Century of Self Reflection

Part 2: Language and Mass-Communication

Unit: Advertising

Text: Documentary: “The Century of Self”—first 30 minutes.

Idea: The world has not always been the way it is now. Psychology, Advertising, Female Rights are all relatively new phenomenona in the Western World.

Focus: How do Freud’s psychological ideas fit into our unit on Advertising?

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Freud believed man harbored “dangerous instinctual drives”, both sexual and violent. His nephew, “Edward Bernays” harnessed his uncle’s ideas to create a mass-consumerism for the first time during the Twentieth Century.

What is the unconscious? Hidden, unwelcome impulses

World War 1 was the logical, inevitable, terrible conclusion of humanity’s and nations’ path towards becoming the greatest, most powerful nation on earth.

America entered the First World War in 1917. Bernays accompanied President Woodrow Wilson to the Versailles Treaty, the peace conference held after the war was over.

They had to sell the war to the American public.

‘”We wanted to make the world a safe democracy. —that was the slogan”, Edward Bernays.

Wilson emerged as a world champion of peace and was adored by the masses in America.

“Propaganda” was a ‘dirty word’ owing to the way in which it had been utilized in a negative sense during wartime.

Bernays realized that the mass acted as one during war time. What if they could do it in peacetime and harness the “irrational desires” of the masses and get them to buy products? Massive profits would ensue.

Cigarettes and the Suffragette Movement: there used to be a taboo on women smoking in public. Smoking was a purely male-preserve in the early-1900s.

The cigarette companies wanted to get 50% of the market smoking. They consulted a psychoanalyst, A.A. Brill,  who stated that cigarettes were symbols of penises (much of Freudian thought has to do with sexual desire, remember!). If they could get women to ‘own’ cigarettes and empower them through

So at a suffragette rally, the days socialites (today’s Paris Hiltons etc.) took out what were labeled “torches of freedom” at one moment. They made them more socially acceptable in a flash.

By linking products to emotional desires and thinking and making seemingly irrelevant links between products and desires, relevant, then you were in business!

Mass production flourished after the War. The War had seen huge increases in production costs.

Most products were advertised as necessities, not as luxuries Advertising then was geared towards displaying a product’s practical virtues.  The rich had always enjoyed luxury products but for the masses, they lived a far more sober life.

They needed the masses to desire the new surplus of products. Look to a desire for the new, even before it is old.  The final stage was to make these new products appeal, not just desirable, but essential: think the fashion industry, the music business, any one of the thousands “New! Improved!” slogans you will see in the shops.

The utilization of celebrity endorsement and, ultimately, in films happened for the first time under the leadership of Bernays. He also financed ‘scientific experiments’ as though they were independent research.

“A change has come over our democracy. It is called ‘Consumptionism. An American’s duty to his country is no longer as citizen but as consumer.” – American Journalist.

Bernays also promoted the idea of credit on a vast scale so that people could consume.

1924: Politics became involved in public relations. 34 Hollywood actors were invited to the White House to change the public’s perception of the presiding President Coolidge, whom they perceived as rather dull.

After losing money in the world financial collapses in the 1930s, Freud was able to market his psychological works in America. His viewpoint of man became more cynical of man as he saw the dangerous potential of the violence locked beneath the surface of man.  Therefore, he thought democracy dangerous as men were violent, so why should they have the right to vote. He suggested it would be better if a stronger group of leaders took control over this potentially dangerous mob. Now then, the techniques that had been used for mass- marketing would be applied to product placement.

If you could satiate the masses’ impulsive desire through the consumption of products, then you would have a better chance of organizing a more peaceful society.

President Hoover was the first to recognize that consumerism could become the central motor of American life.

People were viewed as “ever-moving happiness machines…that would become the key to  economic progress.”

“Democracy at its heart was about changing the relations of power that had governed the world for so long” (30.30).—Stuart Ewen, Historian of Public Relations.

Bernays knew all the politicians/actors/financiers of his day. He was the “Gatsby” of his age!