Movie Review: The Century of the Self; Adam Curtis, dir; 2002

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Retracing the history of the 20th century through the lens of psychology, British documentarian Adam Curtis leads the viewer in The Century of the Self on a journey into the methods developed to manipulate public opinion. Make no mistake. Curtis is not spinning a conspiracy theory. There are no aliens, no Jewish cabal, no Templars. Only doctors, scientists, businessmen and politicians who thought Sigmund Freud's ideas about the hidden urges of the subconscious might be used to control large groups of people and thereby make a better world.

The story begins with Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, who launched his American career selling Woodrow Wilson to the Europeans before setting himself up in the business of what he called Public Relations, the world's first professional marketing agent. Until his arrival, advertising was based on rational appeal, to the utility of the product being sold. But in an economy where industry was already meeting the basic needs of the people, how were businesses to continue to increase profits if consumers didn't buy more (of what they didn't need)? Bernays' genius was to help his clients create demand through advertising appealing to the consumer's unconscious desires.

The need to plumb these appetites and redirect them became urgent in the threatening shadows of Fascist and Communist ideologies. But with greater control came a greater degree of awareness of the methods of manipulation by the public. The push-back came in the 1960's in the form of political dissent and open challenges to established authority. After episodes of these were forcibly suppressed (as at the Chicago Democratic Convention and at Kent State), resistance turned inward, to a philosophy of liberating the self from state control through experiments with drugs, eastern religions, and new forms of psychotherapy.

Corporations were for a time unable to reach this segment of the population until surveys revealed their hidden desire - to be different, to stand out from the crowd, to express their individuality. And so the corporations learned to adjust manufacturing methods to produce a wider variety of the same type of goods.

By late century techniques for mining the unconscious had moved into the electoral process with campaign managers noticing and responding to the same underlying desire of the consumer to express his individuality. The successful candidates – Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, Blair – were the ones who responded to this need most skillfully. In the years since politics has become less rational and more emotional, politicians less philosophical statesmen and more opportunistic businessmen.

Curtis brings a number of strengths to this project, including a sharp eye for detail, evident in the breadth of archival footage employed, and the ability to connect the dots thematically and visually. His collage technique builds meaning out of relationship and weaves a compelling narrative from disparate threads of seemingly unrelated events, all narrated in his own voice of reassuring authority. Of course he wouldn't be much of a filmmaker if he didn't apply a bit of his own subconscious manipulation, most clumsily telegraphed in his overuse of dark and forbidding background music. Otherwise, there's not much in these four hours with which to find fault.

Watch it yourself and see if you don't see some part of your own ideas or behavior reflected back at you. The complete series is available as of this writing at Google Video.

• Adam Curtis at Wiki
• The Century of the Self at BBC
• 2007 interview with Adam Curtis

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The war proved one thing

In his 1932 essay, "In Praise of Idleness," Bertrand Russell argues that the Great War, WWI, provided valuable evidence about meeting the material needs of society.

Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious during the war. At that time all the men in the armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or Government offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or since. The significance of this fact was concealed by finance: borrowing made it appear as if the future was nourishing the present. But that, of course, would have been impossible; a man cannot eat a loaf of bread that does not yet exist. The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.

Imagine, then, this excess potential utilized not for the profit of one company or country, but given instead to meet the material needs of the world.

Thanks to M for pointing me to this essay.

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The Gospel of Consumption

A few weeks ago I was writing about some of the changes that had taken place in my life over the last few years, including learning to live with less, to step off the merry-go-round of consumerism.

The management and workers at Kellogg, the American cereal maker known most commonly for Corn Flakes, decided to do the same themselves many years ago, adopting less pay for shorter working hours.

It was an attractive vision, and it worked. Not only did Kellogg prosper, but journalists from magazines such as Forbes and BusinessWeek reported that the great majority of company employees embraced the shorter workday. One reporter described “a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies . . . libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers . . . becoming richer.”

A U.S. Department of Labor survey taken at the time, as well as interviews [writer Benjamin] Hunnicutt conducted with former workers, confirm this picture. The government interviewers noted that “little dissatisfaction with lower earnings resulting from the decrease in hours was expressed, although in the majority of cases very real decreases had resulted.” One man spoke of “more time at home with the family.” Another remembered: “I could go home and have time to work in my garden.” A woman noted that the six-hour shift allowed her husband to “be with 4 boys at ages it was important.”

Kellogg's system hasn't survived into the present day, but Jeffrey Kaplan argues in his essay, The Gospel of Consumption and the better future we left behind
that the model, or at least its imperative, may be worth reconsideration. If only we were willing to live with less.

By 1991 the amount of goods and services produced for each hour of labor [in the US] was double what it had been in 1948. By 2006 that figure had risen another 30 percent. In other words, if as a society we made a collective decision to get by on the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per day—or 2.7 hours if we were willing to return to the 1948 level. We were already the richest country on the planet in 1948 and most of the world has not yet caught up to where we were then.

How badly do you need an iPhone?

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