TV submission
You: Hi Dario Phong, what are you going to talk about today?
DP: Hi, I'm going to talk about submission.
You: Submission? Who's stupid enough nowadays to let themselves be submitted?
DP: You.
You: Are you kidding?
DP: Sure I'm not. There are hundreds of ways of being submitted nowadays.
You: Sure? Tell me one.
DP: TV. I bet you see TV everyday. And probably you see more than two hours every day. Right?
You: Erh, yes, but what's wrong with that?
DP: Let's pick something at random from TV, advertisements. You see at least a hundred everyday (not only on TV, there's also the radio, inet, newspapers...) You may want or you may not want it, but if you listen to them everyday you'll believe them. They try to make you think in the way they want you to. Isn't it the oldest and most powerful kind of submission? (I don't want to get in the past, but just have a look at different religions.)
You: Well, it is. But how can they make me think in a given way. I just can't believe it.
DP: I never told you that it was easy to believe (and I really don't want to say "Welcome to the real world"). Try to remember some advertisements about, let's say jeans (that was not a random topic). The main goal of a jeans advertisement is to make you buy them. Quite obvious, I agree. But how do they achieve it? The most widely used method (nowadays subliminal messages are illegal) is to show their (supposed) way of thinking, which (surprisingly) matches yours. As they are intending to have a young audience, they always use the same ideas, someone who is cool coz he wears those particular jeans and thus he has more girls than he needs (also note: he) or even a better (I mean that it works better) idea, the world is wrong, I'm right, I'll revolt against everything that I don't like. And then when you like their ideas you buy their clothes. (It's an irony that we actually buy their ideas and not their clothes, isn't it?)
You: Ok, I believe them, and buy their clothes, but what's wrong with it? Where's the submission?
DP: It's around you. But you are only seeing what it's in front of you. I mean you believe that those clothes are good, and then you forget the rest of the companies who sell clothes, and so you are losing the chance to know what they offer. You are losing information. You don't have a wide vision of it. So you are being submissive to one company.
You: I see. But they are only some jeans, it's no real problem to be submitted to a given jeans company.
DP: First of all, I could tell you to the contrary, but I'll not go deep into it. I just want to make you see that they can do the same for everything else. Not only jeans.
You: What else?
DP: I cannot do a list with all of them, as it would be too long. And probably too painful for both me and you to try to face so many things at the same time. I'll talk about another one. The way of thinking of teenagers. Do you like films? I do, but usually I can't pay for the ticket. (That's not the point of the article, though, but you should know that not everybody can afford it. And I better not tell you how many things I can't afford...) When you go to the cinema you want to see a film. And when it's finished, what you have got? Only fun? Wrong, all the films (or at least those ones which you see) explain a story. There are characters, and they have their way of thinking. Maybe you like the way they act and think. And thus you want to be like them...
You: I'm not a child who pretends to be a superhero!
DP: Sure you are not. This kind of influence would be too obvious, you know more than that as you are not a child. However you get influenced. Of course it's not with ideas like "Let's save the world" but you do believe "Let's fuck all the gals!". And here is the point of it. Recently in the US (if the advertisements weren't wrong) there was a film "American pie" which sold a lot of tickets. I have not seen it, and neither do I pretend to. But you can see what's going on only with the film's advertisements. Another "We are virgins and we wanna fuck" film...
You: But we all wanna fuck.
DP: Sure, but we don't make films with it. I mean sex is only an excuse. An excuse for selling more and more, getting even richer. (Sex is widely used in advertisements) In this case what makes me upset in those crappy films is not only the (let's call it lame?) sex but rather the overall impression. They are students. But what do they care about? Sex, fun, their clothes, the way their hair looks. But what about school? getting money? and real worries? What about the real world? Unfortunately such films are only a wall of smoke, made of illusions which you want to believe, and that don't let you see reality.
You: I know what reality is, but I still like seeing those films.
DP: I won't tell you what you have to see. I'll remind you of "Panem et circenses", a Latin phrase. The meaning of it? In the old roman empires Caesars had to keep their power. The power comes from the people. So they had to keep the people glad enough. How? With "Panem" bread and "Circenses" circus.
You: But we are not part of the roman empire, we are near the new millennium. Things have changed, we need something else other than bread and circus.
DP: Things have changed? There is evolution, but the essence of it is the same. You have bread, your job, and circus, the TV and all those crappy teen films. So you are glad enough and they keep their power. Where's the difference? You notice the errors from the past, but never yours. Sad, isn't it?
You: Ok, you have proved that they make us believe something that they want to, but where's the submission there?
DP: If you blindly believe something you become blind, and thus whoever has a wider vision has more power than you. And be sure that he'll use it to make you submit to him.
Just as a conclusion I want to say, that even my words could be a source of submission, however I tried to keep out sentences like "Big brother is watching you" and such things. I don't want to tell you what is true, I just want to make you able to know it. And then you'll be a little bit more free. I'll not be part of the problem, but rather part of the solution.