Swift Viewing
eBook - PDF

Swift Viewing

The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Swift Viewing

The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence

About this book

Since the late 1950s, the idea that hidden, imperceptible messages could influence mass behavior has been debated, feared, and ridiculed. In Swift Viewing, Charles R. Acland reveals the secret story of subliminal influence, showing how an obscure concept from experimental psychology became a mainstream belief about our vulnerability to manipulation in an age of media clutter. He chronicles the enduring popularity of the dubious claims about subliminal influence, tracking their migration from nineteenth-century hypnotism to twentieth-century front-page news. His expansive history of popular concern about subliminal messages shows how the notion of "hidden persuaders" became a vernacular media critique, one reflecting anxiety about a rapidly expanding media environment. Through a deep archive of eclectic examples, including educational technology in the American classroom, mind-control tropes in science fiction, Marshall McLuhan's media theories, and sensational claims in the late 1950s about subliminal advertising, Acland establishes the subliminal as both a product of and a balm for information overload.

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Yes, you can access Swift Viewing by Charles R. Acland in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Film History & Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. List of Illustrations
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Prologue: Black Magic on Mars
  5. One: Subliminal Communication as Vernacular Media Critique
  6. Two: Mind, Media, and Remote Control
  7. Three: The Swift View
  8. Four: Mind-Probing Admen
  9. Five: Crossing the Popular Threshold
  10. Six: The Hidden and the Overload
  11. Seven: From Mass Brainwashing to Rapid Mass Learning
  12. Eight: Textual Strategies for Media Saturation
  13. Nine: Critical Reasoning in a Cluttered Age
  14. Notes
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index