Of Marks And Men: Propaganda And The Consumer Community

by Shelton Hull

WEDNESDAY JUNE 23, 12:33 PM

“No further need to explain excuse produce any arguments or facts

in support of departmental directives. It will soon be neurologically

impossible to oppose or even to question. The virus is hereditary of

course a permanent chromatic formula circuits of protest closed

forever…‘The President is right. The President is always right. The

laws are right. America is right. America is always right. The

American way of life is the right way of life is the best way of life is

the only way of life’ from here to eternity.”

–William S. Burroughs, “The Perfect Servant,” from

Exterminator!</b>

When I’m at home, and the telephone rings, the odds are about

50/50 that I’ll pick it up. Sometimes I’ll ignore the thing all day, then

check the messages later and call only the really important people. I

would guess that you do the same thing. Like me, you probably don’t

like to have your precious free time interrupted by the jabbering of

idiots and telemarketers. Like me, you probably don’t enjoy being

bothered when you’re trying to think. But, unlike me, you probably

don’t have to validate your thoughts with more thoughts everywhere

you go and to everyone you meet. Why the hell do I bother? It’s a

beautiful, sunny Sunday, and I should be at the beach or the mall,

trying to impress women with my good looks and charisma. If I was

smart, I’d call an end to all this circuitous theorizing. I would say that

we are living in a free-market democracy, that everything is fair and

just, that the poor are poor because they are lazy, that the stupid are

stupid because they are stupid. I would offer a Constitutional quote,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal,” as proof that our society is as free as the media tells us, then

I could go outside and engage in the gaudy displays of fuckability

that are de rigeur for modern man. But if I did that, well, that would

make me a mark.

It should go without saying, though of course it will not, that we are

living in a world where the individual is being de-emphasized as a

viable concept. The group mentality reigns supreme, and no one

seriously believes that “one man (or woman) can make a difference.”

The individual thrives when he has a firm sense of community, when

he can clearly see his role in society and understand what he has to

contribute. Much of the advances in technology over the past century

have had the effect of isolating individuals from each other, while

pretending to bring us closer together. For example, consider the

medium that you and I are using right now, the Internet. The Internet

does make it possible to communicate with people that you

otherwise would not be able to, absolutely, and that is a good thing.

However, it’s now less likely that you would engage a neighbor in

substantive conversation, though his physical proximity to you

makes him far more relevant to your life than some disembodied text

on-line. Especially if the computers shut down on January 1, and

looting replaces soccer as the nation’s most popular sport.

As I said, it’s becoming harder and harder to tell one person from

another. In appearance and in action, systematized conformity is

becoming the dominant trend in society, as it is meant to be. As a

journalist, I am regularly exposed to this fact when I read the work of

other journalists – other than the fabulous folks at Ink 19, that is.

You see, journalists are distinguishable by two criteria: what they

say and how they say it. If one man walks through a hall of mirrors,

he might look different here and there, but it’s still the same person.

Likewise, mainstream media diversity is an illusion; there are mild

stylistic variations, but the substance is similar. University programs

and workplace constraints perform the same task for journalists that

advertisers and public relations firm do for the population at large.

They unify perception and streamline thought along very specific

lines, usually in support of the corporate agenda. In short, they make

marks. What, you may ask, is a mark? Read on.

I make occasional derogatory reference to “marks,” and the word has

become a staple of my personal vernacular. I am sometimes asked

to explain its meaning, so I shall. For me it’s a matter of le mot juste

(“the right word”), when a word can perfectly express a particular

concept. As tribal dialects fade off into history at a rapid clip, more

and more highly specific terms of expression are becoming extinct.

This makes it necessary to invent new words, or modify existing

ones to accommodate the new ideas. The word “mark” has 47

definitions in Webster’s dictionary (1995 ed.), covering the gamut of

traditional usage. I refer you to number 15: “a. an object of derison or

abuse; b. the victim of a swindle.” That says it pretty well, and

succinctly, as should be expected from professional morphologists.

In the world of professional wrestling, the marks are children, and

anyone else who thinks that the show is real, much like those who

digest the media message without considering the possible ulterior

motives. I’ve come to think of it also as the root of words like

“market” and “marketing” especially. Convincing people to buy things

they don’t need and only want because they think they need them is,

as far as I can tell, a swindle. Marks are trained to embrace their

banal existence. Years of mental conditioning have left them

incapable of comprehending their role in society. Material goods are

regarded as essential for personal satisfaction. But to obtain those

goods requires money, the more the better, and money is marketed

as the preeminent medium through which the marks may realize their

full potential as human beings, i.e. buying the crap that will make

them cool. It complements and supplements the usual onslaught of

advertising, and it’s an effective general message for total control.

Because you can’t control a country full of individuals who recognize

that something fishy is going on, but things will be fine as long as

they stay oblivious to reality. So, true population control cannot occur

without aggressive thought control.

The evolution of modern thought control dates back to WW1.

Woodrow Wilson was elected on a slogan of “Peace Without

Victory,” which was very effective in what was then a highly

isolationist country. But the British were desperate to bring us into

the war, so their Ministry of Information endeavored to devise anti-Hun

propaganda in order to convince leading American intellectuals that

our participation was vital. Which it was, to Britain. The intellectuals,

then as now, were the primary arbiters of public opinion, although

they were a little more independent back then. The plan worked, but

the majority of Americans were still against intervention. As Noam

Chomsky put it in a 1997 lecture, Wilson’s problem was “how do you

get the pacifist population to become raving anti-German lunatics so

they want to go kill all the Germans? That requires propaganda. So

they set up the first and really only major state propaganda system

in U.S. history.” The Committee on Public Information, a.k.a. the

Creel Commission did its job very well. Hitler was sufficiently

impressed to start his own propaganda system for WW2 (see also

Riefenstahl, Leni and her Triumph of the Will), and the business

community was sufficiently impressed to utilize the techniques of

propaganda to serve its own interests.

Between the surge of immigration going on then and the granting of

voting rights to women, the country suddenly became a lot more

democratic, and most of these new voters had not properly

assimilated the ideals of our capitalist system. It became necessary

to aggressively streamline the thoughts of these new voters toward

“acceptable” ends. Former Creel members then began to use their

talent for propaganda in this manner. One of them, Edward Bernays,

is considered the founder of the public relations industry. He wrote a

book called Propaganda in 1925 that was very explicit about his

intentions, which were to “regiment the public mind every bit as much

as an army regiments their bodies.” His greatest accomplishment,

and perhaps the most socially destructive, was the work he did in the

late 1920s for Chesterfield cigarettes. Using what are now very

typical methods – product placement, celebrity endorsements, etc. –

he convinced women that it was cool to smoke. And so they did, on

a large scale, for the first time ever. Another Creel member, Walter

Lippman, is one of the all-time leading figures in American

journalism; university journalism students may have had some of his

work forced down their throats. He was responsible for introducing

propaganda techniques to the journalism industry. This was, in his

words, a “revolution in the art of democracy,” institutional lying, that

is. The seminal book by Chomsky and Edward S. Herman,

Manufacturing Consent, borrows its title from Lippman’s argot.

All this stuff was pretty well ingrained in the national fabric by the

’50s, but the arrival of television brought it to a new level. For a while,

TVs were limited to only a few households due to their price, which

fell rather quickly. For a while their expense was part of their appeal,

as if purchasing one made you part of an exclusive club or

something. (People do like to feel special, you know.) Once TV

began to spread to more and more households, the device was

marketed as essential to every decent American household. Not

having one implied that your knuckles dragged as you walked.

(People do like to feel modern, you know.) Soon, television had

totally saturated the country, and that made a lot of money for

television manufacturers, several of whom owned networks, as is the

case today. (If you run a big multinational corporation, it’s a good

idea to have a network, or two, or three, in your pocket so that your

own nefarious dealings get minimal attention. The companies that

own networks today are a lot like countries that have nuclear

weapons, as far as their attitude toward reporting the others’

misconduct. If Westinghouse/CBS rats on Disney/ABC, for example,

then Disney will rat on Westinghouse in turn. Also note how the

much-hyped “feud” between Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch is never

escalated to the point that Fox reports on Time-Warner misdeeds, or

CNN does the same to News Corp. They’re all basically guilty of the

same crimes, so it’s in their best interests to keep people focused on

sports and sitcoms.) At that point, television largely stopped being

the subject of propaganda and became a medium for propaganda,

which is the role it serves today. I don’t think I need to elaborate on

that.

Of course, we all want something, so we’re all marks to some

extent. But once you have recognized the control systems currently

in place and how they function, then you are able to approach the

consumer lifestyle as an individual, instead of the statistical amalgam

you are meant to represent. As impressive as the market machinery

is, it sustains itself by assuming that, with enough propaganda, the

individual will lose control of his own ego, and collapse beneath his

need to want. Unfortunately, it seems that this assumption is largely

true.

The main reason that advertising is so effective is that the products

are pushed, directly and indirectly, as a means of making the mark

attractive to the opposite sex. The mating rituals present in the

animal kingdom have been replicated by humans, as is obvious from

viewing any random five-minute slice of a Desmond Morris special on

the Learning Channel. Our advanced brain function requires a more

sophisticated variant on the standard displays of power and beauty

that animals and primitive man relied upon. This problem has been

solved by pushing consumerism as the key to personal satisfaction,

physical, spiritual, social and otherwise. Men will do anything to get

women, because we’re taught that we are nothing unless we’re

fucking someone really hot, really often. The material message works

because, in the absence of a personality, the easiest way to get laid

is to get paid. You can imagine what can happen to people who will

do anything for money. You may have seen a few examples on the

news recently, or maybe you’re an example yourself. Women, on the

other hand, don’t have to do much to get men – other than wearing

expensive, toxic makeup and a regularly regenerated wardrobe,

getting breast implants, fake nails, hair weaves and, first and

foremost, “putting out” – because the men are always presenting

themselves, with colorful plumage bought at a department store. But

they don’t want what the women want, not on a conscious level. The

biological drive of women does not regard sex as a goal in and of

itself. Rather, sex is used as bait to facilitate commitment, to create

a family, because reproduction is the key to sustaining the race. So

the Catholic Church may be right in denouncing contraception as a

crime against nature; although the various means of contraception,

abortion included, are really the only things saving our already

overpopulated planet from a severe humanitarian crisis. We are, after

all, animals, sophisticated though we pretend to be, and animals only

exist to make more animals.

All of which begs the question: what, exactly, is God’s plan for us?

Or, if there is no God, is the human race programmed to

self-destruct? I postulate that, on day one of our evolution, all men

(and women) were equal; but total equality is not something that

mankind has ever been interested in. Not me, not you, not even the

most dogmatic socialist, who is more often than not expressing such

sentiment in order to impress others. And that, of course, is an act of

de-equalization, as is everything done to distinguish oneself from the

teeming masses, all of whom are behaving with similar intentions.

Basically, the only thing that makes us equal is our need to be

special. Because “equal” is just an idealistic way of saying

“ordinary,” and who wants to be ordinary? Most people have no time

for such a debate, because they have to go indulge their egos in one

manner or another. Always variations on a theme: obtain the status

symbol, flaunt the status symbol, then replace with the latest status

symbol. Sometimes it’s clothing, sometimes it’s each other. People

don’t like to think about things like this because it implies that our

lofty position on the food chain is more a matter of luck than of divine

purpose. It also makes us look pretty stupid. But the role of

advertising and public relations in generating a mass consensus in

favor of corporate interests is all the proof you need. Such

consensus, by the way, is usually the exact opposite of the truth,

and that’s why aggressive thought control is so vital to maintaining

the established order.

The more we allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of

community based on rank, empty consumerism, the more we ignore

the nuts and bolts of our brainwash culture, and the further we forfeit

that which makes us the current peak of God’s creative vision: free

will and intellect. Every human, if they’re lucky, has something deep

inside of them (more aesthetic than material) that makes them

happy. The men at the top of the financial pyramid are realizing their

dream, as are the innovators who create the products. But I doubt

that sweatshop workers, or refugees, or single moms on welfare are

doing the same. Of course, not everyone gets a chance to choose.

Some have their lives mapped out for them from day one, and it’s

hardly a life to look forward to. That makes the burden of free will so

much greater for those who can exercise it. To sublimate your

dreams in pursuit of some artificial reality is a waste of time, time

you don’t have to waste, unless you’re a Calvinist or Hindu. If you

wind up in some bad situation you weren’t planning for, then your life

is wasted. And that makes you a mark, marked off the list of people

who can actually make a difference in the world. My friend Otis

coined a term for this all-too common phenomenon: “Falling Off.” As

in, “Poor Jane. She married that Dick, got knocked-up at nineteen,

now she lives in a trailer and her husband kicks her ass every night

before dinner. Yeah, she fell off all right – right off the fucking planet.”

In a sense, the phone is a lifesaver for me. Whenever I feel

depressed, when I can’t conjugate a certain verb that way I want,

when it’s six in the morning and I just don’t want to get up and do

battle with Microsoft Word and my defective mouse, I can console

myself by thinking that, for all the trauma and irritations of my literate

lifestyle, at least I’m doing exactly what I want to do. I trained my

brain for the rigors of my job while my peers were getting blowjobs

behind the gym. And now I am happy, and they – well, I don’t know

how the years have treated them, nor do I really care. Most of them

seem to have been swallowed up by a vast river of unnecessary

bullshit. If at times I forget the rationale for toiling away in silence and

solitude, writing anything for anyone, while the rest of the world

parties like it’s – I like to allow myself one stupid clichŽ per essay –

1999, all it takes is five minutes on the phone with an old classmate.

It’s a win-win proposition. Either they’re happy, and I’m happy for

them; or they’re miserable, and their suffering makes me look and

feel like an absolute champ by comparison. I tried to tell them, and

they ignored me, now look where they are. Suckers! It makes me

embrace life with renewed energy and purpose. I, for one, cannot wait

for the reunion.</b></b>