The Century of the Self (2002)

The Century of the Self (2002)

Although I haven't been able to get much blogging done of late (local disturbances in the Force, mad people on the loose etc), I have been checking a few online documentaries, and here's a set of four I found particularly intriguing.

It's basically the story of the creation of the consumer society, i.e. how people went from buying goods and services they actually needed, to becoming trained into buying stuff they found desirable - all in the name of keeping those profit columns healthy for the corporations, at the expense of ourselves.

Part 1 looks at the extraordinary career of someone who may not be known to many, namely Edward Bernays, a nephew of Freud, and credited in his early years with persuading women to take up smoking by convincing them that by doing so, they were gaining a greater freedom in their lives - all done by staging a photo-shoot with some debutantes posing as suffragettes lighting up at a pre-ordained moment during the New York Easter Parade, nearly a century ago.

He was also employed by the US government and eventually the CIA, and for my money Bernays was probably one of the most influential people of the first half the 20th century, though whether in a positive or negative way will be open to interpretation, depending on one's viewpoint.

The series takes us through the twentieth century, and I'll try and write up and comment on this as and when time and space permit, but in the meantime, I'd definitely recommend watching each of these four programmes, especially to anyone interested in the concepts of social experimentation and whether we really are as rational as we like to think we are.

BBC episode guide

see also:: Babel's Dawn:: Just How Sane Are We?