From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 31 2005 - 02:56:56 GMT
[Platt]
Advertising, besides being an aspect of free speech, is an integral part
of the free enterprise system that has created the highest standard of
living in the world. Unless you prefer to live like Zambians, you ought to
celebrate, not trash, advertising and the system it reflects.
[Arlo]
Sometimes I think you deliberately make this stuff up just to take opposition
with everything I say. :-)
Advertising is an integral part of our consumerist culture, I'll give you that.
However, from the fact that there exist entire graduate programs in "consumer
psychology", as well as referred journals with studies documenting the best
ways to manipulate value through advertising, to the billions spent on it each
year, it's not only easy, but straightforward to conclude that the purpose of
advertising is to manipulate value. You can argue, perhaps, whether this
manipulation is "good" or "bad", but how can you try to pass off that it is
non-existent is beyond me.
From ZMM, "Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see
anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried
within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will
convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and
glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the
vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised
glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty
windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and
the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God,
there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick."
That phrase, "learning strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream
magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance",
nails it on the head. Pirsig saw it. And although Platt tries to deny it, I
think Pirsig was on the mark.
In Lila, Pirsig had this comment, ". . . Above the window with the pennant, a
billboard for Marx Furs. Something angering. . . . The model. . . .
High-fashion, highclass. "I am so desirable, I am so unapproachable. But if
you have the price (you cheap bastard), I am for sale." That price. . . . Was
it all for sale if you had that price? . . . Do women really act like that
here? . . . Some, he supposed. . . . It must sell furs. And jewelry and
cosmetics. . . . Ahh, it was just an advertising cliche. Those guys were for
sale."
Again, Pirsig eloquently and succinctly sums up advertising. It is not some
"objective" getting the word out, but manipulation, "I am so desirable, I am so
unapproachable. But if you have the price (you cheap bastard), I am for sale."
That's advertising, right there.
[Arlo previously]
I take it in Platt-land the courses would be how unquestionably great
American corporations are, and how everyone should blindly and uncritically
continue to be good little consumers.
[Platt]
In Platt-land there would be no biting of the hand that feeds you, i.e.
the free enterprise system that funds schools and pays teachers' salaries
and benefits.
[Arlo]
Just curious, so I know how far your teaching the kiddies to never question
corporations or consumerism, do we teach kids about the illegal chemical
dumping near Tijuana, or in India, by companies such as Union Carbide? Or do we
turn a blind-eye to that as well? In the interest of "not biting the hand that
feeds"?
[Arlo previously]
So, you reject the idea that McDonald's should have to display real
pictures of its products in its ads. Why?
[Platt]
What about the pictures is not real?
[Arlo]
Are you kidding me? You must be. Have you ever ordered a Big Mac that arrived
looking like the one in the picture? Tell you what, for you, I'll stop by
McDonalds this week and get a Mac, and photograph it exactly as it appears when
they hand it to me, sideview, just like the ad. And then you can tell me if
looks anything like what hangs behind the counter.
[Arlo]
And what would be wrong with teaching kids the Wikipedia entry for
"advertising"?
[Platt]
I have no objection to teaching kids how to use an encyclopedia. I would
teach them, however, to spot opinions vs. facts in all source material.
[Arlo]
I admire your gumption to quelch them of the notion that Fox is "fair and
balanced". Tell me, though, if you question the reporting in Wikipedia, that
advertising is propaganda, on what do you base this? How do you explain the
graduate courses in consumer psychology, and all the studies on influencing
consumer behavior that appear in the journal every year, embraced and put into
practice by advertising firms?
Without any evidence to the contrary, and seeing that there is a plethora of
evidence that advertising is propaganda, what makes you think that is simply
"an opinion"? Seems to me, based on all the evidence, it is an established
fact. And, seems to me, you'd be asking the kiddies to ignore a mountain of
evidence just because you don't want to believe it. Oh wait, we're back to Fox
News again... ;-)
[Platt]
In the Communist Manifesto: "Of course, in the beginning, this (the
revolution) cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads . . ."
You really ought to become familiar with the founding document of the
anti-capitalist agenda you support. :-)
[Arlo]
Yes, I had already stated Marx felt a violent revolution was the only means to
improve the world. This is one area where I think he was wrong. He assumed the
working class would rise together, and this did not happen. He underestimated,
in my opinion, the power of the opiate being fed to the people. In the
beginning stages of the revolution, Marx felt an "interim" ruler (benevolent to
the working classes, but condemnatory to the outsted capitalists) would
maintain order until the means of production was back in the hands of labor. At
which time, "politics" would disappear (Marx said "Political power, properly so
called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another") and
society would be more-or-less self-governed by labor interests. The "leader"
would no longer be needed. Indeed, in Marxist thought, society (labor) should
have no political "leader".
It is obvious that this is not the case with Mao, who likely never entertained
the notion of "stepping down" and letting the labor-interests in China
self-regulate. And it is doubtful that the only citizens seen as threatening to
Mao were the capitalists. Mao, like Stalin and Pol Pot, and nearly every other
dictator are megalomaniacs who believe in their divine right to rule, and who
are only interested in their own power, not the power of the people. Marx
despised such people. The whole thing about Marxism was to return power to the
people, not rest it from them to give to a Mao, or any other "leader".
Maybe you should actually read Marx, rather than rely on isolated snippets.
Arlo
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