The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker

(It might turn me on, but does it make me want to buy it?)

I’m starting a collection of subliminal messages because I think they’re funny. The Federal Communications Commission in the US frowns upon them, and the practice is banned completely in Canada. Do you think subliminal imagery works? I’m inclined to doubt it. I know that carefully choosing one’s language is an effective way to implant subliminal messages, but I’m not so sure flashes of visual imagery do. I suppose it depends on how deep a trance one is in, how intellectually “open” one is to being swayed one way or another.

(OK I laughed. But did it increase condom use in the targeted community?)

Survival imagery (food-safety-reproduction) is more likely to work on people for whom it matters most. Sex in advertising, subliminal AND direct, works because most men are highly susceptible to it. It doesn’t take much to turn them on, and in general they’re highly motivated to find sex whenever and wherever they can. This is why I don’t understand why Disney movies are rife with subliminal sexual imagery, something I find creepy since they’re supposedly targeted at children who, as best as I can tell have no sex drive until puberty. Perhaps they’re encouraging the parents? I’ll give Disney animators the benefit of the doubt: They must be bored.

Food imagery has more of an impact on hungry people than it does on people with full bellies (duh). McDonalds has been using subliminal messages for decades. I suppose people’s reaction to the above photograph would depend on what they were hungry for?

I’m even less convinced that subliminal advertising works in marketing non-essentials, such as politics or recreation. If there is no obvious and immediate survival imperative why bother with the subliminal messages? Why not just be straightforward about it? I suppose in some cases a little sneakiness is in order:

Check out this old cigarette commercial. I suppose for the company to state “We want to create a nation of addicts” would have been counterproductive so they chose the subliminal route instead. Do you think it may have worked on the zoned out couch potatoes watching it? Did nonsmokers think “Gee, I think I’ll pick up the habit?” I rather doubt it, but how could we ever know?

Subliminal messaging is used extensively in politics, to an effect that’s near impossible to measure. One thing we can probably surmise from the above clip is that John McCain is the Fox News presidential candidate! However, I’m unconvinced how watching Fox News’ subliminal messages would ever make ME want to vote for any candidate, no matter how many time they flashed his image at me.

Subliminal imagery is pointless in politics because people who really care to the point of recognizing a survival imperative in the right or wrong candidates gather data in an attentive way. We tend to be educated and aware, NOT zoned out in a couch potato stupor, are generally immune to bullshit and as such tend to make our political decisions pretty quickly. The nonpolitically inclined can’t be swayed because they don’t give a shit.

This why the so-called “race” for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees has been such an obvious farce: Polling “statistics” and Diebold “results” have been flying in the face of the basic nature of the human political animal. The first Red Flag was that there was NO relationship between fundraising and polling results. The second red flag was that few of us are undecided or fickle enough to make the polls fluctuate so wildly, and most important, for so long.

If subliminal messages are being used in politics it must be because campaigners don’t think their candidates can win without trickery and consequently decide to pander to voter fears and Teh Stupid. Apparently the Stupid Vote is a huge demographic? Please, say it isn’t so!

I like to imagine myself immune to all of it. This subliminal message about Cheney, however, I’d fall for hook-line-and-sinker, but it’s because I’m already highly suggestible toward the message! Reinforcement? Are such efforts even necessary? Thoughts?