|
I must
admit, I love a good television commercial. The creativity that
goes into the best TV ad is as impressive and enjoyable to me as
a quality drama, comedy, or documentary. "You feel sad for the
Moo Cow Milker? That is because you are crazy. Tacky items can
easily be replaced with better IKEA." But damn those clever
Swedes! They have, through the alchemy of advertising, forced
me into outfitting my entire apartment with their stylish yet
affordable household items.
I kid, of course; but
there is a certain line of thought out there that cannot abide
advertising, and that credits it with all manner of evil.
Advertising, they say, makes us fat by brainwashing us into
wanting fast food and sugary cereal. It makes men want to buy
beer, fancy cars, or anything else associated with hot women. (A
current TV commercial makes fun of the "scantily-clad women
washing car" cliché by having a group of sumo wrestlers wash a
new Subaru.) Advertising makes women dissatisfied with their
appearance and hence creates a need for fashion and beauty
products that would not otherwise exist. Yes, because as we all
know, humans do not naturally enjoy fatty, sugary foods, men
would not drink beer or drive fancy cars in the absence of
advertising, and women need corporations to teach them to care
about their looks. Puh-lease.
Advertising is about the transmission of information, and it is
also about convincing people to buy something. In other words,
it is a form of persuasion, but this use of persuasion is
implicitly equated with the use of force by its detractors.
Sometimes, as in the case of the French website RAP ("Résistance
à l'Agression Publicitaire" or "Resistance to Advertising
Aggression"), the equating of persuasion and force is explicit.
The site features an illustration of a police officer
brandishing a billy club accompanied by the slogan, "Ne vous
laissez pas matraquer par la pub," which translates, "Don't let
yourself be bludgeoned by advertising."
Usually, though, the
message is less overt, as it is on
Commercial Alert's website, whose slogan is "Protecting
communities from commercialism." The site complains about the
psychology profession "helping corporations influence children
for the purpose of selling products to them." Here, the word
"influence" seems none too menacing, but its effect is quickly
bolstered by the words "crisis," "epidemic," "complicity," and "onslaught."
Force may not be explicitly mentioned, but these words bring to
mind infectious disease, crime, and violent conquest. Without
coming right out and saying it, the implication is clear―although
one could argue, ironically enough, that this effect was meant
to be subliminal.
Now, are children more
vulnerable than adults to the persuasive nature of advertizing?
Of course they are, especially when very young. But it is part
of the job of parents (and later, teachers) to equip children
with the tools necessary to judge competing claims and see
through manipulative techniques. I'll be the first to admit that
there is room for improvement in this area―and a free market in
education would go a long way toward providing that improvement―but
as far as advertising goes, most kids are savvy to the more
outlandish claims well before they even reach adolescence. As
people grow up, they learn through experience that beer doesn't
bring babes (though a little may beneficially lower one's own
inhibitions) and that makeup will only get you so far. At any
rate, treating all adults like children is hardly a fair way to
deal with the fact that some minority of people will remain
gullible their entire lives.
Many of those who really hate advertising share a worldview that
involves rich, powerful corporations controlling everything. In
fact, there is a sense in which this view has some merit, for it
is true that large corporations often gain unfair advantage over
their competitors, suppliers, and customers. When this happens,
though, it happens through the gaining of political
influence, which means the use of actual, legally sanctioned
force to hogtie the competition, restrict consumers' choices, or
extract taxpayers' hard-earned income. In a truly free market,
the government would not have the authority to dole out special
privileges, as it does in our mixed economies. Without any
goodies to fight over, corporations would have no legal means of
squashing competitors and could only succeed by being as
efficient as possible and persuading customers to buy their
products (and if their products do not satisfy, they will not
get many repeat customers). To target this persuasion as a
serious problem when actual, legal force is being used surely
reveals an inverted sense of priorities, or at least a serious
misunderstanding about the sources of society's woes.
Another example of the
implicit equating of persuasion with force is the thinking
behind legislated limits on the amounts individuals can spend
expressing their political views during an election―in essence,
limits on political advertising. Here, as in commercial
advertising, the purpose is clear: if persuasion is force, then
the government is perfectly justified in countering that
initiation of force with retaliatory force. If words are bullets,
then words can be met with bullets. But it is clear what happens
to free speech in such a scenario. Instead of competing voices
clamouring for your attention, one monolithic government
propaganda machine decides what can and cannot be said. In the
political realm, this works against new or historically small
parties trying to break through since they have a
disproportionately hard time attracting many small contributions
in order to pay for ads to get their message out. This leads to
a situation in which a couple of largely indistinguishable
parties become more and more firmly entrenched.
In fact, the notion that
persuasion is force brings to mind nothing so much as George
Orwell's novel, 1984, in which the government has
destroyed the precision of words by continually reinforcing its
contradictory slogans: war is peace, freedom is slavery,
ignorance is power, and love is hate. It is shocking to observe
the smug self-righteousness of those who hold forth on the
enormous manipulative power of advertising and who are so sure
that they, of all people, have not been brainwashed. But in fact,
it is they who have been, if not brainwashed, then at least
misled about the relative power of advertising versus the
average Joe's ability to think and judge for himself. They have
bought, hook, line, and sinker, the most superficial critique of
capitalism, when our mixed form of capitalism has plenty of real
abuses crying out for correction.
The point is not that persuasion is powerless. I am engaged in
trying to persuade you of something right now, and if I didn't
think I had a chance of succeeding, I wouldn't waste my time.
The point, rather, is that persuasion must be met with
persuasion, words and rhetorical techniques must be answered
with more words and more rhetoric. If free competition is
allowed in the marketplace of ideas, no one's victory is assured,
and we needn't fret too much over the use of psychological
tricks, because the trickster's competitors can use them too, or
overtly challenge them instead. (See Gennady Stolyarov II's
article, "The
Victory of Truth Is Never Assured!," elsewhere in this issue
of Le Québécois Libre for a related call to action.)
If we are still worried,
though, it is undeniable that better education―freer education―would
produce a less pliant population, especially important for the
issue of political persuasion. The other thing that would help
is fighting for full freedom of competition, in both commerce
(no special government privileges) and politics (no limits on
political speech). In other words, we need to eliminate the
government's use of force in the realms of education, commerce,
and political campaigning. Agitating for the government to solve
our problems for us with the use of more force will only make
matters worse, and further infantilize us in the process. |
