“The Century of the Self”

         I found this documentary really interesting. Although I did find whole thing fascinating, I think it was the beginning that surprised me the most. I had never really thought about the origin of PR before. I guess I always figured someone needed to plan a party or some event and poof! there was their agent. I suppose that’s a rather silly thought now, after watching this video. 

        Though I have studied Freud to what I thought was exhausting his thoughts, I still learned a lot about his theories.  When I first learned about him, I truly thought he was crazy. Everything related to an unconscious sexual desire. However, his nephew’s thoughts about unconscious desires in the sense of propaganda seems to make sense to me. It only seems logical that if it’s an unconscious thought, it would be rather easy for an outsider to manipulate; after all, you don’t even know the thought it there.

       I thought the way women began to smoke was very clever or Freud. By placing an American phrase of liberty to a cigarette automatically made women feel empowered by smoking. Also, by stating that a cigarette was symbolic of a penis made women feel independent and free; all that America stands for. 

      The idea of persuading people irrationally by provoking emotions seems so simple, yet it took so long to actually discover this tactic. Freud uses pathos to provoke emotions and persuade his audience. I like that he follows the classic teachings of Aristotle to manipulate in a very new way. Like Freud, informers about Darfur use pathos.  Whenever someone is trying to promote awareness about the genocide they provoke emotions to get people to sympathize with the situation. They use graphic photos and starling facts to affect the masses the same way Freud did.