Indy! Mind control! Crystal Skulls! Hats!

Just saw Indiana Jones IV: Franchise This!

It was okay. Too much, "And this happened and then this happened and then this happened."

I was talking to my movie companion about if afterwards (which is one of my favorite things in the world to do, besides talking about books and ideas.)

I know that often we see art through the lens of our culture and our current preoccupations. I had asked NTodd and some folks over at Atrios' place if Spielberg and Lucas slipped in any subtle comments about the current world situation. Yep. In some cases it was fairly heavy handed and other cases more subtle. Directors have learned that unless you are making a message movie, you have to be entertaining (and even in a message movie entertainment helps get the message across). A good story well told can be the most powerful way to get a message across.


Ferengi Mind Control Device. Not available in stores! Send your gold-pressed latinum directly to DaiMon Bok, P.O. Box 174, Tower of Commerce, Ferenginar

A lot of this movie was about mind control (which was a supposed interest of Stalin according to a character in the movie). I thought about how real mind control is managed in today's world. For one thing it's just not CALLED mind control anymore. That is one of the tricks. What you CALL things makes a difference. Mocking and destroying perfectly good words is part of the game. Flipping meanings or redefining is another. (I'm reading Geoffrey Nunberg's new book, Talking Right which covers this in detail)

I was watching Frontline show about marketing and I saw how some of this new "mind control" is done.

Mind control that they talked about in the movie or from the late 50's and early 60's was a product of their time, they saw it as overpowering and used terms like brainwashing. Someone would force their will on people. People would have no conscious control, they would do what the controllers wanted. But that was really hard to do.

So the marketers started looking at how they can convince people that what they wanted people to do is REALLY what the people themselves wanted to do. If you dig down you can often find a thread in everyone that is selfish, mean, greedy, fearful or hateful. So they used and appealed to some of our strongest emotions to get what they wanted. They appealed to our hate, fear, greed, self-interest, ambition and pride.

Now there are whole religions that are dedicated to NOT embracing our most selfish selves. That tell us that the happiest people are those who "live for others" or care for the poor. Religions where it's not about looking out for number one, but for connecting to others who are our neighbor. There are religions where it's really about serving the will of god and not their own will.

But what if the messages of those religions get in the way of the message that the marketers really want? Answer: Find the sub-set of some religion that embraces what they want. Need a religion that says it is okay to kill people? Boom, you got it. Want to have someone on your TV show who is pro-assassination of foreign leaders? Call Pat Robertson. That is the easy way to SAY that you have a religious perspective when what the show is really embracing is a bizarre offshoot that agrees with a view the show wants to promote. And even if those views only represent 7 percent of the people in that entire religion, if they are the ones who do 99 percent of the talking, people start to think that maybe that IS what that religion stands for. Especially to those outside the religion.

I believe it was George Lakoff who talked about how think tanks and their wealthy funders on the right have no problem spending money on infrastructure and messages. The right-wing think tank's ROI for the wealthy is the spread of their ideas.

On the left they brag about how much money they give directly to help others. "Low administration costs" is a selling point. They aren't looking to provide ROI for their donors money, they are looking at how well it was spent to make the world a better place. I kind of laugh at the groups like the AEI (home of Lynne Cheney) or the "Competitive Enterprise Institute" who don't turn a profit. "Hey CEI if you were are REALLY a good competitive enterprise you would figure out a way to be self-sustaining instead of having to keep getting money from Scaife and the oil companies." Now I know that lots of groups are designed to stand on their own and make a profit, but it is just hilarious in a way that one named the Competitive Enterprise Institute doesn't.

They know that the ROI they provide their funders are the "ideas" speeches, tv appearances and op-eds that in some cases are just designed to muddy the water. No light, just mud. No truth, just FUD.

At the end of the year they just go back to the oil companies and say, "We helped convince people that fossil fuels don't really have a big role in global warming, give us more money and we'll keep up the FUD."

(Interestingly I noticed that when I read "mind control" I want to go back and change it to something softer, like persuading but I decided to keep control because the harsher sounding word connotes the more aggressive end goal of the marketers.)

No spoilers, but in the movie the desire to wield the power to control people's mind was too much for one person to handle. The quest for mind control, like the quest for gold, led to tragedy. If looks like a lot of the Indy film are about the quest for power, the desire to have it and control it, vs. Indy's quest for knowledge-- to understand it and to share it. In the movies the power has a very physical destruction on the person trying to wield it. In real life it would be easier if the person who attempts to wield too much power would just melt. Of course instant justice is for the movies, in the real world it doesn't work that way. But still people CAN see the effects of people wielding the power that they shouldn't have. Power that has been taken by force that they have no legitimate claim to.

We can't close our eyes and hope that the power will destroy the person wielding it, because we can't count on the power melting the face of the person using it. We have to act. Of course we could tell the person we are stopping that we are doing it for their own good. "Hey, put that down or your face will melt and you will die." but they won't listen. What we can do is appeal to all the people who have been damaged by the unwise wielding of power and say, "This is for OUR own good. This has to stop." And then we act. And to look good when doing it? Get a cool hat.


From Hats In the Belfry