Subliminal messages
Are you sure that you aren't being subconsciously manipulated into making decisions that you wouldn't normally make? Are you sure that over the next few days, your purchases of popcorn and Coke will be completely under your conscious control? Are you even sure that I haven't embedded secret messages into this research paper to manipulate you into giving me an A? If you didn't consciously perceive "secret messages" but you did perceive them subconsciously, then they would be called subliminal. The word "subliminal" literally means "below the threshold" (Encarta 99). The threshold is the level at which you are aware of stimuli, so if something is below the threshold, or subliminal, you are not consciously aware of it. Therefore, you may be receiving messages and obeying them without even realizing it! What I have set out to prove through my research report is that people are being manipulated by the media through subliminal advertisements.Subliminal advertisements stimulated significant public attention in 1957. It was reported that a motion picture theater in New Jersey had flashed subliminal messages on its movie screen during the showing of the movie Picnic. These messages appeared on the face of the actress Kim Novak every 3
Now that I've established that there is a conscious and subconscious mind, I will explain both. The conscious mind has the privilege of accepting, rejecting or modifying perceptions. For instance, if the conscious mind listens to someone say that they are stupid, it could accept, reject or modify it. However, if it is the subconscious mind that listens to this statement, then it just accepts it and believes that it is stupid. Ironically, however, the beliefs held in the subconscious are the source of why the conscious accepts, rejects, or modifies the statement. Many advertisers take advantage of this and try to embed subliminal messages into their advertisements. Advertisers' subliminal messages often concentrate on the taboos of society to stimulate the mind. Such taboos would be sex, which is often the most common focus of advertisers, death, incest, homosexuality, and sometimes even pagan icons. Disney movies have displayed, and have been sued for, embedding subliminal messages. In their movie, The Little Mermaid, they show the male genitalia as a part of the castle. People may think that people were just trying to find perverted things in innocent Disney movies, but apparently it wasn't innocent enough to keep it on the cover. The newer cover does not display a castle on it. Another subliminal message involving Disney is in the movie Aladdin. Right before he sings the song A Whole New World, Aladdin says, "Take off your clothes" under his breath. My last example of a Disney related incident involving subliminal messages is in the movie The Lion King. When the king lion falls off of the cliff, you can see that the dust around him and the stars in the sky spell out the word "Sex." There are many subliminal messages in our products today, but one I find most disturbing is the Camel Cigarettes' advertisement. The Picture on the left shows a man standing proudly with his genitalia erect. The picture on the right shows the camel that is named the "Smooth Character." If you look at his nose, you will come to realize that it is in fact the male genitalia. 2 seconds and urged the audience to "Eat popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" over a course of six weeks. 49,699 people viewed these subliminal messages. The movie theater reported that its concession sales increased 58%. Some people just dismissed this as a publicity stunt or believed that you can't be affected by something you can't perceive. The truth is that nobody has ever been able to reproduce this result. However, this incident caused many people to take interest in the subject of subliminal perception. One such person was Vance Packard who wrote the very popular book, Hidden Persuaders, which appeared in the London Sunday Times as an account of the whole New Jersey ordeal. One of Edmund Taylor's major topics in his books is about just how legal subliminal advertisements are. This is, in my opinion, the most disturbing part about my topic. The truth of the matter is that there are currently no laws whatsoever forbidding the use of subliminal advertisements. This means that a commercial on television could flash a message manipulating you into buying it, and you would never even know, but yet it is perfectly legal. Eldon says that there are many reasons as to why subliminal advertisements are legal. One reason is that the public reaction of the movie situation in New Jersey back in the late fifties to the early sixties ended
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Approximate Word count = 2297
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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