The Century of the Self - Part 3 of 4
Where’s part 2, you ask? Well it’s here, of course, on Google video. I’m not going to post it because—while it is still highly interesting—I don’t think it’s as eye-opening as parts 1 and 3 (and #4 I haven’t watched yet).
#3—above—is about how the Hippie revolution sought to counter the corporate control of their unconscious desires (this sounds like a conspiracy type statement, but if you’d watched the first two, you’d realize these are the terms the people who did this manipulating openly use themselves…). Since political action was being distinctively crushed by the police/state, they turned to inner-directed change in order to try to overcome the maladies of a consumerist, materialist society.
Trust the business-types, however, to hire some brilliant(?) scientists, sociologists and researchers, who subsequently penetrated what made the Hippies tick, and managed to begin marketing to them just as effectively as they had to citizens of 1950s conformist society. Their strategy: target their individuality. The weapon of the 1970s/80s non-conformist was their pledge to individual self-actualization (Maslow-style) rather than fitting into the “machine’s gears”. What they didn’t realize, however, was that they increasingly became dependant on the products of the same corporations they were supposedly fighting against to gain their individual status—whether it be through unique/small-run clothing, tailored vehicle specs, or the general customization afforded by recently invented computer-controlled manufacturing processes.
In short, the counter-culture lost sight of its original goals, and ended up being primarily responsible for the foundation of the next level of corporate control of the masses (again, this isn’t my wording; interviews with those who were responsible for implementing these advertising strategies jovially discuss these terms on camera!).
There are shit-tons of issues that come up in this video that are still just as relevant in today’s context. My—and my generations—tendency to jump to meta-analysis warns me of how morally-detached people can comfortably become when looking to pay the bills, even metaphorically. The many interviewees questioned seemed to show no sign of remorse for how they willingly manipulated the lives of millions in order to further their company-at-the-time’s brand. Nor do they seem at all perturbed by digging into the inner-most psyche of focus-group attendees or survey respondents in order to categorize them as optimal consumer ‘types’. Like the Nazis with their systematized mass-murder, we’ve become totally disinclined to question the utter irresponsibility with which we institutionally manipulate others for our own ends. Sure, on some level humans need to exploit some ‘thing’ in order to survive, but we’ve taken this a far stretch from survival—we aren’t just killing our enemies/others, we’re killing ourselves by evolving away from empathetic connection.
Herein ends the stream-of-consciousness grade-twelve-level written response, and, if you know me fairly well, begins the hypocrisy :(
Film.
