Media Mind Meld: How to Avoid Being Programmed.

Motion pictures are hypnotic. That is their purpose, but you can see through the illusion if you take a step back from it.

We all love to be entertained, but beware of the traps. I've come to realize that there are two purposes to media. Interactive media is about tracking you. Non-interactive media is about programming you.

As a kid I used to invite my friends over and we would "cap," more commonly known as "riffing," on TV shows. In other words we'd make fun of them. If you've ever seen the TV comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 you'll know what I'm talking about. My friends and I did this years before that show appeared.

Another fun thing I'd do was to record a cartoon soundtrack and then use it as a voice over on another program. One of the funniest was a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon over a John Wayne western. My friends and I laughed until we cried...and this was long before most of us started smoking pot.

What this exercise does is to subvert the hypnotic effect of the movie by letting you see the through the illusion to the message behind it. To this day, I still make comments, usually internally, but sometimes I can't help myself and I'll blurt out the absurdity I'm watching. My girlfriend and others will often tell me to shut the fuck up, that I'm ruining the movie for them. I'll fall quiet, but inside I'm still capping. If I don't cap, I don't enjoy a movie at all.

Now, as a sophisticated adult, I see the raw propaganda, the hidden messages that those who promote such things are trying to implant. There are commercial motives, things like fashion and food fads and there are political programs to make us more compliant and accepting or anger us, quickly followed by a "reasonable" solution.

I've been capping so often and for so long I'm quite shocked when I try to engage someone in a conversation about a "program" and find that they haven't a clue as to what I'm talking about.

My latest perusal was of the movie American Made starring Tom Cruise in the story of drug smuggler Barry Seal and his involvement in with the CIA and the Iran Contra affair.

I'm not going to ruin the move for any of you by telling you the entire plot. I knew about the Barry Seal story 20 years ago. If the CIA had a "conspiracy theory" poster child, Barry Seal would be it.

I read not long ago that the CIA has advisors who work with Hollywood, especially when the movie includes references to the CIA or deals with American foreign affairs. I believe it. This movie is carefully crafted to make the CIA appear to be virtually blameless with regard to the drug smuggling operations, placing it all in the lap of Barry Seal, but ruthlessly righteous in it's pursuit of American foreign policy. Of course, we all know the CIA would never involve itself in illicit drugs, don't we?

This is a very entertaining cautionary tale with lot's of propaganda to teeth upon.

Here's the link to a Time Magazine article that attempts to clarify some of the fictive aspects of the movie while avoiding any controversy, reinforcing the message.

If you continually analyze media it loses it's hypnotic power without losing it's entertainment value. The more you do this, the faster critical reasoning improves, enabling you to think more clearly and see through the blitz of programming that we all endure on a daily basis.

Many thanks to @diabolika and her recent post for inspiring me to write this.

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