From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 01 2005 - 19:36:53 GMT
This is a resend, never saw it come through...
[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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