Daniel Boorstin discuses his book "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America"

Studs Terkel We're told often that we live in a world in which events are cataclysmic, but the events might be described as pseudo-events. Professor Daniel Boorstin of the history department University of Chicago has written a remarkable book several years ago but now available in paperback called The Image and the, the subtitle A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. I'm delighted to have Dr. Boorstin as guest this morning, he also is the author of, oh a number of other works including the recent two volume edition of the American Primer, which could be the basis for another get-together, I trust, with Professor Boorstin. I was thinking, what is-- throughout this book, you-you speak of the pseudo-event in America. Perhaps your first thought about that, then we could hear a couple of voices that would dramatize y-your, your theory.

Daniel Boorstin Sure. Well, I might explain it by the incident that first gave me the idea, Studs. Some years ago, my wife and I-I were out in Colorado mountains with our family and into our rural mailbox, there came a brochure advertising the Chevrolet automobile, the new model Chevrolets. And the center spread was a beautiful color illustration of a man and his family who were vacationing on the-- at the Grand Canyon. And instead of all the people standing around the rim and looking am-amazed and entranced into the colorful deep canyon, they showed a picture of the wife and the two kids sitting in the front seat of the car and the husband standing with his back to the canyon and taking a photograph of his family. And that set me thinking and made me wonder whether this wasn't a kind of a parable of American life that we have all these, these natural beauties and all these spontaneous wonders, after all nobody made the Canyon, it's there, it's a product of geology and history. And instead of our enjoying that, why we make these machines in which we make little pictures that we could look at. Things that we make up, you see?

Studs Terkel Well, of course this is a-- it must have been a relevatory moment because this is the key to your book, and I imagine the key to so many of our lives that unfortunately may turn out to be pseudo-lives. The very beginning, talkin' about your friend and the Grand Canyon and the Koda-- not as good as the Kodachrome shot.

Daniel Boorstin Yes.

Studs Terkel You have a quote here about, "My that's a beautiful baby you have there" says a friend, and the mother says, "Oh that's nothing, you should see his photograph."

Daniel Boorstin Yes, well of course that is, a-a-again, it's just a sort of a, yeah, a parable, an example of a common phenomenon of which all public relations is another example. And I began to wonder whether the reason why this man was taking a picture of his family and paying attention to them and to his camera rather than to, to the spontaneous beauty there, wasn't that maybe he was more interested in something that was made up than he was in the spontaneous thing, you see? And then I began to wonder whether much of our life isn't peculiar. By contrast the lives of people in earlier times in that we're more interested in the artificial than we are in the real. We're into contrived rather than the spontaneous. And when we say that public relations men, when they think up events, you see, to celebrate occasions and so on, when we say that they're misleading us-- that may not be quite accurate. A more accurate way of putting it may be that they're exploiting our preference for the artificial, for the made up, over the spontaneous.

Studs Terkel Question is what has led to this preference? The very beginning you have the, the quote of Max Frisch, the Swiss playwright, the very beginning of your book "Technology, the knack of so arranging the world we don't have to experience it." So it seems as though the experience The pseudo-experience

Daniel Boorstin

Studs Terkel itself, Yes, The pseudo-experience to the actual one.

Daniel Boorstin Well, I think there might be a number of explanations for that. Of course, the explanations were-- are very deep and very long, stretched out over history. But I think one of the reasons [striking match] may be that what technology has accomplished has been to level out experience. That is, for example, the, the ma -- some of the main examples of the superiority of American technology over that of the Western European countries is that we don't experience winter here the way people do over there. In, in Italy, which is a highly civilized country but which doesn't have very much central heating, when winter comes, people are cold, indoors you know it. And when summer comes they're hot. Now in this country, the growth of central heating, which we've developed to a point never before seen in the history of man means that in the, in the winter sometimes we're hotter inside than we, than we, in, in the

Studs Terkel And also I suppose the two cities that might be metaphors for all America would be Los Angeles and Miami, in this matter of the one nice-

Daniel Boorstin Well, you have it all leveled out, that's ri-- we don't have seasons. That's right.

Studs Terkel Seasons,

Daniel Boorstin And people can afford to go there because of technology, you can fly there and, and so on. Well this means if, if experience gets flattened out, you see, if there's less and less difference between the, the wh-what we feel when, when summer comes or winter comes or if at night it's, it's lighter than it is in the daytime and so on, then we have to, to seek other ways of adding interest and variety to our environment.

Studs Terkel And so we come to the question-- it's a quote of yours, "Illusion is big business," it's the world of, in a sense, of illusion that we live and perhaps if we can hear the voice of an acquaintance of mine who is a copy chief of an advertising agency. One of his accounts is soap-- and he's talking. If we can just hear his voice for a moment, and I'm sure this will give you much material to talk about.

Unidentified Man If you're gonna write advertising copy, you simply gotta realize that some things are alike and it's up to you to decide what the difference is gonna be.

Studs Terkel So the audience, as far as the consumer is concerned, you can buy one or the other, it makes no difference. It's how use certain word that may [impel?] 'em to buy your product.

Unidentified Man Word, picture, whatever it happens to be. Let's call it by what-- in the advertising business they call, the dumb guys call an "image" and the smarter guys are becoming able to call a "unit of communication." Which is namely, you know, words and pictures together which is what Life magazine is, Time magazine is, more or less what the modern world of communications is. Call it television if you want to. You can also call it an ad. But it isn't-- you can't, you can't, you can't separate the picture from the word any longer.

Studs Terkel But this job is an interesting job it would seem, in which it doesn't matter as to the quality of the product as against another one of a similar degree of efficiency. It's how you sell it that counts.

Unidentified Man Yeah, once, yeah. Once you, once you make the distinction that the degree is similar then it becomes a product-- a problem of distinguishing yours from the, from the other guy who is, who is similar.

Studs Terkel How h-how do you feel about your job? How do you approach it?

Unidentified Man Cynically. [chuckles] The, the fact is that one of the clients we worked for puts three, at least three, products out in different boxes which are, the -- it's same stuff, it comes out of the same tube, the same vat, and it goes into different boxes with different labels on it. And one advertising agency has one name to sell and another one has another name to sell and a third one has another one. And Mrs. Housewife prefers one over all the others. And you know this is, this is, this th-this, if you want to approach it cynically as I do, at this point in time at least, is an amusing kind of a problem. Because it's amusing insofar it's part of the modern milieu. We're surrounded with amusing problems of like magnitude.

Studs Terkel Why do you approach it cynically?

Unidentified Man Firstly, because I know the pro-- the products are the same. I mean, [laughs] h-how can you help but approach it cynically once you know that? Secondly, because I know there's a guy, my counterpoint, somewhere else doing the same thing I'm doing, you know, tryna tryna come up with the very clever way of saying that his is better than mine, you know, that, that's amusing, too. One of the problems is that the reason a person is cynical is because they're able to stand outside of the environment he finds himself in, right? And look back at himself doing what he's doing, all right. That's known as objectivity, cynicism, and maybe sarca-- maybe, you know, it could be even sincerity. But if you can't stand outside and look back in, you have no point of view about what you're doing at all. You just do it. Okay. So I stand outside and I say cynically, "I'm doing what that guy is doing and isn't he funny man?" Then I have to say, "Ah gee, I'm a funny man, too."

Studs Terkel So my friend here then finds his work amusing. He says he's cynical, because he and his competitor are selling exactly the same product under a different name. And Mrs. Housewife, whom we see on TV so often says, "I prefer this to this," though they're both the same. And then he says, "I find that very amusing, and so I look at myself and I'm amusing."

Daniel Boorstin Yes, well I think that if we compare the situation of our friend whose voice we just heard with the situation of people, say who were living in a village in the, 17th century in England let's say, who, who had to choose between having two-- one of two different cobblers make their, their shoes for them. Now it might very well be that there would be no real difference between the pair of shoes made by one cobbler and that made by another cobbler. A person would prefer the work of his cobbler prehaps because he liked him or he-- the, the cobbler flattered him or that he'd had a long family relationship with him or something. Now I-I think that it may very well be that many of the distinctions that have interested people in the past have been not very important and perhaps not real even when you look at the object that they prefer or don't prefer. But what distinguishes the, the activity of the man whose voice we heard in that of the advertising business and the public relations business is that it's planned. That is, here you have people who, whose business it is to make things look-- seem different. And while while the, the consumer who went to his favorite shoemaker may have been deceiving himself and thinking that his shoes were better than another person's that was his-- he was deceiving himself. So we say nobody had tried to deceive him and he was enjoying certain aspects about the experience of ordering shoes which were perfectly real: the pleasantness of the shop and so on. But now when it has become an industry to persuade people that there is a difference when there isn't, then it plays-- then the, the man who does the, the job himself inevitably may has this kind of attitude and then the consumer is likely to be cynical and say, "Well they tell me that this cigarette is milder but is it, is it really?

Studs Terkel And what happens? What happens then? This is 'course is a question that is unanswerable. But what happens to people in a society where-- that practice is planned deception in almost all aspects of our lives?

Daniel Boorstin Well you spoke of, of-- you quoted a passage in which I said that "Illusion is big business." I was going to suggest [laughs] if you don't mind that one might also say it's big politics-

Studs Terkel Yes.

Daniel Boorstin And big education as well. That is that the, I think it's a mistake to, to pin it on the businessman. This is a-a part of our environment, we are all participating in-- if I may say so Studs, the -- I think we might even ask whether this program that you and I are making-

Studs Terkel The

Daniel Boorstin Is a pseudo-event-

Studs Terkel Indeed.

Daniel Boorstin Or not? Now I think that there, there may be a test here, though, and I would like to, to suggest that this particular-- I hope this program is not entirely a pseudo-event, but I hope also it's partly a pseudo-event. That

Studs Terkel The very fact that we're using radio, this means of mass communication, the very fact that you and I, even though we're talking to one another, are also aware that there are, I trust-

Daniel Boorstin Yeah, but that isn't the only thing. That wouldn't even be the main thing, I would say. And my definition of a studo-- pseudo-event at the beginning of the book, I, I distinguish a pseudo-event from other events by saying that a, a pseudo-event is an event that is planned primarily for the purpose of being reported. That is an interview is-- a newspaper man goes and, and, and sees a politician. He doesn't go to see him because he really wants to have his opinion, he goes to see him because he wants to have something to, to report, to put in the paper. Now that, that I think is the hallmark of pseudo-events, when you have Miss Rheingold or you have a, a particular-- any I don't know, Miss Miss Flashbulb or something-

Studs Terkel Man of the year-

Daniel Boorstin Or Man of the year. These are events that are planned so they'll be reported. Now there is another aspect to it, though, and you might say that people learn by reading reports. And if the event-- I would hope that, for example, our conversation here might have some other interest than simply that it would be reported as that both of us would learn something from it. Least I, I know-

Studs Terkel Well, I-I-I-I have indeed-

Daniel Boorstin I'm learning, I'm learning something from it I'm sure-

Studs Terkel May I just-

Daniel Boorstin And-- yes please.

Studs Terkel Just interject-

Daniel Boorstin Yes.

Studs Terkel A paranthetical comment -- our guest Professor Daniel Boorstin and the theme, by the way, the basis for this conversation, is his book reissued in paperback now Harper Colophon books, The Image colon A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, a most remarkable book, it is to me. This is on the -- answering your question am I, am I learning from you? Yes, indeed.

Daniel Boorstin Well, I know I'm certainly learning from this and insofar as I'm doing that, then this is not a pseudo-event. But it's true I think that the, that pseudo-events do perform many useful functions. That is for example, in the case of the ad man whose voice we heard, different advertising agencies, by thinking up ways of persuading consumers to consume objects in large quantities, make it possible to produce those objects more cheaply and then I think it is also true, probably, that in the long run, the objects which don't function or which function, which hardly function at all shall we say, lose out. Now I think it, it, it's important to probably to distinguish certain kinds of objects from others. That is, in the field say cigarettes and beer would be two categories of, of things where it's really very hard to prove objective differences. I mean you can have blindfold tests and so on, but, but really it's not like the -- say where you have like an automobile which which may not start. If an automobile doesn't start in cold weather, that's a fact, you see.

Studs Terkel Nonetheless in almost all of these products advertised, let us say we're seeing a TV commercial. The pseudo-event is the-- it seems to me is the boy will make-out with that girl if he uses that sort of hair tonic or that sort of cigarette.

Daniel Boorstin Yes,

Studs Terkel Or there'll be status achieved-

Daniel Boorstin Yes.

Studs Terkel If that sort of car is bought.

Daniel Boorstin Yes.

Studs Terkel And, at the same time, the theme itself "is this good or bad for you-"

Daniel Boorstin Yes.

Studs Terkel Physically in every way, is secondary.

Daniel Boorstin Well, now there's another aspect to this that just occurred to me which, that you suggested to me actually, and that is take a magazine, take the New Yorker magazine for example, which I think we probably both read and which I've read for years. Some years ago, I used to start New Yorker by reading the cartoons, and then I would read th-the, the short snippets at the front, the humorous things, and I would read the text, you see. And then after that I would look at the advertising. Now I find I proceed in the opposite direction. I start with the ads and then if I have time, which I usually don't because I've become so [laughs] I've got so engrossed by the advertising which I think is the most interesting part and the best composed part, really, I then turn to the text. Now why is that? I think one of the reasons may be that so many of the magazines we read really present us rather unattractive mirrors of ourselves. So much of the stuff in The New Yorker is an account of-- there'll be lon-- a long story telling about a housewife slicing a loaf of bread or a businessman who, who has problems commuting or something. These are experiences that we-- that are closely related to us but the, the romance, the, the fairytale, the, the sense of adventure you get when you read this advertisement for this, this, this trip you can take to the Galapagos Islands where Darwin was and, and all the,, the high adventure which you can get in an advertisement for a cigarette or a soft drink, you see. Now I think that in this sense, while our, our fiction has become le-- more and more realistic, you know I mean you have done a very im-important work of fiction in your Division Street, but nevertheless you're confined, I mean you've tried to confine yourself into the limits of reality, and there's a certain romance there for peculiar reasons but other reasons-

Studs Terkel Back to this attraction to the ads, isn't there another factor, too? Certainly I know this from my old time television experience and when I see now that the effort, the significance of that one-minute commercial is over and beyond that maybe of the feature film. The amount of dough spent on-- that that is the reason that program is [unintelligible] thus may apply to magazines, too, I don't know. The efforts, all the energy of our friend and a mom-- a moment ago whose voice we heard maybe even more in that than in the-

Daniel Boorstin Yeah.

Studs Terkel This matter concerning life and death.

Daniel Boorstin But I think there is an interesting question here about where we find our romance. And I think that it's true that one of the problems that has afflicted the modern fiction writer is that while in the, say in the, in Victorian times where there wouldn't have been books about the sexual behaviour of the American male or female, it would be possible still for a fiction writer to sort of deal in a gingerly but more explicit fashion with these works, these subjects. Now, however, wi-- the socio-- when sociology has covered the field and we can read real stories about real people and how they react, then what is there left for the, for the writer of prose? And it's possible, this is one explanation that these-- that the desperate experimentalism of, about prose writers who write accounts that, that are, that have very little connectedness to them and

Studs Terkel And now isn't it also that the events of the world today, this technological age in every way and what is happening, revolutions in the triple sense, you know, weaponry, cybernetics, and human rights all at one time make the real and the surreal. There's no line of demarcation, too, between them.

Daniel Boorstin Yes and I think there is a problem, a further problem which is suggested by something you just said and that is that when the romance was found in the text, that is when there was real romance, something we, we were, wouldn't expect you see, in say, in the television program itself or in the story in The New Yorker, then advertising could be more sober. And the earliest ads of course were very prosaic and in fact the earliest advertis-- the, and the earliest newspaper ads were printed in small type, agate type, smaller th-than than display. They weren't allowed to use display type. But gradually it seems to me the world of romance and fantasy has become, moved over into the ar-area of advertising. And this is one of the reasons why it's entrancing. And one of the things that puzzles me, and I've talked to some of my advertising friends about this, is that in recent years I noticed this change just when I came back to this country after having been, been abroad for over a year, I found that the commercials say on television when they presented a, a detergent or a soft drink or something, instead of present-- instead of, of putting, of offering a very attractive man or a very attractive woman, offer a kind of a clown or some dope, some person who, whom you would hope never to be like. And I, I've been trying to find an explanation for this, and my advertising friends can't really give me, give me one, but I think that it may be that advertising has gone full circle. It is reaching -- it's begone the way of sociology in the novel, you see. And I think that may be unfortunate. That is I would rather, if I'm going to be asked to to to buy detergent that I don't want to buy, [laughs] I'd rather be asked at least with a pleas-pleasant and attractive girl's figure

Studs Terkel Yeah, I'm surprised the advertising men haven't mentioned one other thing, 'cause I must admit, I'll confess my confession right now, publicly. Oh about ten years ago I went up to an advertising friend of mine, suggest that coffee commercials have elderly ladies and old Danish and Swedish-like, not the pretty girls, old women and [cool?] sipping hot coffee. We know that now since then elderly people, not mine, this is h-- it had to be eventually, that the fact is "Maybe somebody like me," says some lady who is not a, a starlet or some guy who is not Rock Hudson and "Someone like me," in a sense, you know?

Daniel Boorstin Yes.

Studs Terkel And maybe, therefore, it is more plausible, too.

Daniel Boorstin Yes, but it isn't. But I think that it may very well be, I-I'm sure ob-obviously advertising has to perform that-- has to have a certain kind of plausibility, but I think it may also play another role. That is I think it's probable that, that advertising also ought to be entirely, to be extremely successful, has to play another role. The role of romance. One of the-- I, I, it's bad enough to be me in reality [laughs] I don't want-- I would like to think of the possibility that I could be something else.

Studs Terkel Thus far Professor Boorst-- we've been talking about advertising, the illusion of big business. You mentioned earlier you've touched upon the fact that big politics is illusion. So we come to the aspect of the arranged arranged news. That's what -- my first knowledge as a kid when I first read of William Randolph Hearst and the Spanish-American War, what was the celebrated phrase he said to these journalists? "You make the news, I'll make the war." And so we come to what is a pseudo-- now it seems that all politics today is a pseudo-event whether it's a, a president speaking over TV or a mayor or the opposition. It's, it's news that is-- certain, certain pieces of news are handed out. The media accentuate one piece of the news in contrast to another.

Daniel Boorstin Well I think there are a number of-- we-we should remember that in, in the politics of democracy, it's inevitable that political events should have many of the characteristics of pseudo-events. That is when, when a president or a governor or a mayor makes a statement, he is not making it simply to his lieutenants telling them to carry out orders. He is making the statement for the purpose of it being reported, to persuade public opinion then, to, to be with him, to go along with him on some program. Now so that there is inevitably the, th-the taint, shall we say, or the suspicion of pseudo-event in every political statement in a democracy. On the other hand, there are other aspects to, to democracy that is th-the business of our, of, of a democracy is is conducted by legislators, by judges, by executives. And I think the, the differen-- one, one difference would be, for example, when there used to be a time, actually, when the debates in the Senate were primarily directed to the fellow senators and the Senate of the United States, for example. The great debate in 1850, for example, that preceded the Civil War was a debate among giants and Calhoun an-and Webster and Clay, these men were trying to persuade enough people who were sitting in that room to go with them to sell out one view or another. Now however as you know, an increasing number of speeches in the Senate are given to empty seats, and the speeches given over the heads of the people present to be reported back home. And often those speeches are not made to persuade anyone but to make an impression, to give you th-the idea that this man is a go-getter that he's really on the ball, that he's, he's bright and so on. So that there, there is a difference in the sam-- the same kind of speech can be given for both purposes. But more and more of, of American political life is being shaped in the direction of the pseudo expression, I would say, the pseudo-event. The, the utterance that is given for the purpose of being reported. Now there's one development which is extremely important, which I do touch on in The Image, but which I think is of, well all, of cataclysmic importance in transforming politics. And that is the growth of the concept of public opinion. You know until relatively recently, there wasn't such a notion of-of opin-- of public opinion as being something that you could measure something out there like a horse or something that you could d-delineate, you see. And with the rise of the concept of public opinion there developed the, the notion that you could test opinion. And then this led to the development of opinion-polling, which was a byproduct of market research actually, appropriately, too, and a result of this was that people were asked their opinion not-- in many instances where they didn't have any opinion or where they had never heard of the subject, but rather for the purpose of having something to be reported. And this, then, leads to another point which is something that I think is becomes critical in the present at the present moment in this country. The development of what you might almost call pseudo-opinion. That is, people having opinions that are uttered not because they re-really have any feeling about it, but because the person who is asking them expects them-

Studs Terkel Yes.

Daniel Boorstin To have an opinion and they'll look foolish-

Studs Terkel Yes, yes.

Daniel Boorstin If they don't have an opinion. And I think among the, the incentives to this, and I may say so, not this, this -- there are some, I think many discussion programs on television-

Studs Terkel Yes, of course.

Daniel Boorstin People are gathered together, experts in very different fields. Someone asks you what you think of-

Studs Terkel And some by their very presence on that show are automatically categorized as experts, though he could be a used car dealer, very good on used

Daniel Boorstin

Studs Terkel We're told often that we live in a world in which events are cataclysmic, but the events might be described as pseudo-events. Professor Daniel Boorstin of the history department University of Chicago has written a remarkable book several years ago but now available in paperback called The Image and the, the subtitle A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. I'm delighted to have Dr. Boorstin as guest this morning, he also is the author of, oh a number of other works including the recent two volume edition of the American Primer, which could be the basis for another get-together, I trust, with Professor Boorstin. I was thinking, what is-- throughout this book, you-you speak of the pseudo-event in America. Perhaps your first thought about that, then we could hear a couple of voices that would dramatize y-your, your theory. Sure. Well, I might explain it by the incident that first gave me the idea, Studs. Some years ago, my wife and I-I were out in Colorado mountains with our family and into our rural mailbox, there came a brochure advertising the Chevrolet automobile, the new model Chevrolets. And the center spread was a beautiful color illustration of a man and his family who were vacationing on the-- at the Grand Canyon. And instead of all the people standing around the rim and looking am-amazed and entranced into the colorful deep canyon, they showed a picture of the wife and the two kids sitting in the front seat of the car and the husband standing with his back to the canyon and taking a photograph of his family. And that set me thinking and made me wonder whether this wasn't a kind of a parable of American life that we have all these, these natural beauties and all these spontaneous wonders, after all nobody made the Canyon, it's there, it's a product of geology and history. And instead of our enjoying that, why we make these machines in which we make little pictures that we could look at. Things that we make up, you see? Well, of course this is a-- it must have been a relevatory moment because this is the key to your book, and I imagine the key to so many of our lives that unfortunately may turn out to be pseudo-lives. The very beginning, talkin' about your friend and the Grand Canyon and the Koda-- not as good as the Kodachrome shot. Yes. You have a quote here about, "My that's a beautiful baby you have there" says a friend, and the mother says, "Oh that's nothing, you should see his photograph." Yes, well of course that is, a-a-again, it's just a sort of a, yeah, a parable, an example of a common phenomenon of which all public relations is another example. And I began to wonder whether the reason why this man was taking a picture of his family and paying attention to them and to his camera rather than to, to the spontaneous beauty there, wasn't that maybe he was more interested in something that was made up than he was in the spontaneous thing, you see? And then I began to wonder whether much of our life isn't peculiar. By contrast the lives of people in earlier times in that we're more interested in the artificial than we are in the real. We're into contrived rather than the spontaneous. And when we say that public relations men, when they think up events, you see, to celebrate occasions and so on, when we say that they're misleading us-- that may not be quite accurate. A more accurate way of putting it may be that they're exploiting our preference for the artificial, for the made up, over the spontaneous. Question is what has led to this preference? The very beginning you have the, the quote of Max Frisch, the Swiss playwright, the very beginning of your book "Technology, the knack of so arranging the world we don't have to experience it." So it seems as though the experience itself, Yes, The pseudo-experience to the actual one. Well, I think there might be a number of explanations for that. Of course, the explanations were-- are very deep and very long, stretched out over history. But I think one of the reasons [striking match] may be that what technology has accomplished has been to level out experience. That is, for example, the, the ma -- some of the main examples of the superiority of American technology over that of the Western European countries is that we don't experience winter here the way people do over there. In, in Italy, which is a highly civilized country but which doesn't have very much central heating, when winter comes, people are cold, indoors you know it. And when summer comes they're hot. Now in this country, the growth of central heating, which we've developed to a point never before seen in the history of man means that in the, in the winter sometimes we're hotter inside than we, than we, in, in the -- And also I suppose the two cities that might be metaphors for all America would be Los Angeles and Miami, in this matter of the one nice- Well, you have it all leveled out, that's ri-- we don't have seasons. That's right. Seasons, And people can afford to go there because of technology, you can fly there and, and so on. Well this means if, if experience gets flattened out, you see, if there's less and less difference between the, the wh-what we feel when, when summer comes or winter comes or if at night it's, it's lighter than it is in the daytime and so on, then we have to, to seek other ways of adding interest and variety to our environment. And so we come to the question-- it's a quote of yours, "Illusion is big business," it's the world of, in a sense, of illusion that we live and perhaps if we can hear the voice of an acquaintance of mine who is a copy chief of an advertising agency. One of his accounts is soap-- and he's talking. If we can just hear his voice for a moment, and I'm sure this will give you much material to talk about. If you're gonna write advertising copy, you simply gotta realize that some things are alike and it's up to you to decide what the difference is gonna be. So the audience, as far as the consumer is concerned, you can buy one or the other, it makes no difference. It's how use certain word that may [impel?] 'em to buy your product. Word, picture, whatever it happens to be. Let's call it by what-- in the advertising business they call, the dumb guys call an "image" and the smarter guys are becoming able to call a "unit of communication." Which is namely, you know, words and pictures together which is what Life magazine is, Time magazine is, more or less what the modern world of communications is. Call it television if you want to. You can also call it an ad. But it isn't-- you can't, you can't, you can't separate the picture from the word any longer. But this job is an interesting job it would seem, in which it doesn't matter as to the quality of the product as against another one of a similar degree of efficiency. It's how you sell it that counts. Yeah, once, yeah. Once you, once you make the distinction that the degree is similar then it becomes a product-- a problem of distinguishing yours from the, from the other guy who is, who is similar. How h-how do you feel about your job? How do you approach it? Cynically. [chuckles] The, the fact is that one of the clients we worked for puts three, at least three, products out in different boxes which are, the -- it's same stuff, it comes out of the same tube, the same vat, and it goes into different boxes with different labels on it. And one advertising agency has one name to sell and another one has another name to sell and a third one has another one. And Mrs. Housewife prefers one over all the others. And you know this is, this is, this th-this, if you want to approach it cynically as I do, at this point in time at least, is an amusing kind of a problem. Because it's amusing insofar it's part of the modern milieu. We're surrounded with amusing problems of like magnitude. Why do you approach it cynically? Firstly, because I know the pro-- the products are the same. I mean, [laughs] h-how can you help but approach it cynically once you know that? Secondly, because I know there's a guy, my counterpoint, somewhere else doing the same thing I'm doing, you know, tryna tryna come up with the very clever way of saying that his is better than mine, you know, that, that's amusing, too. One of the problems is that the reason a person is cynical is because they're able to stand outside of the environment he finds himself in, right? And look back at himself doing what he's doing, all right. That's known as objectivity, cynicism, and maybe sarca-- maybe, you know, it could be even sincerity. But if you can't stand outside and look back in, you have no point of view about what you're doing at all. You just do it. Okay. So I stand outside and I say cynically, "I'm doing what that guy is doing and isn't he funny man?" Then I have to say, "Ah gee, I'm a funny man, too." So my friend here then finds his work amusing. He says he's cynical, because he and his competitor are selling exactly the same product under a different name. And Mrs. Housewife, whom we see on TV so often says, "I prefer this to this," though they're both the same. And then he says, "I find that very amusing, and so I look at myself and I'm amusing." Yes, well I think that if we compare the situation of our friend whose voice we just heard with the situation of people, say who were living in a village in the, 17th century in England let's say, who, who had to choose between having two-- one of two different cobblers make their, their shoes for them. Now it might very well be that there would be no real difference between the pair of shoes made by one cobbler and that made by another cobbler. A person would prefer the work of his cobbler prehaps because he liked him or he-- the, the cobbler flattered him or that he'd had a long family relationship with him or something. Now I-I think that it may very well be that many of the distinctions that have interested people in the past have been not very important and perhaps not real even when you look at the object that they prefer or don't prefer. But what distinguishes the, the activity of the man whose voice we heard in that of the advertising business and the public relations business is that it's planned. That is, here you have people who, whose business it is to make things look-- seem different. And while while the, the consumer who went to his favorite shoemaker may have been deceiving himself and thinking that his shoes were better than another person's that was his-- he was deceiving himself. So we say nobody had tried to deceive him and he was enjoying certain aspects about the experience of ordering shoes which were perfectly real: the pleasantness of the shop and so on. But now when it has become an industry to persuade people that there is a difference when there isn't, then it plays-- then the, the man who does the, the job himself inevitably may has this kind of attitude and then the consumer is likely to be cynical and say, "Well they tell me that this cigarette is milder but is it, is it really? And what happens? What happens then? This is 'course is a question that is unanswerable. But what happens to people in a society where-- that practice is planned deception in almost all aspects of our lives? Well you spoke of, of-- you quoted a passage in which I said that "Illusion is big business." I was going to suggest [laughs] if you don't mind that one might also say it's big politics- Yes. And big education as well. That is that the, I think it's a mistake to, to pin it on the businessman. This is a-a part of our environment, we are all participating in-- if I may say so Studs, the -- I think we might even ask whether this program that you and I are making- The Is a pseudo-event- Indeed. Or not? Now I think that there, there may be a test here, though, and I would like to, to suggest that this particular-- I hope this program is not entirely a pseudo-event, but I hope also it's partly a pseudo-event. That is- The very fact that we're using radio, this means of mass communication, the very fact that you and I, even though we're talking to one another, are also aware that there are, I trust- Yeah, but that isn't the only thing. That wouldn't even be the main thing, I would say. And my definition of a studo-- pseudo-event at the beginning of the book, I, I distinguish a pseudo-event from other events by saying that a, a pseudo-event is an event that is planned primarily for the purpose of being reported. That is an interview is-- a newspaper man goes and, and, and sees a politician. He doesn't go to see him because he really wants to have his opinion, he goes to see him because he wants to have something to, to report, to put in the paper. Now that, that I think is the hallmark of pseudo-events, when you have Miss Rheingold or you have a, a particular-- any I don't know, Miss Miss Flashbulb or something- Man of the year- Or Man of the year. These are events that are planned so they'll be reported. Now there is another aspect to it, though, and you might say that people learn by reading reports. And if the event-- I would hope that, for example, our conversation here might have some other interest than simply that it would be reported as that both of us would learn something from it. Least I, I know- Well, I-I-I-I have indeed- I'm learning, I'm learning something from it I'm sure- May I just- And-- yes please. Just interject- Yes. A paranthetical comment -- our guest Professor Daniel Boorstin and the theme, by the way, the basis for this conversation, is his book reissued in paperback now Harper Colophon books, The Image colon A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, a most remarkable book, it is to me. This is on the -- answering your question am I, am I learning from you? Yes, indeed. Well, I know I'm certainly learning from this and insofar as I'm doing that, then this is not a pseudo-event. But it's true I think that the, that pseudo-events do perform many useful functions. That is for example, in the case of the ad man whose voice we heard, different advertising agencies, by thinking up ways of persuading consumers to consume objects in large quantities, make it possible to produce those objects more cheaply and then I think it is also true, probably, that in the long run, the objects which don't function or which function, which hardly function at all shall we say, lose out. Now I think it, it, it's important to probably to distinguish certain kinds of objects from others. That is, in the field say cigarettes and beer would be two categories of, of things where it's really very hard to prove objective differences. I mean you can have blindfold tests and so on, but, but really it's not like the -- say where you have like an automobile which which may not start. If an automobile doesn't start in cold weather, that's a fact, you see. Nonetheless in almost all of these products advertised, let us say we're seeing a TV commercial. The pseudo-event is the-- it seems to me is the boy will make-out with that girl if he uses that sort of hair tonic or that sort of cigarette. Yes, Or there'll be status achieved- Yes. If that sort of car is bought. Yes. And, at the same time, the theme itself "is this good or bad for you-" Yes. Physically in every way, is secondary. Well, now there's another aspect to this that just occurred to me which, that you suggested to me actually, and that is take a magazine, take the New Yorker magazine for example, which I think we probably both read and which I've read for years. Some years ago, I used to start New Yorker by reading the cartoons, and then I would read th-the, the short snippets at the front, the humorous things, and I would read the text, you see. And then after that I would look at the advertising. Now I find I proceed in the opposite direction. I start with the ads and then if I have time, which I usually don't because I've become so [laughs] I've got so engrossed by the advertising which I think is the most interesting part and the best composed part, really, I then turn to the text. Now why is that? I think one of the reasons may be that so many of the magazines we read really present us rather unattractive mirrors of ourselves. So much of the stuff in The New Yorker is an account of-- there'll be lon-- a long story telling about a housewife slicing a loaf of bread or a businessman who, who has problems commuting or something. These are experiences that we-- that are closely related to us but the, the romance, the, the fairytale, the, the sense of adventure you get when you read this advertisement for this, this, this trip you can take to the Galapagos Islands where Darwin was and, and all the,, the high adventure which you can get in an advertisement for a cigarette or a soft drink, you see. Now I think that in this sense, while our, our fiction has become le-- more and more realistic, you know I mean you have done a very im-important work of fiction in your Division Street, but nevertheless you're confined, I mean you've tried to confine yourself into the limits of reality, and there's a certain romance there for peculiar reasons but other reasons- Back to this attraction to the ads, isn't there another factor, too? Certainly I know this from my old time television experience and when I see now that the effort, the significance of that one-minute commercial is over and beyond that maybe of the feature film. The amount of dough spent on-- that that is the reason that program is [unintelligible] thus may apply to magazines, too, I don't know. The efforts, all the energy of our friend and a mom-- a moment ago whose voice we heard maybe even more in that than in the- Yeah. This matter concerning life and death. But I think there is an interesting question here about where we find our romance. And I think that it's true that one of the problems that has afflicted the modern fiction writer is that while in the, say in the, in Victorian times where there wouldn't have been books about the sexual behaviour of the American male or female, it would be possible still for a fiction writer to sort of deal in a gingerly but more explicit fashion with these works, these subjects. Now, however, wi-- the socio-- when sociology has covered the field and we can read real stories about real people and how they react, then what is there left for the, for the writer of prose? And it's possible, this is one explanation that these-- that the desperate experimentalism of, about prose writers who write accounts that, that are, that have very little connectedness to them and their And now isn't it also that the events of the world today, this technological age in every way and what is happening, revolutions in the triple sense, you know, weaponry, cybernetics, and human rights all at one time make the real and the surreal. There's no line of demarcation, too, between them. Yes and I think there is a problem, a further problem which is suggested by something you just said and that is that when the romance was found in the text, that is when there was real romance, something we, we were, wouldn't expect you see, in say, in the television program itself or in the story in The New Yorker, then advertising could be more sober. And the earliest ads of course were very prosaic and in fact the earliest advertis-- the, and the earliest newspaper ads were printed in small type, agate type, smaller th-than than display. They weren't allowed to use display type. But gradually it seems to me the world of romance and fantasy has become, moved over into the ar-area of advertising. And this is one of the reasons why it's entrancing. And one of the things that puzzles me, and I've talked to some of my advertising friends about this, is that in recent years I noticed this change just when I came back to this country after having been, been abroad for over a year, I found that the commercials say on television when they presented a, a detergent or a soft drink or something, instead of present-- instead of, of putting, of offering a very attractive man or a very attractive woman, offer a kind of a clown or some dope, some person who, whom you would hope never to be like. And I, I've been trying to find an explanation for this, and my advertising friends can't really give me, give me one, but I think that it may be that advertising has gone full circle. It is reaching -- it's begone the way of sociology in the novel, you see. And I think that may be unfortunate. That is I would rather, if I'm going to be asked to to to buy detergent that I don't want to buy, [laughs] I'd rather be asked at least with a pleas-pleasant and attractive girl's figure being Yeah, I'm surprised the advertising men haven't mentioned one other thing, 'cause I must admit, I'll confess my confession right now, publicly. Oh about ten years ago I went up to an advertising friend of mine, suggest that coffee commercials have elderly ladies and old Danish and Swedish-like, not the pretty girls, old women and [cool?] sipping hot coffee. We know that now since then elderly people, not mine, this is h-- it had to be eventually, that the fact is "Maybe somebody like me," says some lady who is not a, a starlet or some guy who is not Rock Hudson and "Someone like me," in a sense, you know? Yes. And maybe, therefore, it is more plausible, too. Yes, but it isn't. But I think that it may very well be, I-I'm sure ob-obviously advertising has to perform that-- has to have a certain kind of plausibility, but I think it may also play another role. That is I think it's probable that, that advertising also ought to be entirely, to be extremely successful, has to play another role. The role of romance. One of the-- I, I, it's bad enough to be me in reality [laughs] I don't want-- I would like to think of the possibility that I could be something else. Thus far Professor Boorst-- we've been talking about advertising, the illusion of big business. You mentioned earlier you've touched upon the fact that big politics is illusion. So we come to the aspect of the arranged arranged news. That's what -- my first knowledge as a kid when I first read of William Randolph Hearst and the Spanish-American War, what was the celebrated phrase he said to these journalists? "You make the news, I'll make the war." And so we come to what is a pseudo-- now it seems that all politics today is a pseudo-event whether it's a, a president speaking over TV or a mayor or the opposition. It's, it's news that is-- certain, certain pieces of news are handed out. The media accentuate one piece of the news in contrast to another. Well I think there are a number of-- we-we should remember that in, in the politics of democracy, it's inevitable that political events should have many of the characteristics of pseudo-events. That is when, when a president or a governor or a mayor makes a statement, he is not making it simply to his lieutenants telling them to carry out orders. He is making the statement for the purpose of it being reported, to persuade public opinion then, to, to be with him, to go along with him on some program. Now so that there is inevitably the, th-the taint, shall we say, or the suspicion of pseudo-event in every political statement in a democracy. On the other hand, there are other aspects to, to democracy that is th-the business of our, of, of a democracy is is conducted by legislators, by judges, by executives. And I think the, the differen-- one, one difference would be, for example, when there used to be a time, actually, when the debates in the Senate were primarily directed to the fellow senators and the Senate of the United States, for example. The great debate in 1850, for example, that preceded the Civil War was a debate among giants and Calhoun an-and Webster and Clay, these men were trying to persuade enough people who were sitting in that room to go with them to sell out one view or another. Now however as you know, an increasing number of speeches in the Senate are given to empty seats, and the speeches given over the heads of the people present to be reported back home. And often those speeches are not made to persuade anyone but to make an impression, to give you th-the idea that this man is a go-getter that he's really on the ball, that he's, he's bright and so on. So that there, there is a difference in the sam-- the same kind of speech can be given for both purposes. But more and more of, of American political life is being shaped in the direction of the pseudo expression, I would say, the pseudo-event. The, the utterance that is given for the purpose of being reported. Now there's one development which is extremely important, which I do touch on in The Image, but which I think is of, well all, of cataclysmic importance in transforming politics. And that is the growth of the concept of public opinion. You know until relatively recently, there wasn't such a notion of-of opin-- of public opinion as being something that you could measure something out there like a horse or something that you could d-delineate, you see. And with the rise of the concept of public opinion there developed the, the notion that you could test opinion. And then this led to the development of opinion-polling, which was a byproduct of market research actually, appropriately, too, and a result of this was that people were asked their opinion not-- in many instances where they didn't have any opinion or where they had never heard of the subject, but rather for the purpose of having something to be reported. And this, then, leads to another point which is something that I think is becomes critical in the present at the present moment in this country. The development of what you might almost call pseudo-opinion. That is, people having opinions that are uttered not because they re-really have any feeling about it, but because the person who is asking them expects them- Yes. To have an opinion and they'll look foolish- Yes, yes. If they don't have an opinion. And I think among the, the incentives to this, and I may say so, not this, this -- there are some, I think many discussion programs on television- Yes, of course. People are gathered together, experts in very different fields. Someone asks you what you think of- And some by their very presence on that show are automatically categorized as experts, though he could be a used car dealer, very good on used cars- Of And