ŽIURI

Authors of Planet of the Apes

Auridas Gajauskas

I would call Jean-Robert Viallet‘s film How TV Messes with Your Head (2010) a storage device of the history of French television whose caretakers are the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, two critics and the director’s statements. The critics’ identities, as opposed to that of B. Stiegler, are not revealed in the film which is why on screen they appear like apparitions of a storage device or an archive, like ghosts having looked through everything. Together they are the authors of How TV Messes with Your Head, a critical discourse of French television and consumerism. What is this film about and how should it be watched?

The authors dwell upon the history of the privatisation of TF1 and some other TV and radio channels as well as their fight for an audience. From the very beginning of the privatisation process, TF1's mission was to “fabricate part of the market for [commercial] networks which could then sell their audience's attention to sponsors.” Ratings are inseparable from profit, this is why the producers of TV shows are obliged to arouse and maintain their viewers’ curiosity. All of this could be achieved by crossing the boundaries of various agreements. By the time of privatisation, television was a machine that couldn't by any means break the middle class consensus; from 1983 onwards there started to emerge the first germs of visual expansion (for instance, the participants of Psy Show telling each other their innermost sexual problems); yet a further ten years later the carnal containers of desire totally take over the supply. Making references to psychoanalysis, B. Stiegler points out quite a number of fundamental schemes under which television has been manipulating people’s attention and participating in their everyday life from behind the screen for thirty years. The research done by the authors of the film indicate that the eighties and the nineties were, indeed, the epoch of voyeurism and exhibitionism whereas approaching the end of the century sadism began to emerge (for example, the possibility to get rid of the weakest). The inventions of these and subsequent schemes unfold between the stimuli of life and death looking for new impulses of influence to determine the ratings.

The creators of the critical documentary How TV Messes with Your Head deliver the following message: the authors of modern society are not its members but rather the marketing of the impulses of life and death stimuli made to be gazed at. We should not be thinking of “television” in general, but rather of television with the commercial standing behind it (and with “the commercial” I mean not only a clip or a product used by one of the participants of the reality show). In zoology exists a remotivation theory based upon empirical data; according to it, females of some species of primates calm down a furious male by turning their back to him. The association of humility and intercourse determined by a fear factor goes into action instantly. The same happens with products hidden in television shows yet are easily obtainable outside the screen when their demand is being implicitly stimulated by the impulses of death. As Patrick Le Lay announced in 2004 that TV channel “TF1 sells available human brain time to Coca-Cola.” In B. Stiegler’s words, it means “brain time without consciousness.” All this considered, the critical position of B. Stiegler and the filmmakers of How TV Messes with Your Head, that it is due not to foreigners that the French were deprived of their culture but rather because of advertising, makes good sense.

On the other hand, I would suggest the audience to take note that the pessimism and the disappointment with visual TV culture present in J.-R. Viallet and co.’s film work is somewhat leftist or even Christian. And it is not so alone because at the centre of the film there is TF1, a channel that was sold by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to his friend from the right. The documentary How TV Messes with Your Head features some proclamations and is primarily intended for those individuals and communities, fearful, desirous, in search of the joy of life, that make up the masses. The filmmakers take up the path of freeing the human mind that was previously trodden by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and other Marxists. In this particular case the Marxism, however, reminds us of the discourse of a weak and gentle lambs’ resentment against the nightmare, being cradled by the psychoanalysis.

The problem left open by J.-R. Viallet in his documentary was solved by the controversial personality Morgan Spurlock in a subtle and classic manner. The concept of his documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011) is based on the idea of creating a film about brands, advertising and product placement which would be entirely financed and only made possible by those very brands, advertising and product placements in the film (on hearing that, Jon Bond, a co-founder of KBS+P, exclaims “it’s genius!”). During the second part of the film we see that seeking legal transparency as well as that of his consciousness M. Spurlock visits the Centre for Imaging Research to take a fear, desire and sex simulation test. Although the test is being done in the late stage of the process it is, nevertheless, it is important for the whole idea of the film. It does, indeed, eliminate the possibility of disclosing deceit and self-deception. Referring to specialists and using technologies, M. Spurlock produces the organon of consciousness or a mental map acting as a document of the authenticity of the director’s decisions (it also helps to get rid of the objectified consciousness and to purify desires). It makes it clear that the only time in M. Spurlock’s brain is that of the film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold whereas his only consciousness is that of the film to be sold as the greatest. Step by step this “non-conscious” time is being filled with brands and their products. The companies, of course, struggle and demand better position which opens up a unique panorama of the advertising industry with the same note above it. When the film time (or else M. Spurlock’s brain) is filled with symbolic (and financial) capital of brands, the film starts approaching its end which means the beginning of its sales process. The selling of The Greatest Movie Ever Sold marks the end of the film. Since Hollywood filmmakers have avoided using famous brands for years, by selling this film the entire Hollywood system is being sold. In general, all the things, cities and people that have found their way into this film were sold 'best ever' already before the premiere. M. Spurlock definitely deserves to be the best of the best but in the film he keeps the golden mean. Looking at a poster with him wearing a branded suit or others we see the face of a whore with traces of commitment, or that of a general, or even that of a dictator proud of his dignitary, dated yet still protecting their master’s and their own symbolic weight. Of all the meetings captured in the film I would like to pay attention to marketing General M. Spurlock’s eye-to-eye meeting with the Jewish mother Lynda Resnick, the owner of POM Wonderful. Such a meeting proves perfectly the present situation of capitalism and advertising when free creation of identities and historical tradition find one another with a common goal – invention of the future.

If a person has no time it means that somebody else has it. B. Stiegler and the position of the filmmakers of How TV Messes with Your Head is naive as they want to steal that time from others. And yet it is important to show how unwarily new identities are being constructed with the help of visual influence on everyday life (a TV-set does not see the room where it stands). According to Sigmund Freud, a human being is different from other animals in that he or she is inclined to see an object of desire undivided. This is the basis of his evolution and that of his environment. By realising that, a far more relevant way of life seems to be seeing “full” images where hidden time of yours would really be yours. The evolution of an image and of a human being can take up all the possible directions but only the authors of an image know how people looking at those images could evolve and how their world may change. Such authors are the subjects of the other films of the special program Escaping Realities as well.