[Sussex] Definetly No Linux Thread here

[The ol' tealeg]

Morning... er afternoon alll... been catching up on some much needed
sleephopefully that way I won't do somethig silly and trash my
filesystem.. given my posts yesterday :)  ).

On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 13:02:20 +0000
Steve Dobson <steve.dobson at krasnegar.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Why don't you just switch of your television set and go and do
> something less boring instead? - That sounds like a good title for a
> kids show to me?  What do you younger members on this list think?

Sounds familiar... WDY?  
 
> There are so many people who don't get Blue Meanie references, it nice
> to see someone else on this list who is as
> pervert^H^H^H^H^H^Hknowledgable as me.

Not even a teeny weeny meanie, as some bloke doing an impersonation of a
liverpudlian named Ringo for the voicetrack of a weird animated world
from the 60's.  BTW did anyone here know that the song Nowhere Man was
written about Bob Dylan (and deliberatley apes his style) and that the
character who appears in the sea of holes (along with that tune) is
supposed to represent Bob's character.... Man! Those guys were on some
good drugs ;)

As for a blue meany in the advert - well that advert is aimed 50% to
grab a kids imagination and 50% to make a parent think of the
"innocence" of their childhood and refelect that thought onto their
child in association to the product.  This is science, not art...

Nike, oops I mean Nik wrote:
----------------------------
> > My point is if I did not no better, and I usually dont, im sure
> > thats a advert for the covert awareness of the benefits and
> > opportunities of drug taking.... 
> > 
> > or am I wrong.

rant *Geoff::get_opinion(){

I think this sounds like the sort of response that right-wing people
have been coming out with for the last 50 years :-P

It is an educated, or rather a conditioned mind that makes a connection
between things that are outside of the norm and altered mind states. 

Children have things called "imaginations", and even in this age where
they are stunted by television and playstations they are active - the
advertising are just cynically trying to capture childrens imaginations
(and more importantly send an image of an imaginitiven child to
middle-class parent who obsess about the childhood experience and
education instead of letting their kids get on with it). 

Those who know me would find that while I am no supporter of a
"drugs-culture", but I also think this kind of advertising (in fact all
advertising aimed at children) is just as an important problem.  IMHO,
whilst it seems innocent (and certainly is not intended in any "evil"
way) it (and indeed the advanced state of the marketing industy, and
the science of engineering desire) is a major cause of the societal
problems that we have today. 

To clarify I mean those problems that are distinct to
contempary society.  Much as we like to think the past was crime
free there has always been murder and theft in the world, what we
experience now is the overpopulation of our country turning _every_ town
into an urban landscape and thus what were "city" problems are now
nationwide problems (unless you live in Northumberland or the Yorkshire
dales).

What we see now is a society where marketeers understand the human
condition to such a state that they can engineer desire to consume -
this has been going on for nearly 100 years.  Society has changed round
so strongly that many people's whole life is now built around
consumption and the desire to consume.  

We're obsessed with DVD players and houses.  The house market is frankly
a joke.. anyone who wants to take me up on this and rant about "just how
much the house they bought ten years ago is worth now" will kindly go
and consult a book on basic econimcs before doing so, and recognise that
the value of a house is about as tangible as the value of an arm in
todays society.  If you bought ten years ago, well done, circumstance
gave you a good price, and your life may be richer for it, but the
intrinsic value of your house has not changed and you cannot excercise
that value unless you can secure a living in an area or country that
suffers from poverty - in which case your standard of living will reduce
as the relative value of your income and possesion increases.  Live with
it and keep playing the lottery ;)

We (society, not us as a group) measure peoples worth by what car they
drive and the size of their phone.  This has lead to a society that
believes it can never be happy without fame and wealth and that the only
role models are those fed to us by the media (because the mechanisms of
marketing tear down the value of anything they can't sell.

The great lesson of the 20th Century - control the means of distribution
and you control the people - this applies to information (look at Radio,
TV, Newspapers).  This is why big-business is soooo afraid of the
internet - if you have decentralised, autonomous communication of media
and ideas then you are free to find musicians, film makers and authors
who are not signed on with a big company - you couldn't do this in the
old-media environment and thus you could only find those influences they
wanted you to find.  For the record companies (for instance) the
internet signals the end of their ability to print money, not through
piracy but through freedom of speech, creativity and distribution.  I
can hear music live from Club Passim, in Cambrdge MA, live over the
internet.  I could hear Rose Polenzani play there and then go to her
website and buy any of her 5 CDs - which indeed I have done - yet she
has not signed for a major record label and her CD will never appear in
a high street shop and she'll never appear on the Radio playlists.

My firend Paul drew my attention this week to the fact that Ani Difranco
made television history by becomming the first person the refuse to
appear on the David Letterman show just minutes before recording
started.  This news appeared on the Web.  Why did she refuse to appear,
they wouldn't let her play a song (which I have quoted here before) that
contains the lines:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, 
Number 1, George W Bush is not president"

..the traditional media can't allow that on TV, because the big-man who
runs the network wouldn't like it and he fears that fewer of those
adverts would run, and supposedly this would break the mystical chain
whereby the American public buy overpriced crap and make the guys who
own everything a little bitter richer, and the average man on the street
a little bit poorer, and they all hail the holy trinity:

The dollar, the dow and the holy NASDAQ...


} // End of Geoff::get_opinion();

Fortunately some members of society have become so aware of marketing as
to become decerning  - we have lost our innocence, but then so have out
children.

THe lesson of history is this - we will change our society to be that of
our grandparents.. this will appaul our children and they will change it
back to the society our parents built.  I look to America right now and
I see Lyndon B Johnston in a cowboy hat calling himself George W Bush...
 Kennedy was Clinton (or at least Clinton aspired to an image of Kennedy
we built in retrospect).


-- 
-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk 
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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