Staff Writer
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| Cartoon courtesy of Marty Bucella |
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I may be wrong, but a story about Elvis Presley and Tupac Shakur living underground in Area 51 with all the other alien life-forms that the government has kept secret from us just screams out insanity. Subliminal messages, now that’s one that I might be able to make sense out of.
Everyone assumes the only subliminal messages out there are the sexual ones. The ones that involve Disney movies like the Little Mermaid and male reproductive organs in cover art.
You would be surprised, or maybe not, of all the theories roaming around out there. People have witnessed seeing the word “sex” written in the sky during Mufasa and Simba’s emotional talk in the Lion King. Others have reported hearing Aladdin say, “Teenagers take off your clothes,” in the 1992 Disney film. It seems as if people just love associating sex with cartoons.
“According to the definition in psychology, subliminal messages are messages that occur below the conscious, in your subconscious. They are messages that people get that they aren’t aware they are getting,” said Dr. Gat, a psychology teacher here at AVC.
The mind works like this: you’re sitting at home watching television and a commercial comes on. There’s a gorgeous supermodel running down the beach, the wind in her hair and the sun on her skin. There’s a close up of her face licking her lips then the words Pepsi flash on the screen. Although the entire commercial in essence was completely useless, most people leave their house thinking, “Damn, I want a Pepsi.” That, my friends, is what a subliminal message is.
“The main and I believe worst subliminal messages I ever get would be the ones about image and beauty,” said Evania Ramirez a sophomore at AVC. “I don’t mean to fall for them but there are times when I’m at In & Out ready to eat and I feel like tossing that burger. That meal means five pounds under my belt, five pounds no one will consider beautiful, and that hurts.”
That is considerably true. Majority of all fashion ads involve svelte, scantily-clad women riding horses or other meaningless things that do little to nothing to promote the clothing line. Their message? Our clothes are great even though the naked girl over there is wearing none of them. So it’s safe to say that nudity and sexuality do play a large part in the subliminal message area.
“There is a clothing line I am very familiar with and will not mention. I support their cause whole-heartedly, but their advertisements contain high volume nudity in which if I were a parent, I would not appreciate the exposure my children would have to it,”
Ramirez said. These are the same subliminal messages that started the “smoking is cool” fad. You see gorgeous men and women smoking, drinking and having a good time and you are more inclined to believe that smoking and drinking is good for you. You imagine your life with a cigarette in one hand and a martini in the other surrounded by beautiful people and you forget the cancer and liver problems you’re slowly giving yourself.
“Subliminal messages are real but not hidden,” Elier Lopez, a sophomore are the California State University of Northridge said, “they are projected on our minds through the media and in turn implant thoughts of what type of lifestyles to live and what things to buy to fit that lifestyle.” A recent CSUN study showed that the average American youth watched approximately 1,500 hours of television per year. That’s a 1,500 hour window of opportunity for advertisements to convince you to drink, smoke and shed your clothes.
Now before you go burning your televisions, think clearly about all this. Dr. Gat talked about a subliminal message that involved the beverage company Coca-Cola. During the late 1960’s to early 1970’s, Coca-Cola managed to raise their sales by flashing messages that read along the lines of, “Buy more popcorn, Drink more Coca-Cola.” All of a sudden subliminal messages were all the rave in the psychological community, but they came with a down side.
People started to wonder what would happen if they had flashed something like, “Give all your money to the man next to you.” Could this influence their children to do harmful and reckless things? It wasn’t until they determined that all the Coca-Cola research was falsified that the buzz began to die down.
Truth of the matter is that for these subliminal messages to work they need to be small and very well hidden. If your child is watching violent television, they start to imitate it; don’t blame subliminal messages. Children are more likely to respond to overt messages, meaning loud and in-your-face messages. Life imitates art, and their art is crashing cars on fire and the driver surviving without a scratch.
So lets think, are subliminal messages real? Are we unconsciously being controlled by some corporate higher power pushing us to buy their products? Or are we all too smart for that? Are we in control of our own minds, or is someone else handling the puppet strings for us? You tell me.
