During another morning spent on the lounge watching cricket and cruising the net I stumbled upon the critical theory of 20th Century French social critic Jacques Ellul, who looks suspiciously like an ex-cricketer from Yorkshire in his photo.
I was getting swamped by the advertising for a new McCrap product on the telly featuring two young chaps exchanging disinterested glances and calling each other "dude", which given my love of the film The Big Lebowski I am not averse to, but incessant promotion of said generic product really got to me until Jacques jumped off the screen and explained a few things to me.
In arguing that advertising is a form of propaganda that is created to dull the senses of the individual and excite their need for living a collective ideal through some form of communion with technology, he says in his book The Technological Society, written in 1964, that;
"It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed, precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the link between the individual and the demands of the technological society."
As if he had somehow been subjected to Euro McCrap ads back in '64 penetrating my consciousness he goes on to say that,
"The primary purpose of advertising technique is the creation of a certain way of life. And here it is much less important to convince the individual rationally than to implant in him a certain conception of life. The object offered for sale by the advertiser is naturally indispensable to the realization of this way of life. Now, objects advertised are all the result of the same technical progress and are all of identical type from a cultural point of view. Therefore, advertisements seeking to prove that these objects are indispensable refer to the same conception of the world, man, progress, ideals - in short, life."
Touche my fine French friend!
I was taken back to a moment in time where I attacked a life-size Ronald on the Khao San Road in Bangkok for precisely the motives that Jacques details, though he was inanimate and obviously couldn't defend the honour of corporate greed machines like his employers, I none-the-less took great pleasure in working him over a bit with the help of a few locals.
The technology may have caught up with me but the likes of McCrap will never find me!
My mate Jack concludes with a precious piece of advice . . . "the human race is beginning confusedly to understand at last that it is living in a new and unfamiliar universe." Take it on home comrade!
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