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He Cannot Choose But Hear: The Plight of the Captive Auditor
Black, Charles
Black, Charles
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Abstract
Science fiction has been called the literature of extrapolation. In the spring of last year one of the leading magazines devoted to the genre ran a serial, Gravy Planet,' in which the title role is played by an Earth that has come to be dominated by the practices and philosophy of advertising. Common names for food and drink are heard no more; one raises, on Chicken Little and Coffiest, a family whose size is the result of precarious balance between the respective attractions of the promotional campaigns of a gynecological trade-association promising "Babies Without Maybes," and a proprietary formula known as PregNot. Functions of government are performed under the aegis of prestige-laden trade-names, to whose owners the great advertising agencies in midtown New York serve as ministries of propaganda; food inspectors wear armbands of a well-known supermarket chain, and there is a Senator, complete with phony Southern accent, from a soft drink. Advertising itself is ubiquitous; attending to its message is both a necessity and a felt duty of citizenship; objection is dangerous unorthodoxy.