Advertising, marketing weapon, is the art of selling anything to anyone and by any means. To be precise, it is marketing in its communicative dimension. Going through the loophole of the media, it is the archetype of the "communication". The criticism of advertising is then extended to the criticism against the marketing and communication: these three plagues together make up the advertising system. But this system has been generated by industrial capitalism, which funds the average mass of which orients the content. The problem therefore is not reduced coarsening advertising, it also includes the media disinformation and the industrial devastation. We must not delude ourselves: the advertising is just the tip of the iceberg of the advertising system, or that ocean of ice in which it develops and expands the consumer society with its growth devastating. And if you are against this system and this company, it is because our lifestyle is killing the world.
The main effect of advertising is the spread of consumerism. Based on the iperconsume, this way of life rests on productivism and thus implies increasing the exploitation of people and natural resources. Everything we consume fewer resources and leads to more waste, the more harmful and more work impoverishing. Consumerism door so the devastation of the world, to its transformation into material and spiritual desert: an environment where it will be increasingly difficult to live and survive in a human way. In this thriving desert misery physical and mental, social and moral. The imaginary tend to atrophy, relationships are dehumanized, solidarity decomposes, personal skills diminish, autonomy disappears, the bodies and minds are standardized.
The human misery of advertising is, therefore, whether this impoverished life that enhances a ubiquitous advertising, advertising is the misery of the environments themselves, which illustrate only too clearly the moral impoverishment of society which suffers from the merchant. For this reason we will mention plenty of speeches by various advertisers. The cynicism - some of which menano pride - belongs to the point of their "professional folklore" which, for example, no one dares to challenge the description of the novel that makes Frédéric Beigbeder. According to Francois Biehler, advertising always in service, it is "strictly true." How can you justify his profession, then?
"Advertising is also used to boost consumption." The advertising themselves do not deny that this involves a good deal of manipulation. And what it means to manipulate someone if you do not make them do something they would never do spontaneously, as futile and harmful goods renew unnecessarily? As Machiavelli said, the end justifies the means. Biehler must therefore be considered tolerable this manipulation, as is done in the name of an eminently consensual "Reviving consumption and make the economy work, which, a priori, it is not reprehensible."
Here you touch the underlying axiom is that the overwhelming majority of discourses on advertising: it is good, even necessary, to stimulate growth, this Sacred Cow invoked in chorus by all the politicians, it is acclaimed as the Messiah's return. If you accept the fundamental dogma of economism, the injury that almost no one disputes despite its disastrous effects on our lives, then advertising is actually essential, so that it becomes difficult to question it. If the desire to produce is justified by the fact that it depends on the material survival, in societies such as ours, where reigning waste and overproduction, this is an assumption unreasonable, irresponsible and dangerous. We have set me to realize that growth, which became an end in itself, rather than correspond to our needs is first and foremost growth of harmfulness and inequality.
Advertising is inextricably linked to the devastation of the world, which is one of the engines. It contributes doubly: by pushing the overconsumption of industrial goods, favors the development of a destructive; dissimulandone and the consequences, brake awareness every day more urgent if you want to avoid the worst. It must therefore be the subject of a radical critique, that is, an analysis that goes back to its roots. Only those who identify wisdom and acquiescence, critical thinking and media consensus can settle the complaint of his most flagrant excesses.
But just going back to the roots and you will understand the reason for his abuses so common, in particular the extreme violence that makes women suffer. But no one comes out unscathed, as this will show manifesto against advertising and against "the life that is reflected."
Chapter 6 - THE DANGEROUS RELATIONS
History teaches us that what we can break old chains often forge new forms of slavery. The industry could save us the most painful work, but in fact there has enslaved to work relentlessly. Advertising has played a catalytic role in this reversal: inoculandoci the incessant urge to consume, has turned us into slaves of that machine that was supposed to be at our service. At the same time, however, it has done nothing but reveal aggravandoli, the dangers inherent in this mode of production.
The propaganda industry could not confine itself to the goods classical and respect the independence of those three fundamental and vital spheres that symbolize the positive things that has invented modernity: journalism, democracy and medicine. It is no wonder that he has dangerously perverted the internal logic when it is able to put them at the service of capital accumulation. Due to its action, the media have become machines in order to spend, instead of spreading the free thought. With the advent of the world of communication, it has depoliticized politics and democracy emptied of its substance. Finally, seizing the pharmacopoeia, has transformed the medical system in the pathogen. But the publicity he could not do his usual job of undertaker if those institutions had already shown flaws: in fact, it simply has catalyzed the shortcomings suffered by areas that overwhelms it with such ease.
The illusory independence of the media
Before the mid-nineteenth century, newspapers were financed by their readers and editors, as it was not a profit, but to form a counter in front of the omnipotence of the monarchy. In 1836, Emile de Girardin inaugurated the practice that he founded the modern mass printing introduces the paid ads at the end of the newspaper in order to decrease the selling price, so access to a larger number of readers, and attract more advertising and so on. This practice has prevailed, and today the majority of newspapers depends for 50% on advertising, while some live solely of advertising, such as those newspapers "free" whose function is solely to spread at a wider audience.
Obviously, advertisers will felicitate this' association for profit "in which advertising is the" dominant partner "able to" impose their own language "and" parasitize "the space of the newspapers, now reduced to the role of media advertising. The symbiosis is even more pronounced in magazines, transformed into virtual stores that allow you to do shopping while sitting; appears unstoppable in business magazines distributed to customers (by rail companies, airlines, etc.). and finally becomes a caricature in magalogues expression of Naomi Klein derived from the fusion of the terms magazine (magazine) and catalog (catalog), which the writer uses to define those "fanzines," with which the great American brands selling their 'lifestyles' their "fans." In 2004, Leroy Merlin takes out his Du côté de chez vous, combined with the eponymous television show on TF1. It is the apotheosis of a synergy industrial-media especially dangerous with regard to the information.
The convergence between advertising and information was achieved by a double movement. On the one hand, advertisers retain the confusion of genres imitating the style and setting of the newspaper articles. In order to combat illegal advertising (narrow equivalent of black propaganda that operates falsifying sources), the law has required that the advertising be presented as such; However, they continue to disguise themselves in the form of a 'dossier advertising, "and" supplements tribute, "of" round tables ", etc..
But if the advertising mimics the information, the information does not hold some back. Some so-called "journalists" accept bribes to multiply in their Articles, references to those brands who want to increase their notoriety; other practice "reportage advertising 'or' promotion journalism": hybrid language that obscure the border between the advertising space and editorial ones. Journalism becomes a business like any other, so much so that some newsrooms are turning to marketing consultants to determine the expectations of "consumer information."
Inevitably, the policy is considered to be less critical than the surveys on consumption and other "social issues" cross. We have entered the era of infotainment, info-entertainment: the information should be fun (in English entertainment) rather than instruct. These trends are particularly marked in television.
Through the mediation of advertising consultants, advertisers shall, at least in part, the programming schedules of more transmission is followed, attracts more publicity and money; vice versa, the transmissions are relegated to less hookers times impossible. Advertisers will also influence the content, rejecting that their commercials are combined with programs that arouse negative emotions, for fear that they do embarrass their products.
As for the print media, advertisers require that the ads are not in contexts that contain criticisms directed to the brand or what is associated with: the country of origin, to manufacture, etc.. Advertising reinforces the de facto monopoly, which tends to have on '' information 'relating to the products. In this case, the protagonists are advertising consultants (transmission belts between bosses and editors) and, even more, agencies selling advertising space. Thanks to the 'media plans "(with which determine the appropriate advertising vehicles for reaching that goal, then organizing the bombing), are in fact the ones who can influence and blackmail editors, threatening to cut off supplies. Their lobbying power is even higher due to the fact that this industry is highly concentrated: in France, five central agencies have "control of four-fifths of the total volume." Since the plurality of advertisers, which is considered the guarantor of freedom of the press, is an aspect of secondary effects and illusory, the classic argument in favor of advertising must be called into question.
Proud to receive funding for their mission, which is to analyze and criticize independently, some journalists claiming the bond that connects them to large enterprises. "The advertising, trumpets the director of 'Le Monde', is the guarantor of the independence of the newspaper." Precisiamolo: in the face of political powers. But such financing involves another addiction: that the economic powers. It would seem logical if, in the case of a newspaper funded by the State, that the journalist trattenesse by biting the hand that feeds him, why should things be different when the pot it provides the capital?
About half a century ago, the founder of "Le Monde" made this statement: "It seems to me that the dangerous life of the newspaper is secured to an excessive portion of the advertising, because that puts him at the mercy of a blackmail." The payments made by the readers themselves is in fact the only guarantee of a full editorial independence. It is precisely for this reason that a newspaper like "Le Canard enchaîné" rejects the manna advertising; no wonder, then, that it is the only newspaper that informs the public about the influence of harmful latter within the media.
The journalist Florence Amalou explains well how advertising can become a means of pressure, or rather of repression in the hands of advertisers willing to influence editorial line: reprisals advertising (campaigns canceled following articles too critical), a boycott of the new titles that is unmarked by the "single thought" at the service of the employers, journalists laid off or put on the ropes by advertising agencies, "filing" or mutilation of their articles, which can also be adjusted directly or trashed. Other techniques are more gentle and sly: references to entertain friendly, intimidation, collusion, privileged relationships with the leaders. Along with the stick, those who want to create a "favorable soil media 'know also stir the carrot of" lubrication advertising "; Once internalized, these pressures lead to self-censorship that journalists themselves do not deny.
Obviously, these practices are only possible by large advertisers, which puts into question the reliability of strongly concerning them. And as far as the press is still in a position of financial fragility, the more advertising can buy the silence and complacency. Plus a poster advertising, most editors agree the favorable treatment. So, Jean-Marie Messier, the former monarch of Vivendi Universal, has been slavishly courted by the media when he was at the height of his short career: the first few pages, interviews all '"man of the future" and laudatory portraits have mushroomed in the period in which he was one of the major advertisers in France.
The dependence of most newspapers to advertisers is even more problematic by the fact that they are brands, not politicians, to be legally untouchable today. Large companies are in fact political powers most harmful of all, in the sense that they are to transform the world. The decisions which modify or are likely to modify in depth the daily life (GMOs, nanotechnologies, flexibility, etc..) Are not taken place within national assemblies, but upstream, ie on the boards and in the technical and scientific laboratories; instances traditional political will at best the task of swallowing the pill.
Of course, there are significant differences between the average and therefore different degrees of vassalage, but let us look good and believe that advertising will overtake pervertirli to the outside. Interconnection is total: the media need the manna advertising, it needs the media channel to cater to the masses. But above all, there is a profound analogy in their way, though problematic, to convey their messages to the masses of atomized and anonymous recipients. And in fact, the more we are connected to the media in portrait mode and impersonal, unless we are linked with us in a horizontal manner and staff. Atomization that increases our dependence and our vulnerability to the mass media, which are in fact a double-edged sword: most are formidable media "democratic" (accessible to a wide audience), most favor the concentration of the oligarchic public speech, giving immense power of disinformation to those who hold them. Offering "bread and circus games," empires mediaticoindustriali threaten democracy: the situation in Italy Berlusconi does nothing but demonstrate in a particularly acute way the rule that prevails everywhere. The worm is in the apple. If advertising hijacks the information, you must also understand, as they invite us to Christopher Lasch, the inadequacies of the information itself:
What democracy requires, is a vigorous public debate, not information. Of course, it also needs information, but the kind of information it needs can only be produced through the debate. We do not know what things we need to know until we asked the right questions. [.] When we engage in discussions that fully capture our attention and focus, we become avid researchers of relevant information. If not passively absorb the information, provided that we do it.
The communication onslaught of democracy
We came to the political question, and here is the advertising which has opened the gates. The distinction that, despite the identity of their methods existed between advertising and propaganda has been fading. Differentiated the two things: firstly, their scope of application (trade / politics); then the fact that the advertisement constituted an autonomous profession (as firms relied on their advertising to external agencies), while the propaganda was being made by politicians and the militants themselves. Nowadays, advertisers are "political marketing" or "election" and s'incaricano of party propaganda. The confusion of categories has reached such a point that the messages of political propaganda inserted in payment are sometimes preceded by the words "advertising", while those of commercial propaganda they are by 'informed', normally reserved for public institutions.
In the eighties, the advertising took pains to note that "politics has entered advertising and vice versa." The prospects of enrichment for civic life seem exciting: "In a society based on mass consumption almost mandatory everything is sold, and often for reasons very different from those which are the intrinsic qualities: the political man-made soap ...". For our newsboys unadulterated democracy, "the electoral act is an act of consumption as another."
This perspective, which sees the move from the domain of the political conviction to that of seduction, not too much captivates the citizens, so that in France are rated some laws. Political advertising is thus banned from television and radio, and then, in 1990, also from the wall posters. Immediately, the "communication" replaces the advertising, too rowdy. The clever bit is quite clear: "communicate" sounds less one-sided. And it is certainly much more insidious. How do you explain a 'communicator', 'counsel in communication are not necessarily expressed in the form of advertising and it is not necessarily flashy. "Communication is discreet, but it is always "influence the attitudes and behaviors of different audiences." Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former advertising became Prime Minister, embodies this belief: "The advertising has become for many the solution to all the serious problems of society." Everything will be settled from now on by blows of communication, able to "manage" social conflicts, to render possible the "management" of public opinion.
Governing means appear. The consultants in the field of communication now apply techniques that have proven effective in the field of trade. So are organized 'meetings Tupperware "to teach small groups of political demagoguery smile to measure; we resort to telemarketing, or direct mail, to chat with citizens; then if politicians is forbidden to appear in the jingles of television channels and radio stations, not for this they have lost all hope of ficcarcisi in some way. The role of communicator here takes the full width possible. Negotiating interventions in transmissions measured in advance on the basis of their ability to convey the message. As the limited time to talk, we will apply for resorting to the rules make it highly profitable advertising: to "sell an idea," you must a) express a promise, and only one, that is b) suited to the target, c) simple d) credible, and) durable, declinable, f) opportunist. Which explains why campaigns should focus only on a few themes, and the speech is reduced to slogans.
Under the pressure of Auditel, the political broadcasts are more rare; communicators must then pass their clients in other programs, of course entertainment. Nothing is more except to talk about themselves, improve their "image" and imprint in the minds of viewers. When, as is often the case, the ruling parties standardize their plans to take over the 'center', everything is played out in terms of "personality" of the candidates, the equivalent of the '"brand image" and do not talk more than politics, but the wives, children, hobbies. This degradation of political life reaches its peak in countries dominated by violent pattern that often recur to the services of the agencies 'public relations' West, to refine their "communication" inside and outside or to choose the puppet who will have the best ability to "seduce" the local masses. Guatemala is among those who have borne the brunt: the founder of the public relations industry has mobilized the American public to prepare for the reversal at the hands of the local elite and the CIA, his Democratic president, who had dared to propose an agrarian reform in this banana republic of the United Fruit.
The Gulf War, highly spectacularized, then led to the culmination of these manipulations mass. Public relations agency organized the false testimony of a nurse, who told the U.S. Congress that he had seen Iraqi soldiers killing babies in swaddling clothes: the intense emotion from the audience finally convinced that we must go to war. Communicators Bush's father also began to implement the Newspeak, so "surgical" bombing make it more acceptable, even if they are not really a lot less deadly. Subtle strategies of political marketing to sell the war of public opinion reticent.
As the media has subsequently acknowledged that he had left speaker in turn forges of Allied propaganda, the operations of intoxication were then multiplied. In order to justify NATO's intervention, the public relations agencies have sfiancate for "to match the Serbs and the Nazis," thus fueling the campaigns of misinformation on the existence of a genocide in Kosovo. And the media, intellectuals and public opinion are left to mock. Later, the Hague Tribunal has found 2,108 bodies only and no mass grave: the famous "Plan Horseshoe 'is an invention of Western intelligence services and, moreover, the abject Milosevic? was prosecuted solely for war crimes. The Office of Global Communication Anglo-American has done its job well during the second war in Iraq: if the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction have not caught on much in Europe, the bluff of dismantling the statue of Saddam (arranged in advance by the coalition and the media) still has procured an instant effect of justification for war, recovering the emotional potential of the images on the fall of communism.
The first thing we must reappropriate is the meaning of the words. Governments have always been propaganda in France before the Second World War, there was a ministry that bore this name. The term later became pejorative, and not coincidentally the propagandists are styled with the lovely name of 'communicators' (or' experts in public relations "), putting an aura of honesty to the character of a manipulator working hard to control.
Although the situation deteriorated enough, sellers of communication have recently been founded in France the lobby Démocratie et Communication with the goal of dropping the restrictions on advertising in the political field (such as the prohibition of spots removed in elections 2004 European). Among them Jacques Séguéla, which likes to present itself as a "son of publicity," a "mercenary guaranteed," a "chameleon." He has done advertising for François Mitterrand ("Mitterrand Generation") and countless parties throughout the world, boasting of change field to be always on the winning side. How many communicators French, has dabbled in the web of Franco-African relations, working for those dictators who serve so well, too, the interests of our national industry, namely that the oil industry.
If you put these developments in a historical perspective, we can speak with Jürgen Habermas' refeudalization of public space. "In the Middle Ages, political decisions were taken in the arcane secrets of power: what was granted to the people were parades and festivals in which the powerful performance they gave themselves to increase their prestige. With the age of the Enlightenment, it constitutes a public sphere that is not content to passively acclaim power, but the challenges and discusses it: here is the origin of modern political revolutions. However, with the increasing economic concentration and the emergence of a new political power, that of large enterprises, public space has quickly regained its playful aspect of the scene where the powerful strut to get a consensus plebiscite. The great political orientations are no longer discussed, but rather imposed by communication tactics that conceal what is at stake is the manufacture of consent, the manufacturing of consent.
We may be ashamed of the "transition from representative democracy to democracy consumerist" announced by Séguéla, but this distortion is limited to exacerbate to paroxysm those shortcomings inherent in representative democracy, which in no way requires the commitment of everyone in the political sphere, but the exact opposite. Since the concept of participation is now reduced them to vote every five years, we can not wonder that the power has been confiscated by professional politicians, experts and other key figures in the world of communication. The spirit of "progressive" has its share of responsibility in this drift: he disdained the traditions of local self-government and did not give any proof of clairvoyance in front of the media and industrial development, assimilating it to progress and neglecting its harmful effects on the conditions concrete of the public debate and popular sovereignty.
It is therefore logical that, unfortunately, politics is reduced more and more to a show; and gangrene advertising that does not reveal the limits of a concept and too undemanding mediated (ie, indirect) democracy. The way to manipulate public opinion, masking any political, government or industry, behind the veil of the general interest, is now free. In 2004, Sanofi-Synthelabo has launched a hostile takeover of Aventis: if you have to believe the communication campaign conduct on this occasion, only humanitarian concern to save lives would have motivated the creation of this quasi-pharmaceutical monopoly.
The creation of new industrial diseases
In the Middle Ages, charlatans and cavadenti already promised beauty and health, to say nothing of eternal youth, thanks to miraculous potions and elixir of life. One would have hoped that such practices declinassero with progress; on the contrary, the advertising has exacerbated. If it is not worth lingering example caricature of cosmetics, well deserves the attention the other way, unrecognized, with which the pharmaceutical industry uses advertising system to pervert the medicine. In France, the sale and direct advertising of medicinal products are theoretically limited: in fact they are less and less. The industrial sector are trying to reach the general public and they do it as chitosan admired advertisers, "to the sound of a subterfuge to circumvent restrictive regulation." Would all be happy if you reach the level of the U.S., where the liberal deregulation has authorized the direct-to-consumer. In ten years, the advertising budget has increased tenfold and the turnover of medicines involved has tripled ...
We are not yet at this point, but the advertising system is no less active in France, where it aims to target the law allows the doctor who makes the recipes. Doctors are tampinati by a legion of representatives of the pharmaceutical laboratories. We often talk about the shortage of medical staff in hospitals. Recall that in this case there is one representative for every nine doctors! We often speak of "dire necessity" in order to fund medical research, to pay poor countries to patent rights, multiply that by ten or even more than the price of medicines. Recall that laboratories devote only 9-18% of their budget to research, ie three times less than what is allocated to marketing.Long persuaded to do their job, that is, to do their best for the health of the patient, doctors have realized that they are recruited to do as much as possible to consume certain products. An effective advertising system aims to make the recipes of prescribing a reliable arm of the pincer crushes some patients. Here's how it performs brainwashed, told by those who have suffered in the first person. At the beginning of his studies, the future doctor finds pleasure with a whole world of gifts, of logos that become familiar and generous sponsors who subsidize evenings and winter holidays. The counterpart seems minimal, just pretend to listen while a lovely sketch 'scientific truth' of a particular product.
However, "are part of our training," as they say the older, generally already well formatted. Later, the student begins to learn about serious diseases. The books on which studies recommend certain drugs in bold, the same of which can be found in the glittering advertising Jacket or inserted between pages. Books written by the "flower of medicine ', which has gained notoriety thanks to grants of workshops related to their specializations the same as those that produce medicines. But for the student that text is an indispensable reference, and since the medicine is learned by heart, everything becomes part of the system! During the internship, willy-nilly, he attended the workshops several times a week (on the occasion of "courtesy visits" outputs organized by "information meetings", etc..). In addition, the primary may exert direct or indirect pressure are oriented so that the requirements for laboratory X, Friend of the primary.
Throughout his working life, the doctor will be courted for his own good: meetings, luncheons, "training visits" will enrich the knowledge of pre-packaged, cleverly rigged to the task of reference in magazines or brochures that have the properties of the medicinal (sometimes "forget" to mention certain side effects).
When you have launched the third generation contraceptive pills (better tolerated than before, but considered at risk for a possible increase in cardiovascular disease), a laboratory explained in its promotional cards, contrary to the pills competitors, the rate of cholesterol was not increased with its products. A closer examination of the explanation indicated that this test "scientific" had been found ... in the female rabbit. Guinea pigs will appreciate. So even though doctors have learned (very recently) to have a critical look at the tricks of the trade always work. When representatives cease to incentivize physicians, the volume of medicines prescribed in the geographical area neglected (supervised with the help of pharmacists and mutuals) precipitates. They are therefore representatives to sharpen the critical sense of the doctors? Yes, against diseases that do not exist and are created with strokes of conferences and articles "scientific" ratified by renowned professors. Designed especially easy when the border between the normal and the pathological is so thin. From which thresholds have to take into account the level of cholesterol or blood pressure?
The minimum deflection can create a huge market ...
Pignarre Philippe, who has worked for seventeen years in the pharmaceutical industry, reminds us that it is the 'crown jewel of capitalism. "Its profit rates are higher than those of any other sector, including banks. But to keep them, taking account of the expiry of the patent, you have to constantly innovate and push urgently, in spite of every care, the consumption of new products. Pignarre explains in detail the strategies employed: you publish the same article under different signatures, to increase awareness of a new molecule and the doctors suggest that its benefits were indeed confirmed; then you can even market under two different names to impose it faster (called strategy of co-marketing); Finally, it puts pressure to prescribe it in the first place, and so on. When the molecules become public domain, we proceed to the "cosmetics" of medicines, betting on celebrity brand name; For example, it does everything to make us forget that the Tylenol is nothing more than paracetamol. There is also the "niche strategy": the laboratories offer their medicinal limited subdomain of a disease and then "work to expand this niche, preparing physicians to screening and raising awareness of both the press and the general public. They were born as some 'new' psychiatric disorders', such as certain forms of brief depression or schizophrenia early.
Faced with the difficulty of finding new medicines, laboratories, therefore, are going to invent new patients to sell their old products. To this end, they resort to all the tricks of the advertising system, using the tactics of communication addressed directly to the masses through the media. In the United States it is so suddenly appeared a new disease, "the crowd from social phobia." Between 1997 and 1998 it is referred to, in the media, about fifty times but, in 1999, the epidemic seems to spread so much that you refer to more than a billion times. What happened? Nothing, except the development of a vibrant public relations strategy on behalf of a laboratory that is seeking new outlets for an antidepressant, Paxil, whose sales increased by 18% in 200024.
These strategies are dangerous, because medicines may engage a deluge of unwanted effects, side effects ranging from benign to fatal accidents. For example, a laboratory offers of hormones to deal with the 'male menopause'; its advertising playing on the desire of men to "stay young" and keep all their lust. But there is reason to fear that the proposed testosterone leads to long-term a dramatic increase in the incidence of prostate cancer. Similarly, even in the short term, clinical surveys on a sample of 2,500 people are statistically too weak to ascertain any major adverse effects (with laboratories, in case of problems, they do everything possible to explain by the characteristics of guinea pigs rather than of the molecules). A drug tagliafame scored in 1985 authorization for distribution on the market (AMM): trumpets and drums, conferences on the miracle product that will enhance the power of millions of people, sick for having eaten too much or more often a slave to conformity physical touted their advertising.
In a few years it is consumed by seven million people here, and we realize its danger: 200 people will die or suffer serious consequences. The ingenuity deployed to maximize the profitability of the triangle doctor-patient laboratory is terrifying. The dominance of the image on the indisputable truth is a stretch of advertising, but in the field of health is criminal, because medicines are potentially real landmines.
The precautionary principle is fucked thanks to a wave of advertising that encourages overconsumption of drugs, which in turn leads to 1.300.00 admissions (ie 10% of the total!) And 18,000 deaths per year only in France. Obsessive coddling the illusion of perfect health, beauty and eternal youth, Big Pharma has in fact created new diseases.
The cynicism of the laboratories is the equal only at their marketers, who consciously sacrifice our independence, and even our lives to God Profit. Yet it would be wrong and unfair to blame only advertising system that derives from the world of medicine. Again, it does reveal that, aggravandole, the shortcomings of a concept of medicine as a service focused on the prescription of chemical compounds whose aggression is the cause of diseases and addictions. Now, the statistics show that progress in public health are not related substantially to modern medicines, but much more to the improvement of living conditions and especially food, that is to say things that individuals can check for yourself. Another concept of health is looming at this point, a concept based on autonomy and personal hygiene ensured by a healthy lifestyle which involves applying to medical care only in certain special cases.
The "spectacular progress" of medical technology not only have not contributed much to the increase in life expectancy, but have had unwanted or harmful effects provided by physicians. On the one hand these effects, instead of pushing individuals to take charge of their health in order to build a more healthy way of living, have reinforced the idea that health is best achieved through the daily intake of care given by specialized bodies. On the other hand, have been systematically used to justify the conditions of modern life: conditions that are more and more pathogenic! Cancer, cause of death for 150,000 French every year, is an epidemic linked to industry, more specifically in the chemical, which is also the basis of the pharmacopoeia. As Ivan Illich wrote, "industrial civilization creates new diseases and the medical system itself is far from healthy: A social and political structure is destructive alibi in his power to satisfy their victims with therapies that they have learned to be desired . The consumer care becomes powerless to heal or heal those around him. "
CONCLUSIONS
It was now that the publicity would cause a proportionate response to the repugnance inspired by many of us: the advertising itself is infamous, is industrial propaganda masquerading as information and sometimes go for that. It is infamous for what it promotes: the unadulterated hedonism, narcissism appearances merchant, the cool indifference and contempt of the past that is behind the blissful nostalgia for the "real country life." It is especially shameful because it is a powerful engine that consumerism and productivism that leading to the sacking of nature and society, which contributes to an even greater extent by masking the devastation of the world and that it follows that, in spite of everything, jump eyes.
There can only rejoice in the work of all those associations which strive to raise awareness of this particular nuisance and struggling against its compact imperialism. But this battle is too often partial; Conduct legal and legal it is similar to that of Sisyphus against his rock, always rolling down the slope. We can not restrict advertising to criticize, as he well understood the association casseurs de pub, draw the appropriate conclusions from his initial, today publishes a newspaper entitled 'The décroissance "(The Descent). Advertising is in fact intrinsic to the organization of life of which we are all part and for better or worse endure: it thus is inseparable, in all its dimensions. Criticize the criticize this organization without advertising and without wanting to get out of the trap of growth is contradictory.
Advertising is a full-fledged component of the industrial production upon which our hard-working comfort.
It is inextricably linked to the division of labor, the economic concentration, the role of money in our society; in short, the crucial fact that we entrust to large companies, for a fee, the right to take care of our life in our place. We can not, therefore, be content with breaking the advertising showcase, because behind it there is the ideological and practical carrying big brands on our daily lives, and this is what should be impeached. Do not expect anything from the brand, especially when, as pointed out by Stuart Ewen, retrieve critical for creating an image of "responsible companies" that s'ingegnano to put a splash of ethics on their labels, or to pass a coat of green paint on the corrugated sheets of their factories:
Mass culture challenges us in the same language of our critique and invalidate proposed as solutions to the problems of big business of big business. Until we will compare with the infiltration of the mercantile system down to the innermost intricacies of existence, the same social change will be a product of propaganda brands. We have witnessed the early stages of a policy of daily life; but this policy has now become a puppet in the hands of the counterparty. [...] We must remain vigilant and reject any form of sustained progress by the brands.
Once it is taken conscience of the devastating nature of the industrial system, what you can do to avoid being complicit in the expansion? Today it is impossible not to compromise, taking account of the constraints implied by our living conditions. But the need to do everything possible to regain control is not for this less pressing.
We must try to get out of our daily dependence on a mega-industrial-statal to assist us in all our actions. So learn to live otherwise: to work and consume differently, at the same time cheaper and better; preferred, where it is possible, the market at the supermarket, the artisans to industrial chains and independents to large production houses, the junk and the flea market for aseptic malls. It is not laughable shocked advertising and abuses of the industrial system that makes use of, while continuing to promote the expansion of both with our own acts of consumption?
But to understand the phenomenon of advertising, and to pretend to oppose it, you have to see beyond the dictatorship of profit and productivism; or rather, we must strive to understand all the concrete manifestations, including those that affect, because of the widespread venality and the logic of profitability, our framework of life and the life that you lead. A serious criticism of advertising also can not refrain from criticism of the media and the press contemporaries, gradually become a giant advertising page. Can neglect a critical urbanism and modern organization of the space, with its transport networks, however, so favorable to the hammering advertising.
And this criticism does not lead us perhaps to question the value of certain infrastructure that the mainstream obscurantism self-styled "progressive" advertises in a consistent manner? We think of so many things, and in particular - do not hesitate to call into question a consensus so blind as universal (especially in French) - to airports, motorways, high-speed lines, antennas for mobile networks, and course in international projects to build new nuclear power plants in France at low cost or experimental (EPR projects and ITER). Is not the case of questioning, for each situation, and in a precise manner, on the 'benefits' that these infrastructures bring us in relation to those that replace and in relation to the alternatives of which prevent the development? Wondering if these benefits are not realized in reality only for the benefit of a minority? To compare these alleged benefits with the costs of this infrastructure for the community in terms of budget colossal impact of harmful, especially of resources mobilized and induced risks? Because, again, their effect is to promote the expansion of industrial development and the competitive logic, when it seems rather urgent restrain them and divert them to avoid the human and ecological disaster is looming on the horizon.
Of course, this questioning should not be made solely on behalf of the discomforts and harmful consequences suffered by local populations, but the prospect of a global critique of a system universally harmful (and to what extent!) Requiring these facilities to develop. The local movements are so often defeated because they remain prisoners of claims too private discredit them immediately. If it is easily understandable that they did not want, and rightly, to have these lewd near the house, because others would want them instead?
From this point of view, the fight against advertising, particularly in the forms assumed by the actions starting in autumn 2003, it is interesting on several levels. Meanwhile allowed to distance himself from the claims advanced by the majority of corporate unions. Then he is freed, at least in the speeches of its promoters most consequential contradictions classic critique of advertising, one that overshadows modestly for the most outrageous methods such as "persuasion," but continued to obediently repeat the assumption of our industrious elite: "The growth is not the problem but the solution." If you really think that growth is a desirable goal, then you need to equip themselves with adequate resources, and a drab and utilitarian information réclame not part of it. If you intend to accept the looting of the world by dell'iperconsumo, then it is better that it is masked with glitzy commercials, so sensational as mystifying.
We intend to firmly denounce the other illusions they eat naive criticism of advertising. At present the balance of power, there is no reason why advertising from rolling back or stop its advance. There is no reason, for example, because the children of French schools escape, when the time comes to advertising shock treatment which is already given to their peers in the United States. The reforms of public education have actively promoted all conditions for the French schools have an increasing need for money for the powers that be private, and soon many will be attached to a drip trade. It is possible that some initiatives succeed, at least in some institutions, to delay the deadline, but by themselves can not change the underlying problem. Focusing on a scapegoat as easy as advertising, they indeed help to conceal the function for which public education tends to shrink, with the blessing of parents concerned about the "future" of their children: that of preparing them to become employed "competitive 'and consumers' rational'.
The question of the advertising shows so raw it is today difficult to make improvements to a particular aspect of social life without calling into question all the others. Advertising is the life we lead perfectly! The ebb advertising will obviously be if not a decline of commodity production and the emergence of other social relationships (where it will be maybe more than usual come to the aid of their neighbors who accept money to install a billboard in a space where is the owners). Can not occur if the balance of power and the organization of life will not change profoundly. And for this to happen, certainly not enough to invoke the state, in the hope that the bombing limits in place and defend those citizens powerless that has greatly contributed to expropriate any power over their lives. To get in touch crucial issues, advertising must not be contested separately, but used as an interesting way to get access to a radical critique of capitalism. [...]
In a historical context in which the sabotage seems called again to regain his titles of nobility, actions against the advertising have also been able to latch on to the criticism of the show. Profanatrici and iconoclastic, they attacked - often unconsciously, but sometimes in a completely conscious - the heart of capitalism, commodity fetishism. Capitalism is not enough to take advantage of the men outside, with the support of the state and its armed cohorts; it is also a religion, and its main support, today, is all of us, as we lost in the mass of the faithful-consumers fascinated by the wonders of the hi-tech industry.
In 1921, Walter Benjamin had already figured out that capitalism is "the celebration of a cult without dreams and without pity." This worship is that of money and its incarnation in the form of goods "without mercy," that is inexorable and permanent, "no dream," that is no utopia and hopeless. A cult that does not promise any excess towards an elsewhere, but only its intensification; that organizes a closed world 'here and now' merchant, a world exposed in a present without memory. To put it with Herbert Marcuse, it is a one-dimensional world to the extent that it is devoid of any ideal that transcends and allows therefore to get out to judge and criticize. The man in one dimension that is does is projected toward new spending. It will never rebel: no dreams, no revolt.
The high priests of this cult without downtime are undoubtedly advertisers. San Cathelat considers his twisted works like the windows of those "modern cathedrals" which are hypermarkets. San Séguéla, exalted prophet of advertising is "divine", "missionary" and "immortal," assures us that it is precisely "the great mass of the Eucharist is pagan consumption." The test of '' divine essence 'of the advertising system, he explains, is that it "makes the world in his own image." And so "hypnotizes our childhood, our youth movement, brutalizes our maturity." No sacrifice is sufficient for this idol, so voracious as ruthless. Evangelizers of the masses, these shepherds of the malls drive their sheep into the coffers, sanctifying treated as good abreast of the times an overdeveloped capitalism.
In front of the human misery that this spreads, they promise what can only intensify: the consolation through consumption, the foundation of this miserable substitute for religion that is just consumerism, the new opium of the people. Mild euphoric and powerful narcotic, this attorney illusory satisfactions and instills a real resignation. Advertisers are merchants who are working to expand the sand desert.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the enlightened thinkers believed that the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism. In a situationist pamphlet of 1966, entitled De la misère en milieu étudiant, Mustapha Khayati outlined a new historical configuration in which we find ourselves today than then:
"In the era of his totalitarian rule, capitalism has produced his new religion: the show." The advertising system is only the most obvious carrier of this contemplation medusea caused by the independent living of an economy that proves deadly to any decent life. Criticize is the precondition of any social criticism. Preliminary, because you have got rid of this context of blindness in order to open eyes to the world unclean generated by the growth of merchantable quality. But only preliminary, because once broken the spell remains to rebuild, the interstices and on the ruins of the devastation, a human world. What is infamous mask has changed, but the watchword of Voltaire has lost none of its relevance: "Crush the infamous."
Source: HUMAN MISERY OF ADVERTISING '. Our way of life is killing the world, Group MARCUSE, Eleuthera, 2006, 144 pp., € 12.00
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