Friday, August 20, 2010
What you rhyme will strike back in due time
In general, slogans are only helpful ways of remembering facts or details. However, when applied to the show business they turn into something manipulative. In the latter half of chapter four of Amusing Ourselves To Death, Postman states how the 20th century slogans made up a majority of the advertisements and how these slogans were “one part depth psychology and one part aesthetic theory” (page 61). As the television evolved into place, slogans began to walk hand in hand with television commercials to convince the viewer to purchase a product. These slogans do not provide product details (similar to the commercials) and cover-up their lack of importance with their catchiness. Slogans are, in themselves, a very basic type of entertainment. Now if the current use of slogans is extrapolated a few hundred years, we would get a result similar to that in Brave New World. The slogans of Brave New World have seeped in to the everyday lives of due to their catchiness and brainwashing. Many aspects of life, such as birth control, drug usage, and consumerism can be controlled by these catchy phrases. The people of the World State do not realize their peril because they are too caught up in the aesthetic portion of the slogan. The real question is this. Are slogans controlling our life decisions in today’s world?
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Ben, while slogans do seen to stick in our heads and possibly influence our choices, but as for controlling our life decisions- i think not. Yes they do play a largerole in our life but not to that extreme. For example I highly doubt that if i held some one's life in my hand and they were begging to live i would not reply "what would you do for a Klondike bar?" Yes, though, slogans do influence products we buy and possible places we visit, after all companies do spend thousands of dollars on these slogans to lock us in.
ReplyDeletenow concider the use of slogans or catch phrases in politics, such as Obama's use of "change". This may not have been as life-controling as the slogans in Brave New World, but it certaintly had an effect on lives of the voters.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, i do not believe slogans control our lives. however, i do think they hide somewhere in our subconcious, sort of tweaking how we would originally view a situation. And of course, many similar slogans repeated over and over again in your face is going to have a different effect on you than if you hear various and dispersed slogans.
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