Sublime or . . .

A new enterprise called the Subliminal Projection Company has patented a technique for exposing T.V. audiences to invisible commercials. The advertising matter is flashed on the screen for a fraction of a second at an intensity of light lower than the propaganda being shown, with the result that the additional propaganda is absorbed without the conscious knowledge of the viewer. Vance Packard, author of "The Hidden Persuaders", suggests the method of flashing "sexual" or "emotional" symbols, in the middle of regular T.V. commercials. "You might flash a picture of a couple making love, or a mother breast-feeding her baby right in the middle of an automobile or cigarette commercial," he explained. "It wouldn't be 'visible' and the emotional impact would be unconsciously very powerful." The sexual symbolism of the automobile is almost unconsciously established in American life. The association of cigarette smoking with breastfeeding may or may not be tenuous. But to judge from what we already know, breast-feeding images should help the sales of anything in the U.S.A.

It seems a good case could be made out for saying that American males exhibit strong tendencies to infantile regression. Freudians make much of their milk drinking, cigar munching, gum chewing, etc., and European anthropologists are always commenting on their apparent confusion between sex and food. ("Cookie", "Honey", "Sugar", "Sweetie - Pie", "Sugar - Candy") Hollywood and the balloon-bust, the obsession with breasts, the whole massive Colossus of Momism—these things have gradually convinced the world that American women wean their infants too early or too late.