Hitler making ranting speech] Voice over (even more whispered): They discovered that with little more in the way of data than a number of cans of archival film pilfered from different cutting rooms, containing stock shots of disparate subject matter, they would be able to suggest causal connections between phenomena that were totally unrelated. [Shots of Osama Bin Laden with machine gun, cheer leaders at US football game in 1950s, Winston Churchill puffing on cigar] Voice over (more whispered still): Their discoveries coincided with a time of budgetary cutbacks in the making of BBC history documentaries. As money for serious historical research dried up, an increasing premium was placed on the qualities of inventiveness, and subjective historical imagination within the Corporation. [Shots of napalm bombs exploding in Vietnam, football hooligans, Beatlemania, laboratory footage of viruses multiplying] Voice over (just about audible): The confidence generated by accessing random shots from library film enabled a little known group to suggest that random events in popular culture were not merely symptoms of the crises of late capitalism, but were, in fact, the cause of momentous changes in modern political history. [Shots of Trooping the Colour, car bombs exploding in Baghdad, holiday makers in Blackpool, freemasons wearing regalia] Voice over (less audible): Their programmes were the conceptual breakthrough an increasingly cash-strapped Corporation was looking for. Large numbers of prestigious awards could be garnered by programmes that contained little more in the way of technique than the adroit shuffling of card indexes of shots from earlier programmes. [Shots of women screaming from Hammer horror films, New York Stock Exchange dealers gesticulating wildly, bears fighting ferociously in Alaska national park, Margaret Thatcher wearing lab coat in Oxford laboratory] Voice over (much less audible): Amongst their many achievements, these film makers could present an iconoclastic veneer of political irreverence, and the demystification of major political institutions, without doing anything in the way of original research. [Shots of genies from Arabian Nights fantasies with caption 'Copyright Holder Unknown' superimposed, patients in NHS hospital wards, rock stars hurling TV sets off balconies into hotel swimming pools] Voice over (only just audible): So great was their success that these film makers could by now propose an alternative history of absolutely anything, and yet their accountability to any known standards of documentary film making was so tenuous that only theĀ (Voice over disappears below the threshold of audibility) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org *************************************** [tips] The Futuristic World of 1960! Christopher D. Green Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:12:48 -0800 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 ******************************************* re: [tips] The Futuristic World of 1960! Mike Palij Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:26:40 -0800 On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:12:48 -0800, Christopher D. Green wrote: >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.) [snip] >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"). I haven't watched the videos but I have to admit extreme skepticism about the influence of Edward Bernays, at least in influencing the construction of highways in and around cities. With respect to New York City and surrounding areas, a critical figure was Robert Moses who was already in a position of power when the 1939 World's Fair occurred (in which he was involved; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_New_York_World%27s_Fair ) Whether "Futurama" represented GM's view or Moses' view is debatable: Futurama represent much of what Moses proposed and actually built, prior to 1939 and afterwards. For more info in this, see the Wikipedia entry on Robert Moses (standard disclaimers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_moses Also see the NY Parks Department entry: http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_about/parks_history/historic_tour/history_ro bert_moses_modern.html And http://www.livablestreets.com/streetswiki/1939-world-s-fair-futurama For some irony, consider this quote from Wikipedia: |Car culture |Moses himself never learned to drive,[11] and his view of the automobile |was shaped by the 1920s, when the car was thought of as entertainment |and not a utilitarian lifestyle. Moses' highways in the first half of the 20th |century were parkways, curving, landscaped "ribbon parks," intended to be |pleasures to drive in and "lungs for the city". While appearing utopian on |its face, some critics contend Moses' vision of towers, cities and parks |linked by cars and highways in practice led to the expansion of wholesale |ghettos, decay, middle-class urban flight, and blight. Beginning in the 1960s |and reaching a peak in the 1990s, public opinion and the ideals of many in |the city planning profession shifted away from this strand of car-oriented |thought. It is unlikely that Moses was influenced by Bernays (indeed, it is more likely that Moses influenced Bernays). In Robert Caro's definitive biography of Moses "The Power Broker" the index contains no mention of Bernays. This book is also on books.google.com and a search of it for Bernays turns up no hits. It is possible that Bernays may have had some influence but I think it pales in comparison to the influence that Robert Moses had on urban planning and the transportation system. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
