A generation or two ago, puritans warned their children that ‘Hotel California’ played backwards would cause their brains to explode. The same thing was said about virtually every pop group and rock band from the Bee Gees to Led Zeppelin. Today’s kids are probably told the same thing about Beyoncé, Mick Jagger (yeah, he’s still around) and Lady Gaga.
Problem is, no one bothers much about the kind of brain-numbing, mind-altering, ego-twisting, id-warping music that’s played forwards. I worry more about these four things than subliminal messages in supposedly diabolical songs that ask you to kill your parents or buy a coke at the cinema.
At the top of the list are often jingoistic government communiqués. These would be scary in their hoary, hairy, horned, hapless use of jargon – if they weren’t just downright sad. Thankfully, at least their argot is transparent. Take a listen: +
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“The war was won without shedding a single drop of blood thanks to the superlative foresight of the state information department.” “The economy is doing much better than it ever was under the present opposition, no matter what the previous administration said during its tenure.” “The water in your petrol will not be charged to the taxpayer’s account because up to date we have not been able to find the water in the petrol, the petrol in the water, or the taxpayer.”
The second tier is not so funny, because a lot of unlovely people make big bucks out of it. We don’t mind their making decent money out of it, but the dough gets dirty in the wash when the unethical element creeps into it. Time out of mind the fact of the matter used to be that sex sells. Today, though, just about everything decadent sells. Sex, fame, money, power, elitism, exclusivism, egalitarianism – and never mind that the last three of these are mutually contradictory. (Put that dictionary down, dears, and pay attention.)
No, really, we have no issue with manufacturers desirous of selling their stuff. Or spin-doctors keen to market it by creating a need where none existed before. After all, we live in a society whose motto is, “Give us the luxuries of life, and we can live without the necessities.” Our truck is with the ugly clutter that billboards and ambient advertising and tacky point-of-sale material create in an otherwise user-friendly city. Not the medium so much, as the message. The one proclaiming to those who have itching ears the good news of our nouveau GDP: Growth, Development, Progress. Sofa, so good… as the voluptuous model selling ridiculously extravagant ‘imported’ ‘readymade’ ‘antique’ furniture said.
The third contender for our attention appeals to an increasingly naïve section of the populace. I’d say craven, but you might be offended. Of course, one refers to rational republican realpolitikers – the savvy sycophants who have realized that their bread is buttered to the extent that the boots of the powers that be are licked. So a new breed of pseudo-bureaucrat has emerged from the shattered ranks of what used to be civil society, in order to mouth platitudes that would make wizened spinmeisters cringe. See what they say:
“Strong government shares the pie most fairly with suckers-up, so let’s.” “An iron hand in a soft glove is the need of the hour.” “These are the best of times, because if we say they are the worst of times, they will be so.”
Sadly, these ranks are no more from merely the file of skulking time-servers in government offices bound hand and foot to their state pension and political masters’ largesse. But the acme of business and academia who have realized that tender is the night if the price is right. It could be you, dears. Shame!
Last but not least (that is to say, in the lowest circle of hell) there is the PR and propaganda machine. These mandarins of a not so brave new order hail from every walk of life and every stratum of society. “What a pretty cage we all live in.” “Long live the corrupt and the criminals, because friends in high places are better than beauty, truth, or justice.” “Free birds who could fly would be dead birds soon enough.” So croon and caterwaul the actors and redactors and contractors who kowtow to the Mikado.
Government communiqués. Advertising. Rational republican realpolitik.
PR and propaganda machinery. Or, as their acronyms would have it, the world according to GARP. As we argued at the outset, it’s a matter of the mind. And if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Play it again, Sam? Backwards or forwards! So long as the music plays while we slip out to buy a coke… and no one notices or cares as we brain the nearest citizen on the street corner soapbox, declaiming to all who pass by that the battle for our minds has only just begun. |
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