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There are a few porn movies which most people have heard the names of -- Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Debbie Does Dallas. Add Cafe Flesh and maybe Caligula...
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There are a few porn movies which most people have heard the names of -- Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Debbie Does Dallas. Add Cafe Flesh and maybe Caligula...
Ms. G: You got me with the kitty pic(where did you get it from??? Great shot), and I mean a photo of a Feline, you perverts:P, and I stayed for the article. Haven't read the account of the auteur's spiel at the reviewer of his little epic yet, but, I'll bet it's a hoot.
Agree with you about how publicity and journalism in this country are become intertwined to the point of inducing(metaphorically speaking)vast quantities of projectile vomiting(aka Bazooka Barfing), and how that, in turn, can create a distrust of anything and everything we hear and see around us, if we're not careful.
That's a condition that, if taken too far, can be very dangerous, especially when applied to politics, as well as MSM or porn, as it can end up being a form of what Samir Al-Khalil(aka Kanan Makiyaa)called, in his 1990 book on Iraq, "Republic Of Fear", "ignorant cynicism", in which members of the public distrust anyone and anything based, not on a substantial knowledge of people and events, but on a vague suspicion that something's just gotta be wrong with someone advocating a given notion somehow.
While the causes of Iraqi ignorant cynicism and its American equivalent differ greatly, the pattern behind both, and to a much lesser extent, the results seem to me to be quite similar, and neither promise anything good for their respective societies.
That's my two cents, and probably about as much as it's worth on the open market.
Wow, ignorant cynicism is conceptually dead-on for what the core problem caused is. Rotten people spew so much BS that people don't know what to believe and end up having faith in nothing. Which is, aside from being willfully stupid, an unpleasant way to live. Thanks so much for that expression. Kind of scary to think that was Iraq seventeen years ago. I'd hate to think we had a similar future waiting for us in the States.Quote:
Originally Posted by Donald Rilea
Oh yeah, and the kitty is a LOLcat which Forrest Black found and modified from icanhascheezburger.com. That is why the alt tag on the image is With Apologies to ICanHasCheezBurger :)
You're quite welcome.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amelia G
Have encountered ignorant cynicism in myself as much as in others, and can't say I find it to be a particularly pleasant experience.
One of the hardest problems, especially in an information-saturated culture like ours, and this is where it differs a bit from Baathist-era Iraq, is sorting through the overwhelming mass of information, pseudo-information and out-right bullshit that one's bombarded with every single day of any given year.
In Baathist-era Iraq, and perhaps even to a far lesser extent, in to-day's American-occupied Iraq, the problem that confronts most Iraqis was, and is, the overwhelming amount of propaganda that comes from all sides concerned, including the occupation and the insurgency.
But, for the most part, that propaganda is relatively crude compared to that put out for mass consumption in the Western world, even if only because those doing it have generally greater access to techniques and resources not found that much in Iraq nor in much of the Middle East, or other parts of the world.
Don't forget that Herr Goebbels of unlamented memory took many of his propaganda ideas and techniques from American advertisers, and essentially sold Hitler and Nazism as his US counter-parts sold razor blades, laundry detergent and corn flakes, albeit with a distinctly Teutonic twist.
So, advertisers, publicists, political consultants and the like have had a very long time, roughly a little under two centuries, I'd say, to develop and perfect the ideas and techniques they've used here and in other parts of the Western world, whereas Iraqis and others mayn't have been exposed to those for as long as Western audiences have.
The length of time, sophistication of ideas, techniques and practises, as well as mass exposure to them, here have been a God-send for practitioners of those crafts, but haven't been as good for the general public on the receiving end.
It's one of the reasons why I advocate getting one's news, what have you, from a variety of sources, whenever possible, evaluating the information one gets from those sources based on one's own life experiences, education, etc, and then coming to as informed a decision about how to act on that information, or not, based on that process.
It's not always easy, and sometimes not always possible, to get the "full story" or the "straight dope" on anything and everything, and, sometimes, if something really does sound too good to be true, it more than likely is.
But, one should also be prepared to admit, if in the light of more and better info, that one was mistaken or wrong in coming to conclusions based on bad or incomplete information.
That, unfortunately, is par for the course, it seems to me, in an information-overloaded culture like this one.
In the end, a better educated, open-minded, but also cheerfully sceptical, population is the best chance we, and the world, have of ending up as the Blue Plate Special in the dining rooms of the world's political, social and economic elites.
Can't say it will happen everywhere and with everyone, but I think it's at least worth a shot.
Too bleeding cute, the whole lot of them. Thanks for you and Forrest for posting the link.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amelia G
People often ask Forrest what the most evil sites he likes to look at on the internet are and he is like, uhm, cuteoverload.com?Quote:
Originally Posted by Donald Rilea
I didn't think the American advertising industry really took off until post-WWII. Off-topic, but I'm currently watching AMC's excellent stab at original production with their Mad Men series on Madison Avenue advertising people in 1960. I have the vague recollection from school that the 50's were when advertising was used to try to keep the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit going to his job and supporting his family and buying stuff to keep the US economy strong. I know when I toured Coca-Cola, they had a sort of archive of old turn of the last century advertisements. And Forrest Black's grandmother was a Pepsi girl. So advertising in the US certainly didn't start in the 50's, but I wouldn't have thought it would have been evolved enough to particularly assist the Third Reich's rise to power. Were there any particular books or writers Goebbels referenced for good old American know-how and ingenuity in the mass manipulation department? I know the Germans were angry that, during WWI, the British had claimed that the Germans were committing all sorts of atrocities i.e. gang-raping women in the public square, putting babies on pikes, etc. All of which made it harder to believe what human beings could actually stoop to, when reports of real Nazi atrocities started coming out. It sounded like more British BS. Ignorant cynicism even. Americans didn't know to believe that the new reports of deep evil were real and true.Quote:
Originally Posted by Donald Rilea
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amelia G
Well, look at WW1 vintage recruiting posters, as well as listen to similar vintage recordings of popular songs, and watch movies from that period, and one can see how the then-nascent advertising and media industries were put to work selling the war, not just in the US, but on all sides of the conflict, at the time.
There had been precedents for the use of advertising and media forms before WWI in several countries, but, in terms of the sheer scale and effort put into it, it was pretty unprecedented in terms of the mass deployment of propaganda ideas and techniques.
BTW, thanks for mentioning the British atrocity propaganda that was used during the First World War. It's a great example of how initially effective propaganda techniques can back-fire later on, with grim effect.
The first notions that some, though not all, of the British propaganda about German atrocities in Belgium during WW1, were bunk came in the late 1920's, when, thanks to a flood of war-related novels and the like from Britain, Germany, the US and France released around that time(of which All Quiet On The Western Front is the most famous), many in Britain, and worldwide, began to question just how truly just the Allied cause in the First World War had been.
Unfortunately, as the 1930's came and progressed, this also meant that many people world-wide began to pooh-pooh or down-play the reports that were coming out of Nazi Germany about the rise of the concentration camps and the treatment of their inmates, though the Final Solution wasn't implemented until early 1942, with eventually disastrous results for the Jewish people, and for much of the world in general.
That's one of the reasons why I also advocate use of the plain, unvarnished truth, especially in politics, whenever possible.
Sometimes, even if it makes a given side not look as bad or good as gussied-up propaganda might, the truth about a given issue or topic is still better, by far, than constructing a pretty half-truth or out-right lie that will eventually come back to haunt oneself.
:1orglaugh I thought people in the music industry were juvenile but I guess I do not know porn, just pornstars.
if you want to see a totally facinating documentry about advertising, and mass influence check out "century of the self" which deals in part with the career of Edward Bernays, the founder of 'modern' public relations... Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and used his theories to great effect in ad campgains, and public relations... facinating stuff, and deffinitly 'cynical making'.
...also the book 'toxic sludge is good for you' has some very interesting bits about the manipulation of the public via public relations, and advertising... highly recommended.
Thanks, BF, for the book suggestions. Have seen and heard some mentions of Bernays over the years, but know practically nothing about him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Friendly