![]() In divulging the inside cunning of their craft, they have attached themselves to a critical vernacular outlook, creating a bond of cynicism with potential buyers, reducing the adversarial tension that so often marks relations between commercial hucksters and the shoppers they wish to persuade. ![]() Perhaps to this end, certain advertisers over the past several years have moved to join the opposition, making the practice of subliminal advertising an overt part of the sales pitch, something designed to be noticed. To some extent, the folklore of subliminal advertising that runs-mostly by word of mouth-through the byways of American culture is an example of the “consumer resistance” that advertisers, in their marketing plans, are perpetually attempting to “break through.” It verbalizes the dissatisfaction that flows in a world where image-management and spin-doctoring have become social norms. It betrays a trepidation that arises among those who are uninterruptedly targeted by commercial behavior-modification projects. It is a sign of a persistent and prevalent awareness, an aversion, that is spawned among people whose eyes and minds are continually the marks for scheming sales appeals. It speaks to something real about the experience of life in contemporary American society. ![]() While there are questions about whether many of these subliminal come-ons are truly there, or whether they actually work, the popular obsession with subliminal advertising is nonetheless significant. A passage to modern adolescence comes when one learns of the man with an erection (or, by another account, the alluring nude woman) who resides-unnoticed by most people-on the foreleg of the camel on the frontside of each pack of regular, unfiltered Camels. Tales of Madison Avenue’s subliminal cunning are part of the erotic folklore that is passed along the grapevine of American youth culture. This preoccupation with subliminal advertising is part of the legendary life of post-World War II American capitalism: the word “SEX” written on the surface of Ritz crackers, copulating bodies or death images concealed in ice cubes, and so forth. American consumer culture has produced its legion of subliminal hobbyists, people who spend their free time thinking about, locating, and deciphering the cryptic codes that are ostensibly embedded within our ads. Many students come to my classes full of a critique of advertising based on advertising’s pernicious-and apparently infinite-subliminal appeals. Many people have been influenced by Subliminal Seduction, or other books by Wilson Bryan Key, a man who has made a career out of decoding covert-often sexual-enticements that he sees concealed within the overt visual messages of advertising. Since that time, there has been an enormous and stubborn popular fascination with the subject of subliminal advertising. Legend has it that an evanescent suggestion, “Hungry? Eat popcorn,” drove zombielike audiences of the ’50s on sudden expeditions to the candy counter. Though unnoticed, he contended, these messages would speak to people’s unconscious minds and influence consumer behavior. Vicary unveiled the tachistoscope, a device that could repeatedly project succinct verbal messages onto movie theater screens for an imponderable moment. IN THE LATE 1950s a market researcher named James M.
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