People or puppets?; Why aren't you rich?

What is the meaning of success and the impact of well as shown in advertisements and the mass media. This poses the bigger question. Are we Americans acting as people or puppets. This is serious people or puppets is produced by the Union Theological Seminary in cooperation with the National Association of education of broadcasters under a grant from the educational television and radio center on today's program entitled Why aren't you rich. You will hear the views and voices of author Edwin fuller psychoanalyst early LUMAS Jr.. The loss of her Kenneth bark and theologian Robert McAfee Brown These are the men who have analyzed some of the concepts created by our modern mass media. And compare them with our traditional moral religious values. Here is the commentator for people or puppets.

The president of the Union Theological Seminary in New York Dr. Henry Pitney even Jewish success is a favorite theme of American advertising the product names have been changed to protect the guilty. As you and your mink coated woman leave the creases Heights country club and step into your imperial blue royal we the makers of the royal automobile make this sincere statement to you in the fullest and deepest confidence in the Royal Automobile there is surpassing new motor magnificent majesty of styling wonderful new elegance and refinement of line to attend to your comfort. There is added interior luxury. In summary this is a masterpiece and everything that makes our royal Roy. If this sounds at all extreme to you it is only because we are telling you in words what the advertiser is saying in a full page multi colored photograph. The marks of material elegance However the symbols of success leap out at you in every adjective in the copy in every detail of the photograph. This is

undoubtedly good advertising for a product of this type. But what is this saying about and perpetuating within our society. In another full page ad the wrapping just the wrapping on a bottle of whisky is described as enveloping the world's greatest liquor and the Regal luxury of shimmering red satin. The advertising world gives us other measures of success X brand deodorant is used by an even more obviously successful woman perpetually young lovely and sexually exciting. Why brand cigarettes are smoked by an obviously successful man one who hunts fishes and sails his own boat. The brand laxative is adored by a six year old child. The offspring of unequivocally successful handsome parents in their well decorated oversized living room. Is there a panacea in all this on the air one hears an all powerful unseen voice. Who can deal with any problem.

Because he's the millionaire I'm television the answer is more direct. If you had a million miles leave it to the Motion Picture of the musical comedy stage to be most direct. How to Marry a Millionaire. Or there. We're not concerned here with the ratings of the shows we've mentioned or the sales results of X Y and Z brand products. We are concerned about the values and concepts the American people are being sold in the processes of consuming and being entertained. What kind in quantity of an influence is being exerted. Is this picture of wealth and success a desirable goal for American life. If not why do we decide to do it in its place. These are the key questions our producer

Philip gallop asked of our guest authorities. As a minister in the Presbyterian Church. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown served as a Navy chaplain in the Pacific during World War 2. Dr. Brown is general editor of the laymen's the illogical library and associate professor of systematic theology and philosophy of religion at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Brown was asked first. What might the media's emphasis on wealth and success be doing to most Americans. It seems to me it's perpetuating in our society what I can only call a kind of fantastic lack of proportion in relay in the relationship of our society to the rest of the world. We have thrown at us from every side in all of the mass media. These pictures these images of opulence and wealth as though these were the norm for which every person should strive and it

becomes a little difficult sometimes to square this with the picture that one gets of most of the rest of the world. Here we are this little island of fantastic prosperity while the the good deal of the rest of the world is either gaping at the imminence of death or the fact of starvation. And we seem to portray at least in our mass media an almost total insensitivity to this kind of thing. Do you feel. That we're really as prosperous or as economically secure as the media present. No I don't think certainly that the picture we get in the advertising section of any slick paper magazine is the picture of Mr and Mrs Average American but it clearly seems to be the kind of thing that the producers of the mass media want us to conceive to be Mr and Mrs Average American and that therefore we are to bend all our efforts to the ability to have the kinds of goods which are advertised and if we are not able to have them then there's either something

wrong with us or we should go into debt a little more in order to keep up to date. And really the only thing wrong with our system is not its values but that of not enough people have enough money. There is if we could all be millionaires you see. Then the system would work fine the values are all right. If these are decided upon as the most desirable values for the achievement of the good life. The question we have to ask is then whether the advertisements are appealing to the right values or the wrong values. And I have to ask myself why I have not only some kind of instinctive reaction against all this but why on second thought there may be even a more deep seated concern that something is going to skew here and two or three things occur to me as as worth mentioning in this regard. First of all as I look through these advertisements or as I hear them on the radio or see them on television I very often have the uncomfortable feeling that I'm being had that somebody is really

putting something over on me that I am being manipulated or that somebody is trying to tell me what I should want. I'm not sure I should have to desire to have necessarily an imperial blue royal or even a royal at all. And yet I find myself bombarded with the notion that this is the only kind of car that a man of style will have. But I feel that somebody is trying to get at me you know way against which I instinctively react. And the second thing that concerns me even more is the point I mentioned briefly few moments ago the extent to which these this kind of image of living is so totally out of relationship to the possibilities for most of the people living in the world today. These advertisements can only be possible in a country which is fantastically rich when compared to most of the rest of the world. And there's something a little disturbing about looking at advertisements like these and then looking at the

news which we find any day in the in the in the paper it was a fairly compelling illustration of this to me in the issue of The New Yorker is just shortly after the conclusion of World War 2 which it was devoted entirely to John her CS account of Hiroshima. This was the entire content of the magazine except for the usual advertisements. And it was reported afterward that some of the advertisers of the product said they actually felt ashamed by the juxtaposition of their luxury products and the things which were being said in adjoining columns about the state of life in a Japanese city which had been the victim of the first atomic bomb. The most important thing I think however which makes me raise questions about the way of life suggested in our mass media is that I do feel that all standards are being appealed to. At this point I'd be willing to take a stand with St. Paul that for the Christian what is being asked of us

is something rather different than simply conforming to the standards which are set before us. He tells us be not come formed to this word and this word coming form and conformity is of course a crying problem in our day and age. The conformism which the advertisement suggest seems to me a rather terrifying thing and I feel inclined sometimes to want to scream out against it. I have a feeling sometimes it may almost be too late to do this in America that this same kind of attitude is in baiting all sorts of areas of life. Business church government all the rest. Which really means you don't dare disagree with anyone particularly not with anyone higher up the ladder. And so you'd better get an imperial blue Royale if that's what your executive status demands in the in the corporation for which you work. Would I be oversimplifying to say that the conforming man being

manipulated never asked to choose between right and wrong good or evil he only has to conform as he would say in a communism or fascism. It's conformity you never really ask them. Morality is no longer a part of life. This is all worked out for him by whichever group he happens to be part of. There's no problem about whether what the company is doing is right or wrong. It's a question of doing what the company asks in the most efficient manner possible and the person who dares to raise the question of morality is liable to find himself a very lonely individual if if he persists in in voicing this kind of concern. This of course isn't simply true within big business this is a problem which is raised on all levels of life. Professors teachers doctors ministers all of us are faced with this and the degree to which we are aware of the problem is at least some index I think of the ability to be able in some way or other to cope with it.

Dr. Earle a Loomis Jr. is a psychoanalyst. Chief of the Division of Child Psychiatry at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City. And professor and director of the program of psychiatry and religion at the Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Loomis sees the emphasis on wealth in advertising and the mass media as perpetuating a popular fantasy a dangerous fantasy in that it leads many of us to believe we are something we are not. The presence of a kind of unconscious or even sometimes conscious omnipotent fantasy is one with which psychiatry not uncomely has to deal. And the gradual substitution of the impossible by the possible. In the in the mind of the patient in the life of the patient is part of the task of psychotherapy. I you implying here that in a. Highly interdependent stratified society that many inferiority

complexes may simply be the result of the fact that people are inferior that it's very difficult really to. Do much in a kind of. Mechanized and specialized culture that we have. Well this is one of the problems that there isn't. There isn't as much respect for difference there isn't as much respect for the what you might call the homey. Folk qualities that are highly valued perhaps in other cultures. The father's ability to carve a piece of wood make his son a toy for example. This doesn't get you the Nobel Prize or an Oscar or a million dollars but it may be a trait embedded in the life of the man who will be a far better father than one who wins a Nobel Prize or makes a million dollars. These these are traits that. Seem to me to be relatively undeveloped and. In striving upper

upper echelon oriented America. And I'm Dr. Lewis you were head of department of psychiatry and religion. We referred to fantasies and distortions and the only commercial we had words like magnificence Majesty elegance time and tradition might associate these terms with God but here and the commercial Majesty magnificent do not refer to God but to a car. But then is the kingdom and the power and the glory not ours. That they even taken the words right out right out of it and divine and sublime. Yeah I've seen favorite advertising words. Edmund fuller teaches at the Kent school in Connecticut his analyses appear regularly in the Saturday Review. The American Scholar The New York Times Magazine and other publications. Edmund Fuller his most recent book is man in modern fiction. I noticed that your allusion in the theme of this particular discussion

to the phrase Why aren't you rich doesn't happen here to mention the other familiar phrase associated with it. The good old saying if you're so smart why aren't you rich. There is a I think the thing is pinned down immediately to its assumption a concept of smartness a concept not of wisdom but of being wised up to the concept that the happy man is the man who knows how to turn the fast buck and who then with the buck that he has acquired is able to parade the badges in the pertinence AA's that are recognized in the open marketplace as the signs and symbols of the success. Do you feel that in the kind of. And I use the word conditioning that Americans are getting today that this. Sort of material wealth money type of success and good life is the only kind of success and good life that's being presented to them in other words not so much that there's anything bad with money automatically. There isn't.

It's the fact that almost everything else is left out. Well I do agree that the picture of life and it aims and goals that the advertising world conjures up leaves out the ultimate substances and rewards of creative and productive endeavor. We. So far all of our authorities seem to see only danger is in the media and advertising of business and material wealth. Kenneth Burke I disagree. Mr. Burke teaches at Bennington College. Among his many books are the grammar of motive the philosophy of literary form and counter statement. Mr. Burke. Why don't we to put in place of the goal we have called undesirable for insofar as our factories can produce vast amounts of goods for sale and use of Rize I gonna get Does that production and distribution then I'll keep

the wheels going unless a great number of people are willing to believe they should buy as much of the output of our factories as they can and it seems obvious the way to stimulate job buying is to build up precisely the good life and we have just tried for trade or can't get cared for here is a sorry area where partridge and cabbage are indistinguishable. History is full of ironies and here is another of them. You don't have a high degree of productivity and I factories there's data of various means out of the factories are to be kept going their prize must be sold and if they are to be sold then people must be educated or conditioned to buy them. And if on the other hand people don't buy them where only God only falls into disarray they were unable to earn a living. That is they are denied the opportunity to vindicate themselves in the morality of work but the main point to keep in mind is as one's plain simple disturbing fact. Insofar as the ability to produce consumption goods increases people must be persuaded of the good life lies in the direction of such practices. Nor is there much solace in the thought

that much of the slack is taken up by the shift to production Brahmans. Your problem seems to me like a compulsion or roses I find and I just keep going around and around in this same circle. Here are the stages people would vindicate themselves by working. Technology has made for a deficiency of what whereby they work can produce vast quantities of material things as they can be kept at work no means of large enough people going to afford such things or induced to buy him. The idea was tied up in the advertising columns are a function of this necessity. These ideals as tested by traditional moral values are quite low. Some of the workers are to get the high moral value of work and as such conditions they can do so on means of why Dingy ideals of the good life help keep the bread products moving. In with Berg's analysis. Focus is a key question for our other guest authorities. If the wealth and success simply. Really are dingy and inadequate. What would you put in their place.

First Dr. Lewis. Those of us who are interested in child psychiatry and I happen to be one are impressed with the qualities that make up a happy family. And this may sound like more of the same with folk traits but the values be the capacity to get along with each other and to develop in one another something or the other in other words and other oriented rather than self oriented value. What. What pleasures can I get from bringing out something in my friend not self consciously but as a way of life. If such a person who gets such pleasures is asked why are you doing this for him he would almost be surprised to be confronted with the fact he wouldn't necessarily self-consciously be propagating his neighbor's welfare. This is one of the kinds of things it's build into a happy family. People feel that the things that they can do the family life the doing

something creating something of themselves getting along with people that this is just something they should be able to do what comes naturally. I'm inclined to stick my neck out and say precisely that that the best things in life are free of that. One of the things that's leading us astray today is it is in part an outcropping of the old Puritan ideal that you have to work hard to get anything and that there's something sinful about enjoying something for nothing. Now this may sound odd in the face of a culture that is being damned right and left for being selfish and. For people at least wanting to end up at the pinnacle of having it easy. But the dedication to hard work. Is so dramatic that many of our. Would be successful people just can't play Can't Take It Easy can't have fun can't accept.

The simple the commonplace the ordinary which has a great deal of grace and charm and potential in it but they've just been trained away from it. The very word play has a negative rather than a positive connotation. It sounds as if one is idling as if one is trifling as if one is evading the main task of life and yet within play and playfulness demit dimension of life probably lies a wellspring of creativity and spontaneity and the possibility of new ways of interacting with each other. Horsing around is a positive term in my in my book. Now this doesn't mean that there isn't a balance to this in that the side of discipline and insight and responsibility must also be looked at. But an over emphasis on valuing only that which comes hard I think is actually psychiatrically unsound. And by the way it's theologically in violation of the whole concept of grace and a free gift. Mr. Fuller what would you substitute for the material wealth values.

Material wealth as such treated as an end in itself. It is I think a degradation a debasement of the true vision of life but money is seen as a means to some productive end or some realise asian of life fulfillment ranging from all the things of the satisfactory the satisfying of basic and constructive desires the education of generations the procurement of advancements of various kinds. Money as a medium of a attainment of ends in themselves inherently more important than money. This I think is the substitution of values that is needed to correct this idea that things in themselves are the end value of life. Dr. Brown of the personal comfort motives and material well symbols alone are

good enough for us to act upon that is. What would you suggest. That of course is a very tall order and if I am if I were pushed to try to suggest very briefly a kind of answer to that I think one of the things for which I would want to put in a plea would be something like integrity. That is the notion that there is some kind of correspondence between the inner man and the outer man. That what you are saying and doing all day long there is some kind of relationship to who you really are inside and that you're not just putting on an outer shell for the sake of being safe that you are able on occasion to disagree and to say what you really believe not because you think it's a politic thing to say but because you believe it's true. When we are afraid to speak up because to do so will be to lose status or a promotion or even a job. And we

find ourselves conforming splitting apart the inner and the outer man and any sense of integrity and the sense of holiness which is really what the old Anglo-Saxon word salvation really means homeless or health. All of this is in danger of disappearing. And now for a commentary on today's program. Here is the Roosevelt professor of systematic theology and president of Union Theological Seminary Dr. Henry Pitney even you isn't in the first place I wonder whether we wouldn't all agree that the picture in which this discussion has given of the conception of success which is being constantly thrust upon us by advertising by the mass media today is correct. That is that it is not an exaggeration. And if so then the question which forces itself upon all of us is what can we do about it. What can each one of us do to protect himself against that kind of cheap and crude misrepresentation of the true values

of life. And then what can he do as a citizen to discredit this whole falsification of values by advertising and mass media. I'm tempted to make two comments which seem to me to qualify the extent of the evil influence of such glorification of false values based I suspect I suspect that the average American is far more allergic even resistant to such propaganda than the advertising people are prepared to admit. It is one of my strongest convictions that the media of advertising and amusement consistently underestimate both the Intelligence and the standards of the average American. Part of the proof of the soundness of this conviction lies in the fact that whenever the stage gives out really fine musical shows like the Rodgers and Hammerstein works they prove huge successes. Whenever Hollywood gives us a really great film it confirms all the predictions

all the axioms of the movie industry by becoming a record box office attraction. Second I suspect that many people like myself go much further in their reactions. I'm just stubborn enough. So that when I hear or read extravagant advertising I make a firm and wholly resolved that what Or ever else I do I won't patronize that product or show. Now what can we do about all this as a civic and national problem. Two things which are closely related to what I've just said. First and courageous a sit down strike non-response non-cooperation with a school advertising exaggeration. Second and last in a campaign to laugh it out of sound and sight nothing exposes absurdity like derision. We need a studied effort of good humored to expose mass media

extravagance for the nonsense that it did. I suppose it is not inappropriate for a program sponsored by a theological seminary to conclude with an exhortation even an invitation to decision. I invite Jordan Listman in a movement to expose derived and condemn the perversion of truth in advertising. Not forgetting that one of the most effective weapons in this campaign is the time honored rapier of well-chosen sarcasm and well-aimed humor. That was Dr. Henry Pitney even Jews and the president of the Union Theological Seminary and a commentator for this series people or puppets. Next week at the same time people or puppets will bring you an authoritative analysis and dramatic presentation on Sex and the mass media.

What Is This Thing Called Love. The guest authorities discussing this topic will be novelist Geoffrey Wagner anthropologist Solon Kimball psychoanalyst early Lewis Jr. people or puppets is written moderated and directed by Philip Gallo. Well the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Executive producer for the seminary professor John W. Bachman. Music by Alfred Brooks. Your ANNOUNCER This series is made possible by a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center for distribution by the National Association of educational broadcasters. Join us again next week for an exciting analysis of the Sex and the mass media. Is This Thing Called Love. Or puppet. This is the end of a radio network.