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Swift Viewing

Duke University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations.........................................................xiAcknowledgments...............................................................xiiiPROLOGUE Black Magic on Mars..................................................1ONE Subliminal Communication as Vernacular Media Critique.....................13TWO Mind, Media, and Remote Control...........................................43THREE The Swift View..........................................................65FOUR Mind-Probing Admen.......................................................91FIVE Crossing the Popular Threshold...........................................111SIX The Hidden and the Overload...............................................133SEVEN From Mass Brainwashing to Rapid Mass Learning...........................165EIGHT Textual Strategies for Media Saturation.................................193NINE Critical Reasoning in a Cluttered Age....................................227Notes.........................................................................239Bibliography..................................................................267Index.........................................................................291

Chapter One

As news events, presidential elections in the United States are unusual creatures. Resources and funds flood the proceedings over a lengthy period, shaping coverage of the extensive primary process and the presidential race proper. Control of the presentation of the candidate and party underlies every decision. The orchestration of image and platform enlists experts in population profiling, spin doctoring, speechwriting, event planning, media consulting, and commercial producing. Managing the release of information to the media, the actions and appearances of the candidate, and the impressions made upon those most likely to cast a vote are tasks confronting any election team.

Nothing ever goes exactly as planned. Campaigns seek to capture media and public attention, and doing so results in high visibility for the statements made and the responses given by candidates and their representatives. Consequently, even the smallest verbal slip, inexpertly located phrase, or unthinking gesture can produce headlines and talk- show topics. Just as presidential election campaigns strive toward careful coordination, the attention they receive from the numerous print, broadcast, and Internet news agencies makes unpredictable developments ever more likely.

The election of 2000 made a generous deposit in the bank of unforeseen complications and challenges. The razor-close tallies in Florida, the subsequent recounts and stories of tampering, and the interventions of the Supreme Court were the culmination of months of news oddities. The CBs news anchor Dan Rather rambled all through election night, treating the audience to bewildering aphorisms like "If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a handgun" and "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home." Media outlets jumped to call races that later required embarrassing retractions, prompting Rather to blurt out, "We've lived by the crystal ball, we're eating so much broken glass." Not letting a tragic plane crash hamper his campaign, the deceased Democratic candidate Mel Carnahan remained on the ballot in Missouri and won, beating the incumbent John Ashcroft for a Senate seat. Ralph Nader's presence on the presidential ballot assured that at least some media attention turned his way, if only to try to discredit his run by portraying him as an idealistic buffoon. George W. Bush's malapropisms became legendary. While deepening a popular mistrust of the democratic process, the elections left behind new phrases that are now stuck in the popular lexicon, "fuzzy math" and "hanging chads" among them. And one of the strangest twists was Al Gore's accusation that the Republican Party was using subliminal suggestion in its advertisements.

In a slick television spot on Bush's plan for affordable prescription medicine, we see the candidate meeting with, speaking to, and shaking hands with senior citizens. The music hits a dramatic "duh-dum" punctuation as the commercial introduces Al Gore's competing "big government plan." Gore is not shown in contact with people but as a distant talking head on a television monitor, thus reiterating visually a theme running through the campaign—that Gore lacked warmth. Where the words "affordable Rx plan" and "the Bush plan" appear steady and clear as they accompany images of Bush, the flashing and unsteady phrases "interfere with doctors" and "bureaucrats decide," against a black background, graphically represent Gore's proposals. Momentarily, only parts of these words are visible, so that for a fraction of a second one reads only individual letters rather than whole words, including, most notoriously, the letters "rats" before the word "bureaucrats" appears.

Democrats challenged the Republican ad, declaring that imperceptible, embedded messages were sneaky and unfair. With them Bush's campaign was attempting to manipulate voters without their awareness, so the claim went, and some members of Gore's campaign distributed information on subliminal communication to support their accusation. A minor flurry of media reports followed over the next few days, offering denials from Bush, no comment from Gore, assessments of media experts, and historical backdrop to the concerns about subliminal messages. The ad's producer, Alex Castellanos, maintained that the appearance of "rats" for 1/30 of a second was purely accidental, though he admitted that once it was brought to his attention he did not pull the spot. Many found his claim of ignorance implausible. Castellanos had previously been the target of comparable accusations. An ad that he prepared for Senator Jesse Helms in 1990 presented a white job applicant being informed that although he had superior qualifications for a job for which he had applied, he had lost out to a minority candidate because of a "racial quota." Augmenting the race baiting, a strange blemish appears on the letter read by the frustrated job seeker, a marking that resembles a black hand. Kathleen Hall Jamieson described this visual tactic as a form of negative campaigning intended to elicit a visceral response.

The "rats" spot ran 4,400 times over two weeks in sixteen states, and the Republican campaign spent approximately $2.6 million on it. When asked about the accusations on a tarmac in Florida, Bush replied, "Conspiracy theories abound in American politics. I don't think we need to be subliminable [sic] about the differences between our views on prescription drugs." Bush feigned naivety, saying that he did not know what subliminal suggestion was, let alone know how to use it for campaign purposes. As if to emphasize the point, Bush mispronounced the word "subliminal" repeatedly. Whether deliberate or not, his verbal blunder was met with wide ridicule. How could he not know what the term is or even how to pronounce it? Was he as intellectually underdeveloped as had been suspected, or was he insincere in his protestations? The talk-show host David Letterman ridiculed Bush, saying that the mispronunciation made him wonder, "Gosh, do you think this guy is 'electimable'?" For a short time Bush's "subliminable" was homologous to Dan Quayle's "potatoe."

The Republicans pulled the ad, insisting that...