propaganda [was Re: Vineland]

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Vaska,
All I know is an undocumented anecdote I picked up somewhere regarding an 
opium-laced cough syrup supposedly very popular among poor 19th c. immigrant 
populations suffering through the childhood TB epidemic (historians, gotta date on this?).  
It was called *Mother's Little Helper* and was marketed as the only *medicine* strong 
enough to suppress those tormenting coughing spells that must have driven many an 
indigent parent into madness as their infants coughed themselves to death.  
But what a marketing angle, eh?

john m
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Vaska writes:
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>A heretical squeak from Toronto: is anyone on this list familiar with the
>rhetoric and modes of 19th-century political and commercial advertising, US
>way?  This is a bona fide question: I myself don't know enough on the
>subject, but my suspicion is that a great deal of contemporary US propaganda
>techniques is home-grown stuff, actually.  Shoot me if I'm wrong.
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>Vaska
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>Brutality has been so successfully privatised
>>under capitalism so that it is average Joe Shmoe US citizens who keep
>>other US citizens in their place rather than secret police or storm
>>troopers. In the 50s the system depended on whistle blowers like
>>Reagan to shop those who harboured un-American ideals. In Pynchon's
>>1984 most people just don't have any such ideals. prevailing opinion
>>steers most people away from anything so dangerous very early on.
>>
>>re Chinese propaganda:
>>> That, I think, is actually the main thrust of much propaganda: not
>>> to convince all of its recipients that all of it is true, but to
>>> present a mountain of deception that amounts to intellectual
>>> aggression.  Absorbing lies all the time, while dissent and debate
>>> are violently suppressed, chips away at intellectual morale.  Lively
>>> understanding rarely comes from dictation; it tends to come from
>>> exploration, which is stifled in places like China--and which was
>>> also stifled in Nazi Germany.  There is much more opportunity for
>>> the stuff in the US.
>>
>>Yes and no. More opportunities may be true, but which opportunities?
>>Who dictates what opportunities exist? The US people at large or
>>corporations and media moguls? And the point is not that opportunities
>>are not there if not for the taking then at least for making. For some
>>people there is some limited opportunity to exercise their own
>>political and social ideas. We are allowed to discuss our options,
>>even have our own ideas of what would be a Utopia, even make our own
>>attempts to realise such Utopias. What we are not able to do is i)
>>ensure that most people are aware of how rotten things are and ii)
>>present radical arguments against the status quo in place of the
>>tired, formulaic dichotomies the media recycles whenever any such
>>question is raised. The debate is already preprogrammed in the
>>intellectual climate of our culture and may only develop along
>>sanctioned lines (the UK is no better in this respect - witness the
>>political muzak which we have had by way of an election campaign here
>>in the last few weeks). Any attempt at an expose or a revision of
>>fundamental principles is rapidly rerouted by the media treatment it
>>receives into the simplistic and familiar formats of TV news/current
>>affairs/commentary, formats which deracinate any radical elements of
>>the debate thanks to the self-censorship achieved by by donning such a
>>formal strait-jacket, the humdrum monotony which an argument acquires
>>when clothed in such media garb. Net result is that one has to live
>>within the system with almost no opportunity to change the most
>>important determinants of circumstance.
>>
>>> . . . Now, if I were to look
>>> for a precedent for the Nazi system, I might look more quickly at the pre
>>> WWII US, and, even moreso, the pre WWI US, and even moreso, the pre Civil
>>> War US, and even moreso, the pre US under Great Britain (the amount of
>>> advertising declining steadily as the regression into the past continues),
>>> but I still think that other governments might provide even better analogs.
>>
>>I don't deny such blatant propaganda exists in other countries. When I
>>singled out the US as the inheritor of the Naxi's legacy my point was
>>not that US propaganda was the same as in Nazi Germany. On the
>>contrary that US propaganda has taken propaganda one step further in a
>>way that say Chinese propaganda (as you describe it) has not.  The US
>>media have perfected the use of propaganda to the extent that most of
>>its citizens don't regard what they are fed as being propaganda. The
>>Nazis were lucky enough to be able to use more primitive techniques to
>>achieve the same effect because their population was not
>>propaganda-savvy.   But that is not how it works now. Everyone is
>>media-savvy these days. Except in reality everyone just thinks they
>>are media-savvy. But TV still manages to run rings round people no
>>matter how much they think they are in control. This is the real
>>battle, not conning people about particular matters of fact but
>>conning them about the quality of the information sources they rely on
>>to the point that they no longer question (know how to question) the
>>validity, coherence and completeness of the information and opinions
>>on which they are asked to base their judgements. You don't need bars
>>when people lock the doors in their own minds.
>>
>>re whether advertising and TV have won the war:
>>
>>> I guess I mostly take issue with the remark that the war's over.  I think
>>> that's your opinion about what's going on in the US, but not what's in
>>> Vineland, which I think is more concerned with pondering the state of the
>>> war.  I think there's some humility in Vineland (and Pynchon in general)
>>> regarding the ability to state accurately and authoritatively "how things
>>> are" or even "how things were."  Pynchon does a great job of visualizing
>>> history, but it's significant that he does so through a fiction that is
>>> full of distortions and questions.
>>
>>If you question whether the war is won consider the number of hours
>>people watch television, the lack of control people exercise over what
>>they watch, the lack of alternative sources of information and
>>commentary, the dramatic behavioural shifts which people undergo when
>>viewing, the frightening passivity with which people absorb TV and
>>advertising input, its terrible effectiveness in selling product from
>>politicians to perfume to life-styles.
>>
>>Pynchon may have been making a joke when he had Hector humming the
>>Flintstones theme on the run from tubal detox but it was also a
>>palpable hit at TV. You may consider the use of TV images all the way
>>through to be nothing more than a riff on the kute kliches of TV
>>plotting, character and setting. Ditto for the film borrowings in
>>GR. But to me such a deliberate pastiche (yes, I do mean pastiche,
>>John) suggests that there is a critical comment wrapped up in this
>>(re)presentation.
>>
>>But ignoring questions of the book's form let's consider two examples
>>where TV images are commented on explicitly. Recall Zoyd in his 50th
>>floor Hawaiian hotel room after his arguiment with Frenesi on the
>>balcony. The only thing stopping him from jumping is the thought of
>>Steve Lord arriving on the scene and saying "Book him, Danno, suicide
>>one". The other example is Hector meeting Frenesi at the airport
>>trying to sell her the idea for his blockbuster movie/TV series (I
>>forget which). In both cases these are poeple in extremis. They are
>>cracking up, breaking apart. And in both cases TV, the glitz and
>>glamour of TV, TV characters and locations, the possibility of
>>entering into TV's fairyland world have become central to the
>>character's worldview, have begun to seem more real than their `real'
>>world, have begun to invade not just their fantasies but their
>>decision making processes and desires. TV has become their touchstone
>>of familiarity, security, wisdom and justice, presents the paradigms
>>which they aspire to and judge by. (Other examples are Frenesi
>>masturbating with submissive delight in front of her her favourite TV
>>fascist fantasy or Prairie displaying herself for Zoyd in her mind's
>>eye in all the lace-clad glory advertising can muster)
>>
>>> > Yes America is different. It's the same old story - the rich
>>> > using their wealth to deny opportunity to the poor - only in the US it
>>> > has been refined and refined to the point where it is a pushover.
>>
>>> Is that it?  Is that the whole story?  That's what I'd call a short short
>>> short story.  I think it's worth at least a couple of sentences more. 
>>> Pynchon himself has written over a thousand pages on it so far.  Would he
>>> have bothered if it were that simple?
>>
>>No, of course it's not the whole story. But propaganda is a central
>>plank in American capitalism's success. And the power of propaganda
>>*is* a definite theme in Pynchon's work, in GR as much as in Vineland.
>>Much as Pynchon's acknowledges that a worm has room to turn even when
>>trapped within the core of a rotten apple my reading is that he
>>expects most worms to stay right where they are, eating shit.
>>
>>
>>Andrew Dinn
>>-----------
>>And though Earthliness forget you,
>>To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
>>To the rushing water speak:  I am.
>>
>>----------geoboundary--
>>
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