Subliminal Facts
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- Laws
- Court Cases
- Subliminal Devices
- Self Help
- US Government
- Urban Legend
- Scientific Research
- This Documentary
Laws
There are no federal, state or local laws which prohibit the use of subliminal advertising in the media.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies, (AAAA) does not have a formal policy regarding subliminal advertising. The closest thing they have to a formal statement on the subject was given during a hearing before the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 1981.
The Federal Communication's Commission, (FCC) also has no strict regulations against the use of subliminal advertising. In 1974, the agency issued a policy statement which cited: "The FCC's position is that the use of subliminal techniques involves intentional deception and is inconsistent with a licensee's obligation to broadcast in the public interest." But, policy statements are not enforceable rules. The FCC also has no rules on what is, or is not, a "subliminal" message.
Court Cases
In 1986, three lawsuits were filed against Ozzy Osbourne, claiming that lyrics and subliminals in the song "Suicide Solution" off the Blizzard of Ozz album contributed in the suicides of three young fans. On Dec. 19, 1986 a California Superior Court judge threw out the case. On July 18, 1988 an appeals court upheld the decision to dismiss the case.
In 1990, a lawsuit was filed against the heavy metal band Judas Priest, claiming that subliminals in their song "Better By You, Better Than Me" off the album Stained Class had contributed to the suicide and attempted suicide of two young fans. Unlike Ozzy's "Suicide Solution" case, Judas Priest went to trial due to Justice Jerry Whitehead's conclusion that subliminal messages were not afforded First Amendment rights. Nevertheless, no proof was ever given that the subliminal messages were placed on the song knowingly, nor that they had any effect, particularly that of suicide, on the listener. The judgement was in favor of the defendents in this case.
Subliminal Devices
In 1979, Time Magazine reported that tests were being conducted in over 50 department stores using subliminal messages to control shop-lifting using messages such as "I am an honest person" and "stealing is dishonest". One un-named store reported a SAVINGS OF $600,000 BY REDUCING THEFT 37 PERCENT during a nine month period.
United States Patent 6,506,148
Loos January 14, 2003
Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors
Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near 1/2 Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance. Many computer monitors and TV tubes, when displaying pulsed images, emit pulsed electromagnetic fields of sufficient amplitudes to cause such excitation. It is therefore possible to manipulate the nervous system of a subject by pulsing images displayed on a nearby computer monitor or TV set. For the latter, the image pulsing may be imbedded in the program material, or it may be overlaid by modulating a video stream, either as an RF signal or as a video signal.
Self Help
The subliminal "self-help" tape industry, which boasts of being able to teach a person a foreign language while they sleep, or help them lose weight or quit smoking, or a multitude of other applications, is roughly a $50 million per year industry.
US Government
Whether an accidental editing technique or a subliminal insertion, during the 2000 presidential election, the Bush campaign and the Rebulican National Committee ran a television commercial which blipped the word "RATS" for 1/30th of a second when describing Vice President Gore's prescription drug plan. THE AD IN QUESTION RAN 4,400 TIMES IN 33 CITIES (mostly swing states), and cost the Bush campaign $2.5 million.
In 1994, Newsweek ran an article titled, "A Subliminal Dr. Stranglove." The article explained how the FBI Counter-Terrorism Center met with a "long-haired Russian Dr. Strangelove call Igor Smirnov." Igor was consulted about running subliminal messages behind the phone calls while negotiating with David Koresh during the Waco Branch Davidian crisis. Although the FBI claims not to have used the technology, they did meet with this representative from Moscow's Institute of Psycho-Correction.
A RECENT ON-LINE ARTICLE
Sometime in late 1980's, then-Col. Paul E. Vallely, the Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group, United States Army Reserve, Presidio of San Francisco, Ca., co-authored a discussion paper, which received wide and controversial attention within the U.S. military, particularly within the Special Operations community. The paper was titled "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory," and it presented a Nietzschean scheme for waging perpetual psychological warfare against friend and enemy populations alike, and even against the American people.
"MindWar must target all participants to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war."
Leaving nothing to the imagination, the document concluded by emphasizing that MindWar should employ subliminal brainwashing technologies, and weapons that directly attack the targetted population's central nervous system and brain functioning: "There are some purely natural conditions under which minds may become more or less receptive to ideas, and MindWar should take full advantage of such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves," the paper concluded.
Click here for the full article.
Urban Legend
James M. Vicary, who unveiled to the press in 1957 that he had developed a technique to increase popcorn and coke sales using a tachiscope in movie theaters, addmitted five years later in Advertising Age Magazine that his research was fabricated and the press conference was simply a marketing strategy to promote his product.
Scientific Research
In a study which took place at the University of Southhamption, UK in 1999 by Caroline Meyer and Glenn Waller, one hundred women avoided food for at least 4 hours and then completed a task where they were exposed to one of five subliminal visual cues. The dependent variable was the amount eaten subsequently. The results found that women who were exposed to the abandonment que (lonely), ate significantly more than those who were exposed to the neutral que (gallery), the positive cue (happy), or the appetitive cue (hungry). Those with unhealthy eating attitudes also ate more after the hostile emotion cue (angry) than after the neutral cue.
In a study by Anthony G. Greenwald, Eric R. Spangenberg, Anthony R. Pratkanis, and Jay Skenazi in conjunction with the University of Washingtion, Washington State University, the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of California Santa Barbara in 1991, three replications of a double-blind experiments tested subliminal audiotape products that were claimed to improve memory or to increase self-esteem. Conditions of use adhered to manufacturers' recommendations and subjects were limited to persons who desired the affects offered by the tapes. Actual content and labeled content were independently varied so that some subjects who believed they were using memory tapes were actually using self-esteem tapes, and vice-versa. After a month of use, neither the memory nor the self-esteem tapes produced their claimed effects. Nevertheless, a general improvement for all subjects in both memory and self-esteem (a nonspecific placebo effect) was observed, and more than a third of the subjects had the illusion of improvement specific to the domain named on the tape's label.
Numerous other scientific experiments have been conducted in the realm of sub-audible and visual threshholds. The debate still continues as to whether subliminal content has any affect on the recipient of such messages.
This Documentary
To our knowledge, no other documentary has ever been produced which provide an un-biased account of subliminal programming and the history of this phenomenon in American culture.
Moreover, this documentary seeks to answer the following questions: What is a subliminal? What is the subconscious and how does it work? What are the documented cases of subliminals in media? Are they effective? Are subliminals being used purposefully or accidentally? What are the laws regarding subliminals? Is the government using subliminals for propaganda purposes? Is the general public afraid of subliminals? Why or why not? Does the topic warrant a more general awareness from the public?
