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PLEASE, PLEASE ME - Shotwell

The Pleasure Principle in Politics
PLEASE, PLEASE ME: The Pleasure Principle in Politics
Gregg Shotwell 9/17/08


Pleasure is primarily relief from tension. For example, one thinks about smoking a cigarette but delays gratification because the boss is watching. The craving intensifies until the boss leaves and the door to temptation swings open. In reality smoke aggravates the lungs and nicotine agitates the nerves, but the experience is pleasurable because it satisfies the craving and relieves the tension imposed by social restrictions.

Television advertisers (all TV shows are advertisements for TV) prey upon the pleasure principle. Violence and conspicuous consumption gratify our cravings, if only subliminally. We want what we want when we want it and anyone who gets in our way deserves to be knocked out. We all long to consume, but some of the tensions we desire relief from are not readily admissible.

Buddy movies which feature a black male and a white male have become standard in popular film. Feelings of fear, mistrust, guilt, and resentment buried in a culture steeped with racial tension are subconsciously relieved by the camaraderie and ease of the actors. In advertisements race relations are always featured harmoniously. Their rapport is smooth and refreshing.

The first buddy movie that featured an African-American in a lead role with a white partner was the TV series, “I Spy”. Robert Culp was an Ivy Leaguer and tennis pro whose impulsive antics got him in trouble. Bill Cosby was the scholar, cool and collected, who posed as Culp’s trainer and got him out of trouble. Race was never an issue in this popular TV show filmed from 1965 to 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement—and what a relief it was.

Which brings us to the latest buddy movie, Obama & Biden. Like Bill Cosby, one of Obama’s gifts is making whites feel safe. The media stirs up racial tension and doubt, and Obama comes off cool, calm, and certain. He’s articulate, thoughtful, and genuine. Biden, the elder of the two, is the trouble maker, a loose cannon brewed in the kettle of Irish-American politics. Obama & Biden is “I Spy” ala 2008 where (as Marshall McLuhan said in the sixties) “The Medium is the Message”.

Or was that “Massage”?

The McCain/Palin ticket also transmits a subliminal message. The fear and doubts of an old man’s ailments are assuaged by posing him with a younger woman. But the overt pitch is a card trick— “Maverick”— a western TV series popular from 1957 to 1962 about two con men.

Brothers Bret and Bart Maverick galloped across the wild west one step ahead of the hot trouble pursuing them. Don’t we all want to get away lucky? Leave the past behind? To top it off the Mavericks made a lot of money without working which is supremely gratifying for TV viewers.

The dapper Mavericks preferred poker to manual labor and would blow dodge rather than face the consequences of their shenanigans. For example, McCain says American soldiers can stay in Iraq for a hundred years and then he flies home on his wife’s private jet.

Viewers are always pleased to get the inside joke.

The Sarah Palin soap opera is likewise a pleasure to watch as it relieves social tension with a supersizer of small talk. The pleasure of gossip is derived from the relief that someone has a messier life than yours; that you may have a crummy job but you’re not in over your head; and thank God, you didn’t name your sons Trig and Track. Everyone sighed with relief when McCain picked Palin, because voters desire relief from decisions and politicians are pleased to present diversions.

“Mud” as Marshall McLuhan once said, “sometimes gives the illusion of depth,” but nothing deepens the illusion more than lipstick on a pit bull.
 
 

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