"Century of the Self" - Psychoanalysis
List the ten most important points raised in Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘Century of the Self’
Relate these points to a critical analysis of one image from the mass media which, in particular, focuses on the nature of consumerism, desire and the unconscious.
Ten most important points
- Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, was the first to apply Freud's findings about human ideas and the mind to controlling the masses
- Bernays linked products with subconscious desires
- Bernays introduced the idea of promoting a lifestyle, rather than simply a product
- Bernays suggested that if you could use propaganda for war, then you could also use it for peace, which coined the idea of Public Relations.
- He created the techniques of mass consumer persuasion we use now.
- He was the first person to tell car companies they could sell cars as symbols of male sexuality and also started the practice of product placements in movies.
- Bernays staged a dramatic experiment by putting on an event in a New York Mayday parade to break the taboos of women smoking cigarettes. Cigarettes were seen as a symbol of male sexual power, so Bernays attempted to find a way to connect cigarettes with challenging male power.
- The single symbolic act of the experiment with women smoking cigarettes made the practice more socially acceptable and gave women more power and independence.
- Products changed from something that was needed and instead, they could become powerful emotional symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others.
- Products became linked with desirable famous people.
- The citizens became the consumers.
- Bernays attached goods to peoples innate human desires.
- Bernays and Freud's theories showed that humans cannot make completely irrational decisions.
Critical analysis of an image from mass media
The 'Cult Shaker' - 'Party Now Apologise Later' campaign from Denmark
These two images from the Cult Shaker campaign use sex and suggestive imagery as the selling point for the product, where they encompass desire and unconscious to appeal within the consumer market. Both images from the campaign contain evocative imagery which draws the viewers attention with the pure shock value that the advertising has the audacity to use images as provocative as these. In terms of being suggestive, the advertisements are promoting a brand of cheap alcohol, and along with the slogan 'Party Now Apologise Later', the campaign seems to be promoting the partying and sex lifestyle. The consumer buys into the idea that if they were to drink the product, they would be incorporated into this lifestyle too. Vivid and expressive graphics such as these play on the consumers want for this explicit and daredevil kind of behaviour, as the adverts suggest that the product can provide the consumer with a sense of courage and appeal, yet in their simplest forms, they are merely couples posed in different positions, dressed in the clothes one would wear on a night out. They are a symbolic representation of a basic human desire, and through the situations in which the models are placed, the positions of their bodies and the text added to the images, there is an almost unconscious connotation to the way that they are verging on being powerful emotional symbols of what people want to be like.
What is also interesting about these images is that the focus is not entirely on the woman in the image, but that the man also plays a role in the sexual connotations. This targets the adverts at both a male and female audience as although a bold statement of the woman being the focus may attract a woman's attention through the idea of power, it also neutralises the power struggle by making them both a focal point of the different images. In terms of the theory of Bernays, this style of imagery attaches a product with innate human desires, and although the subject of sex has been used repeatedly in the advertising for alcohol, these images hold possibly a stronger sense of 'breaking the taboos' of present day society as unlike in other advertisements, the models are fully dressed rather than revealing large amounts of skin. It could be said that this then taps further into the sense of subconscious, innate desires, and the way that these adverts have taken the approach of depicting the lifestyle rather than simply semi-naked models means that the audience they are aiming them at is also the audience that will have more of a subconscious link to the message of the images.
What is also interesting about these images is that the focus is not entirely on the woman in the image, but that the man also plays a role in the sexual connotations. This targets the adverts at both a male and female audience as although a bold statement of the woman being the focus may attract a woman's attention through the idea of power, it also neutralises the power struggle by making them both a focal point of the different images. In terms of the theory of Bernays, this style of imagery attaches a product with innate human desires, and although the subject of sex has been used repeatedly in the advertising for alcohol, these images hold possibly a stronger sense of 'breaking the taboos' of present day society as unlike in other advertisements, the models are fully dressed rather than revealing large amounts of skin. It could be said that this then taps further into the sense of subconscious, innate desires, and the way that these adverts have taken the approach of depicting the lifestyle rather than simply semi-naked models means that the audience they are aiming them at is also the audience that will have more of a subconscious link to the message of the images.
