Juliane's Freefall Into the Jungle

Juliane’s Freefall… is apparently the English translation of Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel, a Werner Herzog documentary which was released in 1998 with the English title, Wings of Hope. Juliane’s Freefall was chosen to introduce this post since it best describes what happened: Juliane Koepcke did fall almost two miles from a plane into the Peruvian jungle. It is also the case that this blog is in need of a more exciting topic and this title is the most titillating one I have come up with since Subliminal Seduction.

 If my assumption is correct, you may be at least somewhat curious and I will let you know right away that Juliane survived and is now known as Dr. Juliane Diller. She plummeted about 10,000 feet as the plane she was in disintegrated in the dark on Christmas Eve in 1971. That was 50 years ago and that is why I read this anniversary article, which is a long and thorough one with good pictures: “Woman Who Fell From the Sky: She Fell Nearly 2 Miles and Walked Away,” Franz Lidz, The New York Times, June 18, 2021. Since you may not be able to read it, here are some details and more.

   Lansa Flight 508 came apart because of a lightning strike and it is apparently the worst such disaster in aviation history. Juliane’s mother flew from her seat in a different direction while the belted-in Juliane fell along with the remaining seats into the jungle trees. It is likely that the seats “spun like the winged seed of a maple tree toward the jungle canopy” and that they cushioned the impact. She awoke in the rain still in her mini-skirt, below which appeared a deep gash, but apart from that and a broken collar bone, she was not badly injured. She found some of the other passengers, all of whom were dead. Given that she had grown up in a nature preserve in the jungle, she was able to survive for 11 days until she stumbled upon some workers and, after pouring gasoline on the maggots in her wound, she was flown to safety. Although you may not be able to access the NYT article, there are many others which discuss her ordeal in detail and I will provide some below.

   The reason Mr. Herzog made the documentary about her is an interesting one. He was in South America at the time filming Aguirre, The Wrath of God, and was scheduled to take the same Lansa flight. At the last minute his plans were changed and, over a quarter of a century later, he contacted Dr. Diller and they re-traced the flight and the events in Wings of Hope. For various versions of the account of the woman who fell from the sky, see the list below. Mr. Herzog is also the source for many more interesting subjects.

Sources:

There is a good Wikipedia entry for Juliane Koepcke.

There is also one for LANSA Flight 508.

See also the Wiki entry for Wings of Hope (film).

There was a version of Wings of Hope on YouTube and you can still find some snippets. See also the useful version on Weird History - "How Juliane Koepcke Survived a Plane Crash and 11 Days Along Along the Amazon."

The Wiki entry for Werner Herzog will keep you busy for days.

Of course, he has his own website: Werner Herzog.

The Bonuses:

If you are wondering about others who have survived plane accidents, Wikipedia again has the answers: List of Sole Survivors of Aviation Accidents and Incidents. 

I didn't know that Mr. Herzog went to Pittsburgh to study at Duquesne (it didn't work out.)

For another Herzog film about a crash landing see: Little Dieter Needs to Fly. 

And, he made a film,  How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, which is about auctioneers at the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship. Apparently Mr. Herzog has contended that auctioneering offers an "extreme language" and is "the last poetry possible, the poetry of capitalism."  

Now you must think that this was all worth reading. 

Bloomberg

 

Johns Hopkins University

   The name "Bloomberg" may be familiar to you and you are likely to have heard of Johns Hopkins. Bloomberg was the mayor of New York City for many years and he was a presidential candidate in the last U.S. election. Johns Hopkins University is a small, private one, located in Baltimore and you probably know about it because of its medical school. Loyal readers of this blog will recall a post about Sir William Osler, who was important in the history of that school. There was recently some very good news about Johns Hopkins, because of Bloomberg, and I thought of it as I read the very bad news about Laurentian University. 

Bloomberg the Benefactor

   Recently Mr. Bloomberg gave Hopkins another donation of $150 million. Earlier, in 2018, he gave the University $1.8 BILLION, which is surely the largest gift given to an institution of higher education. His first gift was $5 when he graduated and the total he has now provided to Hopkins exceeds $3 BILLION.  His generosity extends beyond his alma mater. He has given lots to Harvard and $100 million to Cornell which is in the state next door. He has also donated considerable sums in other areas ranging from the Arts to Public Health initiatives. I won't go on. The sums are too great for me to handle and they are outlined in the sources I will provide.

   It is interesting to learn about the source of his riches. The Mayor of New York does not make very much and Mr. Bloomberg spent millions when running for president and even more to try and keep Trump out of the oval office.  Bloomberg does not come from a wealthy family. What he has comes mostly out of the object pictured above and there are thousands of them, all known as "Bloomberg Terminals." When they arrived on desktops in the early '80s, it was thought that they would not last, but they have. 

Laurentian University

   The good fortune of Hopkins is interesting to consider given the bad news coming from Sudbury. Laurentian needs a benefactor to lift it from insolvency since it does not appear that the current government will. Or perhaps Hopkins can send relief in the form of some of the staff members from their Advancement Office who surely can't have much to do. It is probably not a good idea to rely on noblesse oblige to support higher education, just as there must be a better solution than relying on the largesse derived from foreign students. But, what other options are there? Unfortunately here in Canada, colleges and universities have never received as much support from alumni as those in the United States and the provincial governments are typically rather stingy benefactors. 

Sources: 

Bloomberg Philanthropies will keep you busy for the rest of the day. Among other things, a large amount is expended to keep people from drowning. 

Plenty of bad news can be found in Sudbury. The Sudbury Workers, Education and Advocacy Centre (SWEAC) is trying to get more government assistance for the university.

 Both the COU and OCUFA issued statements about the inadequacy of the Spring Budget.

https://ontariosuniversities.ca/response-to-ontario-spring-2021-budget.

https://ocufa.on.ca/press-releases/2021-budget-a-missed-opportunity-to-invest-in-ontarios-future/

The Bonus

Bloomberg's daughter went to Princeton and many benefitted. There is now an Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity. 

In an earlier post, I provided this quote about Canadian universities c1930s: 

The universities had no contact with one another. Most of them had been conceived, born, and nourished for sectarian purposes, and all were very poor. Because they were poor they were ill-nurtured, and were as a rule at odds with one another. Professors were badly paid, libraries were meagre, laboratories were few and scantily equipped, museums hardly existed. The provincial treasurers, harassed by other demands for which they were afraid to tax their constituents, took advantage of the divided interests of the colleges to refuse aid impartially to all. From: Fifty Years Retrospect: Canada, 1882-1932

On Oration

 Revisiting Rhetoric

    "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" is a good question to be asked these days and it would be a fine thing to hear such sentiments expressed in a speech that was inspiring.  Although I confess to not going out of my way to listen to politicians, when heard, they have not impressed me with either what was said or how it was expressed. Our Prime Minister would not be characterized as 'charismatic', but slack should be given because he has to speak in two languages, neither of which is spoken by the last President of the United States. Although Trump was not known as an elocutionist, he somehow seemed to electrify his followers and turn all the hats red. One of the many mysteries of that administration that has yet to be solved.

   This topic has surfaced because of a book review I read.  Consider this post as a PSA (Public Service Announcement - I felt I had to clarify that; gents my age are more familiar with PSA as a test.) Information is provided about the book, the review and, most importantly, will include audio sources that will allow you to listen to hundreds of speeches. 

   The book is authored by Simon Sebag Montefiore and, according to the publisher: 

In this exuberant collection, acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore takes us on a journey from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Some speeches are heroic and inspiring; some diabolical and atrocious. Some are exquisite and poignant; others cruel and chilling. The speakers themselves vary from empresses and conquerors to rock stars, novelists and sportsmen, dreamers and killers, from Churchill and Elizabeth I to Stalin and Genghis Khan, and from Michelle Obama and Cleopatra to Ronald Reagan, Nehru, and Muhammad Ali.

   The review is written by Jeff Shesol who should know whereof he speaks since he wrote speeches for President Clinton. Even though Clinton favoured the 'aw shucks', conversational style, it was still likely a lot of work to produce a talk that seemed like just a talk. Shesol's  review of this book is generally favourable, but he notes it is hard to picture a present-day politician dog-earing the pages of a speech anthology and studying, as Kennedy did, the cadences of Churchill? Two other speech anthologies are mentioned in the review, one of which was given to Kennedy as a gift - A Treasury of the World's Great Speeches. The other is, Lend Me Your Ears by William Safire. The full review of Voices of History: Speeches That Changed the World  is in this article: "An Anthology of Great Speeches, From the Inspirational to the Ominous," Washington Post, July 9, 2021.

Commencement Speeches

   One would think such speeches should be inspirational and motivational and if you want to listen to some, here are three sources for doing so:

C-Span Video Library

   This database goes back to Kennedy's 1963 graduation speech at American University and the most recent as of today is Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at the Naval Academy in May 2021. There are nearly 1000 speeches and one can search by name and key word to find ones of interest. 

NPR - The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever.

   This site has not been updated since 2015, but it still contains over 350 speeches. This database is also searchable.

Speaking While Female. 

   If you want to listen to speeches by women, start here. All kinds of categories are covered. You can begin with "Anti-slavery," and move on through subjects like marriage, nature, sports and war. Or you can listen to Bette Davis speaking at the Hearings at Congress about "Equal Pay For Equal Work." It even has Commencement Speeches. 

The Bonus: 

   If you want to nurture your talent for public speaking, here is the website for Toastmasters. 

   If you just want to listen via the Internet, see my earlier post - Sound. There, you can even listen to the few sounds to be heard in the Olympia National Forest, which is supposed to be the quietest place in the U.S.

American Procession Series

   This is another short post about a Book Series. It will be of minor interest to a small number of bibliophiles and it will be of no interest at all to the miniscule group of readers who stumble across this blog.

   The American Procession Series was published for about a decade in the middle of the last century, which makes it even less exciting. Still, I like checking such series against the holdings in the library, where I used to work. It used to be a fine library, but it has largely moved on from the 'book business.'  The library has some of the titles, which are now in storage. Odds are, that they will soon disappear.  Along the way, I did learn a bit about Mari Sandoz, the Nebraskan who was likely not generally as happy as she is in the picture which I have provided below.

Published by Hastings House ‒1954-1964
Henry G. Alsberg, Editor

   This series focussed on "periods in our history and cultural growth which have not yet been fully explored." Of the nine titles in the series, the Western Libraries has six.  Three of the books are authored by Mari Sandoz and the Western Libraries has others by her which are listed at the bottom (the bolded titles.) They will be of use to those interested in Indigenous matters. For a thorough analysis of this series or the books by Sandoz, check with a Western Librarian.

The Beaver Men: Spearheads of Empire, Mari Sandoz.

Brass-Knuckle Crusade: The Great Know-Nothing Conspiracy, Carlton Beals.

The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men, Mari Sandoz. 

The Cattlemen: From the Rio Grande Across the Far Marias, Mari Sandoz. 

Escape to Utopia: The Communal Movement in America, Everett, Webber.

New Green World: John Bartram and the Early Naturalists, Josephine Herbst.

Tinkers and Genius: The Story of the Yankee Inventors, Edmund Fuller. 

The Wild Jackasses: The American Farmer in Revolt, Dale Kramer. 

Wilderness For Sale: The Story of the First Western Land Rush, Walter Havighurst

                                       Other Works by Mari Sandoz

The Battle of Little Big Horn

Cheyenne Autumn (The source for John Ford's last Western.)

Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas: A Biography

I Do Not Apologize For the Length of This Letter: The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 194-1965.

Description: "The collected correspondence of Mari Sandoz focusing on her political activism in behalf of American Indians in the mid-twentieth century. Introduced and edited by Kimberli Lee, the letters document Sandoz's role as a non-Native chronicler and advocate for Plains Indian cultures"--Provided by publisher.

Old Jules

A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux

                                                        Mari Sandoz

For more information about Sandoz see:

The Mari Sandoz Heritage Society

and the:

Mari Sandoz High Plains Center 

Source: 

   For more about this series and others see: Series Americana: Post Depression-Era Regional Literature, 1938-1980: A Descriptive Bibliography: Including Biographies of the Authors, Illustrators, and Editors, by Carol Fitzgerald

No More Name Changing

 Sticks & Stones

"Sticks and Stones" is an English-language children's rhyme. The rhyme is used as a defense against name-calling and verbal bullying, intended to increase resiliency, avoid physical retaliation and to remain calm and good-living."

   "Sticks and Stones" - Wikipedia

"A common childhood chant meaning hurtful words cannot cause any physical pain and thus will be ignored or disregarded."

   My suggestion for solving the problem of problematic names is that we simply relearn the rhyme mentioned above, rather than relearn all names. And, it is far easier than eliminating all eponyms. I stated my position on the matter of names in this post - Names on the Land - and it has not changed, nor am I now embarrassed about what I wrote, or how it is written. Even if I was someone defined by an acronym such as, BIPOC, I don't think I would be traumatized by seeing the signs for Dundas Street or Plantation Lane.

Birds & Bees

   Those of you who have somehow been able to avoid the debates over toponyms will surely be surprised that the arguments now extend to the naming of birds and even insects (there are other "nyms" by the way. For example, it is proposed by some that the name of "British Columbia" should be changed and I think that BC is an example of a choronym. Other choronyms will need to be examined for excision, as will astionyms such as "Vancouver." Those of you who want to be among the first to display your self-righteousness over an old name newly discovered, as well as those of you who are beginning to worry about the amount renaming to be done, can start here.") I have already done more work than I planned, so here are the basics about the Birds and the Bees.

Bird Names for Birds

Awful Anna

 

   

You will find all you need to know at the link above (Bird Names for Birds.) It contains a spreadsheet of: 1) bird names, 2) who the bird was named for and 3) who it was named by. Biographical profiles are provided and here is why Anna's Hummingbird is up for elimination:

"Anna’s Hummingbird was named by René Primevère Lesson, a French naturalist in the early 19th century.  This bird was named to honor Anne d’Essling, wife of François Victor Masséna, Second Duke of Rivoli, who also has a hummingbird named for him by Lesson.

I am personally very fond of this bird species.  This is a bird that used to visit my feeders almost every day all year long in Phoenix, AZ.  I feel very attached to these chunky little hummingbirds, their beauty, their feisty behavior, and their spectacular courtship dives.

My problem with naming this wonderful bird for Anne d’Essling is that she really has nothing to do with this bird other than her husband’s ornithological interests.  Anne probably never saw a live hummingbird and it is unknown if she was even interested in them.  Surely she appreciated their beauty, but that is not known for certain."

Audubon, by the way, was an awful fellow. 

The Better Common Names Project

   For bugs, see the link above . I will just say here that the entomologists have moved into the field of etymology. Among the derogatory names the Task Force is currently examining is Gypsy Moth which is offensive to some Romani people. The Crazy Ant is also under the etymological microscope. 

   Rather than worrying about the elimination of the names of some insects, we should be more worried about the extinction of them. For that see: Insect Elegy. 

Post Script:

   To complicate matters I will introduce you to Stigler's Law of Eponymy which "holds that scientific laws and discoveries are never given the names of their actual discoverers.” It is a good reminder of just how collaborative and complex the processes of scientific discovery really are - the point here isn't so much that the wrong person gets credit as it is that the very idea that a single individual can get credit for a discovery is, well...a bit ridiculous."

   The same could be said about naming generally which was usually "collaborative and complex." Names were applied to the land by people who were often scoundrels, to honour people who were even worse and sometimes to satirize them. Some were attached in seriousness, others as a joke and not a few were chosen by those who may have been inebriated.  If the names are eliminated so is the history. Read Names on the Land before you discard Dundas. 

Sources: 

   "This Moth’s Name Is a Slur. Scientists Won’t Use It Anymore:The Entomological Society of America Will No Longer Refer to Common Species of Insects as “Gypsy Moths” and “Gypsy Ants,” Because Their Names are Derogatory to the Romani People." Sabrina Imbler, The New York Times, July 9, 2021.

   "Scientists are Renaming the ‘Gypsy Moth’ as Part of Broader Push to Root Out Offensive Monikers," Caroline Anders,  Washington Post, July 11, 2021.

   For Stigler's Law see the very good: "Stigler's Law: Why Nothing in Science is Ever Named After Its Actual Discover," Alasdair Wilkins, Gizmodo. 7/13/11

[It's hard not to think of Sayre's Law in this context: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."]

The Bonus:

   Country renaming has been continual over the centuries and some of the name changes are both reasonable and understandable. I was reminded of that fact by this recent headline and it is unlikely that you will recognize the name of the country: "Africa's Last Absolute Monarchy Convulsed by Mass Protests," John Eligon, NYT, July 2, 2021. The country is Eswatini, which was formerly known as "Swaziland." Other changes are noted in the article:

Nyasaland became Malawi on achieving independence in 1964. Months later, Northern Rhodesia achieved nationhood as the new republic of Zambia. In 1966, Bechuanaland was reborn as Botswana, and Basutoland changed its name to Lesotho. Rhodesia, following a 14-year period of white-minority rule that was not internationally recognized, became the new nation of Zimbabwe in 1980.

But several former British colonies in Africa — like Uganda, Kenya and Gambia — did not change their names upon gaining independence.

The Bonus Question: 

   Of all the country names on the planet, which one is in most need of reconsideration?
The United States.

Think about it. 

As soon, however, as the emergency of the war [ the American Revolutionary War] had grown less, the inadequacy of the name became apparent. United States of America was greatly lacking in that it applied no good adjective or term for the inhabitants of the country. It was unwieldy, inexact, and unoriginal. Although it rolled well from the tongue of an orator, not even the sincerest patriot could manage it in a poem or song."

Names on the Land, p.171.

Subliminal Seduction

   On the very long list of things I have to do, which is shorter than the list of things I am supposed to be doing, you would not find the words "subliminal seduction." I did see them in a recent publication and thought I should connect them to a time and place and put them in a context about which you may have forgotten, or be far too young to remember. While I would like to take the time to consider subliminal seduction in relation to such current concerns as -  fake news, alternate reality, disinformation, media manipulation, post-truth, truthiness and our current epistemic crisis - I will just pause long enough to relate them to UWO (Western University) and events 48 years ago. 

   Since I am not supposed to be doing this, I will simply provide the basics, which can be used by a journalist or reporter who can get paid to put them all together with more details and coherence. I will begin with the catalyst and conclude with something I wrote back in 2008, which is highly relevant.

   The title that attracted my attention: "The Cold War Panic Over Hidden Messages in Ads,". It was written by Lisa Borst and is found in BOOKFORUM, June/July/August, 2021. Here is the beginning, along with a few snippets:

“AT THIS POINT, you probably should take several deep breaths in order to relax, there is much more to come, if you’ll pardon the expression,” cautions Wilson Bryan Key, in the first chapter of his 1973 pulp best-seller Subliminal Seduction. The book, which ignited one of the Cold War era’s more banal panics—that the advertising industry is a black site of veiled salacious messages—is best remembered for its analysis of an ad for Gilbey’s gin, which Key claimed contained the letters S-E-X embedded in ice cubes...According to Key’s four basically interchangeable books, most of mass media is an orgy if you look closely. Using a kind of horny hermeneutics of suspicion, Key rifled through the byproducts of postwar consumerism and found taboo-breaking everywhere...

   Is there any truth to the subliminal myth? Key’s analysis is buoyed by some boilerplate Freud that’s pretty convincing—seductive, even—including a fun reading of castration anxiety evident on late-’60s Playboy covers. But there is the old project of finding the latent in the manifest, and then there is missing the forest for the trees because every tree sort of looks like a penis. Key’s books offer a cautionary tale for demystification: in attempting to articulate certain undeniable realities—that sex and its contingent fantasies can be spectacularly profitable; that advertising is a destructive financial monoculture on which the media and entertainment industries depend; that every advertisement is essentially a dare, manipulating the viewer in complex psychological ways—they veer toward the truth and blow past it."

Wilson Bryan Key

   If asked in a quiz, "Which professor at UWO would you associate with the word "notoriety?" you would likely have come up with the name of the fellow who appeared on the Geraldo Rivera Show, not Key. Key was in the Journalism Department at Western when he wrote Subliminal Seduction. According to an article in the Western News, the working title at the time was: Rape of the Not So Innocent: Mass Media's Pollution of the Psyche (see Cathy Hawkins, "Sex and Death in Ads: It's What You Don't See That Counts, Mar. 21, 1973.)

   Key was not long at Western and a more enterprising journalist would try to find out why he left. I mention it in my piece from long ago which is provided below. In 1981 in a review of The Clam Plate Orgy... Sandra Martin notes that: "Subsequently, he had a falling out with his colleagues and the university administration which eventually paid Key $64,000 to quit the campus. By that time, however, he was world famous." That is likely to be correct since Ms. Martin is a good reporter and her husband was a faculty member in the History Department (see: "Paperbacks," The Globe and Mail, May 30, 1981.) Key did return to campus in 1980 as a guest of the University Students' Council (see: "Former UWO Journalism Professor and Controversial Writer, Wilson Bryan Key, is Coming to Western on Oct. 9, to Speak About Subliminal Seduction and Media 'Sexploitation'." Western News, Sept. 25, 1980. 

   If you want to read his books, these are found in the Western Libraries: The Age of Manipulation: The Con in Confidence, the Sin in Sincere; The Clam-plate Orgy and other Subliminals The Media Use to Manipulate Your Behavior;  Media Sexploitation, and  Subliminal Seduction: Ad Media’s Manipulation of Not So Innocent America.

   Vance Packard wrote The Hidden Persuaders and on the 50th anniversary of its publication, I wrote a piece about it and discussed Key and his association with Western. The connection between Packard and Key is made apparent in the piece.  Those of you interested only in Key's Canadian connection and the subliminal stuff can skip to the parts that are bolded. 

From the Stacks: The Works of Vance Packard

(From: The Bottom Feeder, Jan. 2008. This was a newsletter produced by the staff in the Business Library in an attempt to get students to use the libraries and read books, not just case studies. We probably would have been more successful using something subliminal.)

 

Introduction:

   We descended into the stacks on this occasion because we noticed that many others had observed that it had been 50 years since Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders was published. That book was a non-fiction best seller in 1957 and when we took a look at it, we quickly realized that there is much in it that will be of interest to students of marketing and advertising, as well as to those who follow the broader subject of American Studies. Although we did not have much time for this, we spent enough to know that you should spend more. The Hidden Persuaders alone is worth examining and if you look at Packard's other books (two others of which were best sellers) you will find that he discusses many subjects which are of interest today, including: conspicuous consumption; career concerns; status seeking; planned obsolescence; media manipulation; income inequality and even sex which is of minor interest to at least a few of you. There is even a "Western connection" in that it will briefly lead us to consider "subliminal advertising", which was a subject of some interest here on campus back in the 1970s and which is still a popular one among undergraduates.

   We leave ourselves open to the charge that was sometimes levelled at Packard - that we are being rather superficial and do not fully engage the intellectual issues involved. We will try to avoid it by indicating that our interest here (largely because of time restraints) is bibliographical rather than theoretical. Our major purpose is to point you to the sources and the minor one is to assist you in realizing that extent of the collections held in the Western Libraries. We have all of the material discussed below and we now have even some of the older material in electronic form.

   Back in 1995 when Advertising Age celebrated its 75th anniversary by noting the most important events in advertising history, the publication of The Hidden Persuaders was one of them. Packard indicates clearly what the book is about in the first paragraph:

"This book is an attempt to explore a strange and rather exotic new area of American life. It is about the large-scale efforts being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and out thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our levels of awareness; so the appeals which move us are often, in a sense, "hidden". The result is that many of us are being influenced and manipulated, far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives."

   There is much in the book that will be of interest to you and perhaps we can quickly entice you with some chapter titles: "So Ad Men Become Depth Men"; "The Built-in Sexual Overtone"; "Back to the Breast, and Beyond" and "Selling Symbols to Upward Strivers".

There is also a chapter about advertising and children ""The Psycho-Seduction of Children", and there is chapter relating to political advertising that has some resonance given the evidently interminable American campaign, "Politics and the Image Builders". Although in this case Packard is quoting someone else (Richard Rovere), we could not resist sharing it with you:

"Richard Nixon appears to be a politician with an advertising man's approach to his work. Policies are products to be sold to the public - this one today, that one tomorrow, depending on the discounts and the state of the market. He moves from intervention (in Indochina) to anti-intervention with the same ease and lack of anguish with which a copy writer might transfer his loyalties from Camels to Chesterfields".

   Another interesting chapter ".And the Hooks Were Lowered" , deals with "subthreshold effects". In it, Packard is discussing what is now generally referred to as "subliminal advertising" . There was a very real concern at the time that listeners and viewers were potentially being brainwashed by sounds or images which they could not consciously perceive. We will briefly bring up two Canadian connections in this regard.

   The first has to do with an episode involving the CBC. Apparently the CBC did a test where the message "Telephone Now" was flashed 352 times during a 30 minute program to see if viewers responded to this subliminal message. There are accounts that other networks did the same and the use of such techniques was generally banned. We were not able to quickly verify the Canadian episode which is alleged to have occurred around 1958. For a recent account where it is mentioned see: "For a Time in the '50s, A Huckster Fanned Fears of Ad 'Hypnosis', by Cynthia Crossen, The Wall Street Journal , Nov.5, 2007 (the huckster was James Vicary).

   The second Canadian example is a very local one that involves this campus in the 1970s. A faculty member in the journalism department, Wilson Bryan Key, published a popular book, Subliminal Seduction, which made controversial contentions about the degree to which the public was being bombarded with sexual images. We have not attempted any archival investigations, nor do we wish to upset any lingering administrators from that period so we will simply quote the following:

"Key relates the details of his original research on subliminal advertising, his colleagues' response to his research, his subsequent (forced?) leaving of University of Western Ontario, their large financial settlement with him, his testimony, before governmental committees, persecution by the advertising industry and commercial media, and numerous instances of when his detractors privately acknowledge the validity of his contentions while publicly discrediting him."

   Key relates those details in The Clam-Plate Orgy: And Other Subliminals the Media Use to Manipulate Your Behavior  We took them from a review by Franklin B.Krohn, in the Journal of Business Ethics , Vol.6, 1987. For an original review of Subliminal Seduction see "Look in the Bottom of the Glass," by Paul Dickson, The Washington Post, Times Herald , Oct. 17, 1973 (believe it or not, we now have the WP in electronic format back to 1877!). The Key/Western episode is discussed briefly in "Don't Bet on It," by Paul Benedetti, The Globe and Mail, March 24, 2007.

   In The Hidden Persuaders, Packard is basically discussing how "professional persuaders" were using the tools of social science and how "motivation researchers" like Ernest Dichter were influencing the field of marketing. To see the influence of this research north of the American border, you need only consult this brief article by Western Business School faculty member Professor David Leighton. He was recently at our library celebration and I wish we had asked him about it: "Putting Motivation Research to Work," Business Quarterly, Vol.23, No.4, Spring, 1958 (even this is available electronically). Additional sources are provided below.

[ A long bibliography of books by and about Packard as well as some obituaries was included, but is not provided below,  and The Bottom Feeder is no longer found on the website of the Western Libraries. It does still exist in the Internet Archive, from which the above was taken. It was done by me and no one in the Western Libraries or at Western University is responsible for the content.]