Use your Illusion
"Hitler managed to scare all of Europe to its knees a month ago, but he at least had an army and an air force to back up his shrieking words. But Mr. Welles scared thousands into demoralization with nothing at all."
- Dorothy Thompson,
New York Tribune, 1938
Don't believe everything you hear
Unbeknownst to many, the greatest war ever fought on American soil started on October 30, 1938, at 8pm on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. This was a time before television, when radio transmissions were what captivated the masses. Over the following hours, a good percentage of the American radio audience became convinced that aliens from Mars had landed and invaded Earth. The United States was being destroyed.
Many in the New England area loaded up their cars and fled from their homes. In other areas, people congregated in churches. Many improvised gas masks. All across the USA, women miscarried and an influx in premature births was reported. Deaths, too, were reported but never confirmed. People everywhere became hysterical. They thought the end was near. They were oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in the Orson Welles radio play The War of the Worlds, adapted from the book by H.G. Wells. Much like Stanisław Lem's deluded populace, people were stuck in a kind of virtual world in which fiction was confused for fact.
The power of radio had fooled the listeners. They had become accustomed to believing everything they heard, without questioning. Now they had learned the price for gullibility-the hard way.
Don't believe everything you see
Later television began to dominate and quickly won the trust of the herd. By the 1950s, quiz shows had become America's favorite pastime, reshaping the prevailing model of intellectual life and providing a service to teachers nationwide.
When Edward Hilgemeier, Jr., a 24-year-old contestant-hopeful for the quiz show Dotto discovered answers to the questions for the quiz show in the hands of one of the show's current contestants, a Ms. Marie Winn, he was paid $1500 to keep quiet. He later squealed to the New York Post, but they refused to print his story. In fact, most newspapers refused to reveal the various quiz show hoaxes perpetrated on the public, until President Eisenhower made the following announcement: "I share the American general reaction of almost bewilderment that people could conspire to confuse and deceive the American people. Nobody will be satisfied until this whole mess is cleaned up."
Probably the most famous collaborator in this deception was quiz show contestant Charles Lincoln Van Doren, an associate professor at Columbia University recruited by the quiz show Twenty One with full knowledge of how the fix would be operated. During the show, Van Doren would act nervously and breathe heavily as he feigned a struggle to answer questions to which he already knew the answer.
This scandal prompted the networks to set up standards and practices divisions to police game shows. In May of 1959, the Federal Communications Commision (FCC) levied a $10,000 fine, a year in jail, or both for anyone influencing, prearranging or predetermining the outcome of any TV contest of knowledge, skill or chance. For a time, all quiz shows that gave away large sums of money disappeared from television.
Girl you know it's not true
In the late 1980s, a group called Milli Vanilli sold ten million albums and scored five Top Five singles, including three number one hits. In 1990, they won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist for their second album, Girl You Know It's True. But they didn't hold on to it for long: At a press conference that summer it was announced that the Grammy had been revoked. It had leaked (although some say there had never been much of a secret about it) that the group's putative members, Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, had misrepresented their contributions to their own music, never having actually performed any of the vocals on any of their songs. Their photos had been pictured on the album covers and they had lip-synched in concert. The vocals had actually been performed by Charles Shaw, John Davis and Brad Howe.
Although Milli Vanilli have since been used as the crown example of utter shallowness in music, they were hardly unique. Other bands have also been fronted by lip-synchers and, for all we know, plenty of them still are.
Back in force
After the Orson Welles episode, Dorothy Thompson of the New York Tribune wrote: "All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time. They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic."
Orson Welles first demonstrated the power of the media. And by the 1950's the fakery was intentional-the work of producers who had concluded that they could create fictional game shows that would be more exciting than the real thing.
Now simulations have become commonplace and attempts to use them to trick the public are the rule rather than the exception. And as the increasing dominance of one single global culture continues to develop, tens of millions of people around the world are drawn into the same illusion. The ability to create deceptive simulations, especially for television, has become essential to the exercise of power.
Americans like to imagine themselves engaged in a heroic struggle. They long to bring the enemy to battle and annihilate him on primetime TV. Unfortunately, "terror" is not something you can wage a televisable war against. You need an enemy, not a method. Because there are too few terrorists to keep the evening news stories on them fresh, the war party had to come up with a better enemy. So they chose two Third World nations-Afghanistan and Iraq-as the proxies. Now they are creating more and more enemies who are forced to use the only means available to an impoverished Third World country-terror. Cycles repeat. Deceptive simulations dance before our eyes. And we keep learning the price for gullibility, the hard way.
- Dorothy Thompson,
New York Tribune, 1938
Don't believe everything you hear
Unbeknownst to many, the greatest war ever fought on American soil started on October 30, 1938, at 8pm on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. This was a time before television, when radio transmissions were what captivated the masses. Over the following hours, a good percentage of the American radio audience became convinced that aliens from Mars had landed and invaded Earth. The United States was being destroyed.
Many in the New England area loaded up their cars and fled from their homes. In other areas, people congregated in churches. Many improvised gas masks. All across the USA, women miscarried and an influx in premature births was reported. Deaths, too, were reported but never confirmed. People everywhere became hysterical. They thought the end was near. They were oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in the Orson Welles radio play The War of the Worlds, adapted from the book by H.G. Wells. Much like Stanisław Lem's deluded populace, people were stuck in a kind of virtual world in which fiction was confused for fact.
The power of radio had fooled the listeners. They had become accustomed to believing everything they heard, without questioning. Now they had learned the price for gullibility-the hard way.
Don't believe everything you see
Later television began to dominate and quickly won the trust of the herd. By the 1950s, quiz shows had become America's favorite pastime, reshaping the prevailing model of intellectual life and providing a service to teachers nationwide.
When Edward Hilgemeier, Jr., a 24-year-old contestant-hopeful for the quiz show Dotto discovered answers to the questions for the quiz show in the hands of one of the show's current contestants, a Ms. Marie Winn, he was paid $1500 to keep quiet. He later squealed to the New York Post, but they refused to print his story. In fact, most newspapers refused to reveal the various quiz show hoaxes perpetrated on the public, until President Eisenhower made the following announcement: "I share the American general reaction of almost bewilderment that people could conspire to confuse and deceive the American people. Nobody will be satisfied until this whole mess is cleaned up."
Probably the most famous collaborator in this deception was quiz show contestant Charles Lincoln Van Doren, an associate professor at Columbia University recruited by the quiz show Twenty One with full knowledge of how the fix would be operated. During the show, Van Doren would act nervously and breathe heavily as he feigned a struggle to answer questions to which he already knew the answer.
This scandal prompted the networks to set up standards and practices divisions to police game shows. In May of 1959, the Federal Communications Commision (FCC) levied a $10,000 fine, a year in jail, or both for anyone influencing, prearranging or predetermining the outcome of any TV contest of knowledge, skill or chance. For a time, all quiz shows that gave away large sums of money disappeared from television.
Girl you know it's not true
In the late 1980s, a group called Milli Vanilli sold ten million albums and scored five Top Five singles, including three number one hits. In 1990, they won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist for their second album, Girl You Know It's True. But they didn't hold on to it for long: At a press conference that summer it was announced that the Grammy had been revoked. It had leaked (although some say there had never been much of a secret about it) that the group's putative members, Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, had misrepresented their contributions to their own music, never having actually performed any of the vocals on any of their songs. Their photos had been pictured on the album covers and they had lip-synched in concert. The vocals had actually been performed by Charles Shaw, John Davis and Brad Howe.
Although Milli Vanilli have since been used as the crown example of utter shallowness in music, they were hardly unique. Other bands have also been fronted by lip-synchers and, for all we know, plenty of them still are.
Back in force
After the Orson Welles episode, Dorothy Thompson of the New York Tribune wrote: "All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time. They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic."
Orson Welles first demonstrated the power of the media. And by the 1950's the fakery was intentional-the work of producers who had concluded that they could create fictional game shows that would be more exciting than the real thing.
Now simulations have become commonplace and attempts to use them to trick the public are the rule rather than the exception. And as the increasing dominance of one single global culture continues to develop, tens of millions of people around the world are drawn into the same illusion. The ability to create deceptive simulations, especially for television, has become essential to the exercise of power.
Americans like to imagine themselves engaged in a heroic struggle. They long to bring the enemy to battle and annihilate him on primetime TV. Unfortunately, "terror" is not something you can wage a televisable war against. You need an enemy, not a method. Because there are too few terrorists to keep the evening news stories on them fresh, the war party had to come up with a better enemy. So they chose two Third World nations-Afghanistan and Iraq-as the proxies. Now they are creating more and more enemies who are forced to use the only means available to an impoverished Third World country-terror. Cycles repeat. Deceptive simulations dance before our eyes. And we keep learning the price for gullibility, the hard way.
