COP : TASK 1 - CENTURY OF SELF

Century of self:


- Edward Bernays is Freuds nephew from america, was the first person who used Freud's pyschoanalysis and applied it to manipulate the masses.

- Edward Bernays used psychoanalysis to manipulate the self through the unconsious mind, for the use of advertising, to make people want things they didn't need, by linking the mass produced goods to their unconscious desires

- Bernays after the war realised the power of the war campaigns and decided to use this technique

"If you can use propaganda for war you can use it for peace"

Edward Bernays

But Bernays decided that the word propaganda had too many bad connotations from the war so came up with a new name - Public relations.

-  To see if Freud's psychoanalysis works, Bernays carried out experiments on the minds of the popular classes, one of his experiments was to try persuade women to smoke. There was a taboo at the time against women smoking and cigarette companies wanted to change that as women were half of their market. Bernays went to a psychoanalysis to find out what the cigarette means to women and was told that it represents the penis, and of male sexual power. and if Bernays could convince women to smoke it would be a way of challenging men, as women would have their own penis. Bernays staged an event where he got women during a parade to light cigarets and then informed the press that he had heard that  a group of women were staging a protest and smoking what they called, torches of freedom. It worked,  and Bernays made it socially acceptable for women to smoke.

- By manipulating minds using psychoanalysis irrelevant objects become powerful emotional symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others. 

- Once out of the war America had a worry about mass production, they were frightened of over production that there would come a time when people have too much goods and would stop buying. They realised they must shift America from a needs, to a disires country, people must be trained to want things, to disire new things even before the item is deemed 'old'. Mans disires must over shadow mans needs. Bernays was responsible for the change.

- Bernays was one of the first to practice product placement. He would link famous film stars to his clients products, and those famous film stars would also be his clients and the magazine a client of his also. He began to put product placement in the movies. He would dress the famous at the premiers in clothes of other clients he represented also.

- Bernays maniplulated the mind by attaching goods to peoples ornate irationale desires, creating a false need for things and also adding an emotional need for it too, so the consumer wants to item but will also feel better for having the item

- Bernays used consumerism as a way of social control. By satisfying peoples inner selfish desires you make them happy and therefore docile

- The growing wave of consumerism helped created a stock market, which Bernays was envolved in, promoting the idea that normal people should buy shares, borrowing money from banks that Bernays represented. People listened and did as Bernays said. Bernays had control of the masses and thought of people never as one person he thought of people in groups of thousands and thousands.

- Bernays instigated politics being involved in public relations. Bernays used to same technique he used to promote a product, to promote a priminister by getting celebrities to visit the whitehouse and to be seen with the president

In the above two adverts for Camel cigarets are aimed at advertising smoking to men. on the surface they a relatively simple adverts just featuring a man smoking in the wilderness, but underneath they are laced with connotations relating to psychoanalysis, advertising using the art of manipulation. The advert works on many different layers by making men look at the advert and think that camel is a manly cigarette and if he doesn't smoke he'll be less of a man and if he doesn't smoke the brand camels he will  be even more less of a man. The adverts feature a man who is on his own traveling which will connote to the man independence, power and control of being on his own. The advert on the left features a dog and the advert on the right features a plane. Both these things the man has dominance over, dogs are obedient animals who the man controls and has power over, they obey him and submit. The plane is a mechanical object, it is powerful and big, but man is needed to control it, man has the power and the machine is obedient and does what man wants. The tag line of 'Camel where a man belongs.' is stating that a man belongs in this situation where he is in total control and power the complete scene of masculinity. All these feelings of power and control and dominance all relate back to the penis, and this is represented by the cigarette. The cigarette is an extension of his penis, it represents his masculinity and power of being a man, being the more dominant and powerful gender, and all the connotations of power, dominance, control, apply to the power over women as women don't have a penis, so therefore can not be all the things the man is in the advert.