OccuLibrary Project Debut Tonight

At the The Fallus Dart Air, 5 - 9PM, Shamrock Hotel
4312 Elm St., Dallas between Peak and Carroll (more details at the link): GlamROccuLibrarymentary Trailer Shoot 1 (2012), by me and Lizzy Wetzel, with performances by Sally Glass and George Quartz.

The Fallas Dart Air also includes works by Kristen Cochran, Lanie Delay, Vince Jones, Kirsten Macy, Margaret Meehan, Ludwig Schwarz, Marjorie Schwarz, Edward Setina, Lizzy Wetzel, Lily Hanson, Peter Ligon, Marianne Newsom, Brian Ryden, Noah Simblist, Sunny Sliger, and Saul Waranch.

The "Nobody Heard What You Said" Story

By Jay Rosen at PRESSthink:

In 1984, Stahl had produced an extended report for CBS trying to document the contradictions between what Reagan said and what he did. It showed him speaking at the Special Olympics and at a nursing home, and reported that Reagan had cut funding to children with disabilities and opposed funding for public health. I’ll let [Bob] Somerby tell the rest:

Dick Darman clued in Lesley Stahl—it’s all about the pictures. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Stahl aired a lengthy report on the CBS Evening News; it was broadly critical of President Reagan. In her recent book, Reporting Live, Stahl described her thoughts as the piece went to air:

STAHL (page 210): I knew the piece would have an impact, if only because it was so long: five minutes and 40 seconds, practically a documentary in Evening News terms. I worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out.

But that isn’t what happened, she says. When the piece aired, Darman called from the White House. “Way to go, kiddo,” he said to Stahl. “What a great piece. We loved it.” Stahl replied, “Didn’t you hear what I said [in the broadcast]?” Darman’s answer has been frequently quoted:

STAHL: [Darman replied,] “Nobody heard what you said.”

Did I hear him right? “Come again?”

“You guys in Televisionland haven’t figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you.”

Stahl’s critical report about President Reagan had been accompanied by generally upbeat visuals. According to Darman’s theory, the pictures registered more with viewers than anything Stahl had said.

(Much more at the link.)

The Psychogeography of Art Museums

Per Wikipedia, psychogeography was defined by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals" (referncing Debord's Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955).

More about the project shown in the video above at eMotion.

Obama: a Corporate Marketing Creation

John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US. You can see the rest of the speech here; remember to rate it up.



Please go rate this up on YouTube (click on the picture above). We cannot begin to hold them accountable, until we understand what they need to be held accountable for.

From "Network" (1976)

Movie info at IMDB.

MUST SEE: "The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis

I've now watched all of Parts 1 and 4 and plan to watch all parts at least twice, taking notes. For me, this is the most important documentary since "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (1970).

The Century of the Self presents more proof than anyone could ever want that we are living in a fantasy created for us by powerful elites -- a fantasy that pretends to offer happiness but that actually diverts us both from effective action and from true fulfillment.

We all kinda knew that, but the documentary provides fascinating details about how it's been done and for how long, as well as insight into the implications for our future. To take back control of our lives, we'll need more than just the general idea, both in order to free ourselves and in order to help make others aware.

You can see the series on the Internet Archive or Google Video.

Knowledge truly is power. Please run don't walk to see The Century of the Self, and tell everyone you know to see it. More details, including the embedded Part 4, in my previous post on it, here.

"The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis

Below is Part 4 of an excellent BBC series documenting how, beginning in the 1920's, Freudian theories gave rise to public relations techniques that have been used to uncover irrational, often self-centered or petty motivations of whole populations, so as to either cater to or manipulate them.

(Note, this video is nearly an hour long -- wish it moved a bit more quickly -- but the info is fascinating and important, and the visuals and audio are terrific -- well-edited, with lots of cool archival stuff. If you can't spare the time, I'm providing a cursory summary of some of the main ideas below.)



These psychoanalytically-derived techniques have been used not only by businesses in designing or selling products but also by politicians (and, I might add, by religious leaders -- see, e.g., Brands of Faith) in marketing themselves.

Some using these techniques believed they were helping to bring about a more democratic system in which the consumer or voter was "king." But the point of a "focus group" is not to hear our considered opinions on any given topic but rather to discern the more primitive desires and fears we might not admit to if asked but that often, with or without our awareness, drive our behavior.

After decades of immersion in the P.R. resulting from these techniques, we've gone from seeing ourselves as exploited by business interests to -- rightly or benightedly -- viewing the marketplace as a main source of identity support and fulfillment.

But our democracy has to some extent been reduced from an electorate actively undertaking organized action to make the world better for others as well as ourselves to a relatively atomized, passive agglomeration of consumers who secretly feel entitled to prioritize gratification of their every self-centered whim.

We feel we are free, but in reality, we've been enslaved through our unconscious fears and desires. We all kinda knew that, but the documentary provides fascinating details about how it was done, which can help arm us against such efforts in the present, as well as providing insight into the implications for our future.

You can see the other parts of the series on the Internet Archive or Google Video.

On a somewhat related subject, I'd like to recommend the recent New Yorker article, "Twilight of the Books," on the effects of the rise in TV watching and relative decline in reading. Among other things, it describes studies suggesting that proficient readers may think differently than people who rely more on visual communication. While both kinds of thinking are probably valuable, it appears that, generally, visual communication involves thinking oriented toward graphic, functional-narrative or emotional content, while reading facilitates abstract reasoning and an ability to compare and contrast subject-matter based on a wider array of kinds of logic.

Interesting to think about in connection with other studies about TV. As I wrote in a previous post (analyzing the Smith/Cohen cover video of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), "We all live in an ever more fully-saturated mass-media environment that continually urges us to consume and invites us to flee consciousness above all. Studies have shown how much TV has in common with both addiction and brainwashing – see here, here, and here. TV is unusual in that on the one hand, the brains of people watching it appear much more inert than usual, with their critical faculties turned almost completely off, while on the other hand, they are nonetheless uncritically absorbing the commercial and other messages being transmitted."