"Sit and watch only ATN," came the command. A Russian TV
network hid those words in every 25th frame of their
advertisements...
Horrified Russian officials shut down the network for two months. Facing a
fine which the Moscow
Times identified as a whopping $450, the broadcasters disputed the
government's response as "lawlessness."
Paranoid Russians are nothing new. The Moscow Times remembers detractors of
Boris Yeltsin blaming his 1996 election victory on an election-eve broadcast of
subliminal messages. More importantly, the Times noted subliminal advertising
has never been shown to work after an initial six-week "Eat Popcorn" experiment
in a New Jersey movie theatre in 1957.
The prospect of subliminal messages terrifies individuals already grappling
with their powerlessness before huge corporations. (See "Canadians fear
sexy Coke machine.") A grass roots group opposing the "Scientology" cult
also warned that
they'd received information that subliminal messages were concealed in
"Battlefield: Earth."
But the truth is millions have already surrendered their minds to the corporate
entertainment state -- willingly. Sure, I fear a world where broadcasters
transmit secret messages like "Regis Philbin is not annoying" and "Stalk
Blossom." But the master plan would involve harvesting mega-revenues from
foisting their pap on an unsuspecting public.
And they've done that already....
Face it, to some extent we're all willing slaves to technology. I heard the
news about Russia's subliminal messages from Ananova.
The digital broadcaster rocked back and forth with faux-human motions, moving
her head in imitation of blinks and nods, and told me that the polar ice caps
were melting. That a woman had disrobed in front of Bill Clinton ("HE was
visib-ly sur-prised when...she...DISROBED.") That a Russian TV network had
subliminally commanded viewers to tune in...
As I stared into her decadent red lips, I had to wonder: how free are *any* of
us?
