The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (Vintage)

by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

  An image is the kind of ideal which becomes real only when it has become public. A corporation which decides to rebuild its image has decided less on a change of heart than on a change of face. The face-lifting operation can usually be done for hire, by the new professions of plastic surgeons and cosmetic experts. The Container Corporation redesigned everything from its checks to its delivery trucks. It sponsored a major advertising campaign featuring “Great Ideas of Western Man,” embellished by reproductions of works by modern painters. In the jargon, Container Corporation was not “pursuing an ideal.” It was “constructing an image.” Once the image was constructed, the object was to make the corporation, its products, and, hopefully, its customers, all fit neatly into the picture.

  Because an image is essentially passive, it need have very little to do with the activities of the corporation itself. In old-fashioned language, image building is the building of reputations, not of characters. When, for example, Daniel J. Edelman & Associates of Chicago undertook a “corporate image job” for Brunswick Corporation, the object, as a business journalist put it, was “to build an image of Brunswick as a company on the go—no longer merely a 115-year-old bowling equipment outfit, but an increasingly diversified company.” Edelman’s spectacular success, widely admired in public relations circles, was accomplished by offering a shrewdly selected range of stories—items of pseudo-events—each well suited to the interests of a particular newspaper or magazine. Fortune was given a personality piece on the president of the corporation, who was depicted as a sportsman turned business genius, and another piece on the sudden emergence of a smaller corporation as a giant; the Associated Press columnist was handed an item on how bowling had become a billion-dollar business; The New York Times received a more sober biographical feature; in the Wall Street Journal was placed a story on the boom in the school equipment industry (tied to a convention of the American Association of School Administrators); for Life Edelman planned the photogenic stunt of completely modernizing a classroom, with Brunswick school furniture, in a single week-end. Each of these was another brush-stroke in the painting of the image. Meanwhile, the company itself, of course, had to do nothing more than go about its business, avoiding scandals or any public information that might discredit the image.

  Sometimes the image build-up is concentrated on the chief executive rather than on the corporation itself. Benjamin Sonnenberg built up an image of Charles Luckman (then president of Lever Brothers) as a supersalesman genius; the effort here was by Sonnenberg, not by Luckman, much less by the corporation as a whole. It was necessary for Luckman to do very little except not break the image. A build-up of Benjamin Fairless (then president of United States Steel Corporation) was accomplished in similar fashion. Perhaps most important were the speeches he gave. The decisive one of these, an attack in 1950 on “jugglers in Congress attempting to alter U.S. business economics,” was written by Phelps H. Adams, who had come from the New York Sun’s Washington Bureau. This success in building up Fairless helped make Adams a vice president for public relations. The build-up of Charles Percy, the imaginative and energetic head of Bell & Howell (by features in Life and elsewhere) has shaped the image of his company.

  When the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey took over the New York television program “Play of the Week” ($600,000 for a thirteen-week sponsorship; later to be considered a bargain in image building), it was building its image as a public-serving corporation. The production of plays, of course, had nothing to do with the production of oil. In an age when the average consumer has only the vaguest notion of the actual activities of a vast, complex corporation, the public image of the corporation substitutes for more specific or more circumstantial notions of what is actually going on. Most corporations today, like most scientists, operate on unintelligible frontiers. Institutional advertising—which, for example, makes us think of the Du Pont Corporation no longer as “Merchants of Death,” but as making “Better Things for Better Living through Chemistry”—is a form of corporate celebrity building. Far from being resentful, we are usually grateful for the image. It is a concrete, graspable picture, taking the place of our amorphous notions.

  As consumers, too, we can similarly be persuaded to buy. When Edward Gottlieb & Associates undertook to promote cognac (and actually succeeded in tripling its sales), they did it by creating images. They distributed cognac free at gourmet dinners, to food editors, to TV cooking programs, and to the White House, where its use would be photographed and reported. When Communications Counselors Inc. took an assignment from the Millinery Institute of America, they gave elegant hats free to fashion models, fashion editors, movie stars, TV performers, and society celebrities. Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Eisenhower, wearing hats, were photographed for national magazines. Hat sales soon showed the profitable effect of people wanting to fit themselves into the picture.

  Amidst lamentation of the rise of conformity in American life, it has seldom been noticed that to “conform” now commonly means to fit into an image. Since the Graphic Revolution the multiplying and vivifying of images has provided the new molds within which the new conformity becomes possible. In England, where the word “conform” had long been in use, it was primarily a transitive verb meaning “to form according to some model”; in the intransitive sense (to say simply, “he conforms”) it meant primarily to comply with the usages of the Church of England. In twentieth-century America the word has acquired a new meaning. Commonly nowadays when we say “he conforms” or when we talk of “conformity,” we usually mention no explicit object. This is because now there is always an object implied. We mean he is trying to fit into an image. “Conformity” is one of the most characteristic words of our age. Its widespread use is, I suspect, an unconscious, inevitable by-product of the rise (and the passivity) of images. Images themselves are invitations to conformity.

  The passivity of conformity is the passivity of fitting into images. The prevalence of images makes possible the prevalence of conformity. Before the age of images, it was commoner to think of a conventional person as one who strove for an ideal of decency or respectability, or who simply wished to avoid being conspicuous. Since the Graphic Revolution we think of him as a “conformist”—one who tries to fit into the images found vividly all around him. In our world of pseudo-events, synthesized images take the place of external standards.

  We have become thoroughly accustomed to the use of images as invitations to behavior. There was a time when if you wanted a lady to buy a hat you would ask her to do so, or if you wanted a man to buy cognac you would describe the virtues of your cognac. Now the persuasion is more indirect. The widely observed decline of salesmanship may be explained in part by the ways in which the Graphic Revolution has made the hypnotic appeal of the image take the place of the persuasive appeal of argument. Why be a salesman when a well-presented product is one which itself draws the consumer into the picture? Products have become props for images into which the seller confidently assumes we will try to fit ourselves.

  (4) An image is vivid and concrete. It often serves its purpose best by appealing to the senses. “The Skin You Love to Touch.” The Old Dutch Cleanser girl with upraised stick (“Chases Dirt”). The bearded cough-drop Smith Brothers. The Arrow Collar Man. “Man of Distinction.” The image is limited. It must be more graspable than any specific list of objectives. It is not enough if the product, the man, or the institution has many good qualities appropriate to it. One or a few must be selected for vivid portrayal.

  (5) An image is simplified. In order to exclude undesired and undesirable aspects, an image must be simpler than the object it represents. “This strong, vigorous symbol, with its four sections bordering a square center,” The Chase Manhattan Bank explains, “is indicative of our Bank’s character and diversity.” “When people just see those initials, IBM, the mechanism is triggered. In a flash the entire corporate image is etched on the mind.” An effective image has the capacity to become hackneyed. Yet it loses its imagic power a
s soon as it passes into the language. Then it has become a word in place of a pseudo-event. We have then forgotten that it was contrived on purpose by certain people for specific ends. The maker of an image wishes to hear it on every tongue. Yet when everybody uses it for his own purposes, it loses its pseudo-eventful quality and ceases to serve its original purpose. This happened to “aspirin,” “mimeograph,” “cellophane,” and “linoleum,” and has almost happened to Kodak, Technicolor, Band-aid, and Kleenex. The most effective image is one simple and distinctive enough to be remembered, yet not so handy as to seem the natural symbol for the whole class of objects it describes.

  (6) An image is ambiguous. It floats somewhere between the imagination and the senses, between expectation and reality. In another way, too, it is ambiguous, for it must not offend. It must suit unpredictable future purposes, and unpredicted changes in taste. Many such changes may have taken place before the image can be remade to contain them. It must be a receptacle for the wishes of different people. Seldom is this so plainly acknowledged as in the recent program by Pincus Brothers Maxwell, clothing manufacturers of Philadelphia. They advertise their new brand of men’s suits, not by a sharply focused photograph, but by a blur standing on the street. “The agency, Zlowe Co., New York,” Printers’ Ink explained (January 20, 1961), “came up with a campaign that discards the fashion plate for personal image. Based on deliberately blurred reflection photography, the illustration is supposed to sell the man through a vague but attractive image he has of himself.” Early in 1961 Volkswagen ran a series of advertisements entitled “The experimental X-93 Volkswagen” below a blurry full-page photograph of an automobile. The fuzzy outlines were designed to make it easier for the viewer to see whatever he wished to see. In advertising, as in painting, the non-representational technique is apt to become more popular, to give the viewer ample scope for his unpredictable but always exaggerating expectations.

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  Strictly speaking, there is no way to unmask an image. An image, like any other pseudo-event, becomes all the more interesting with our every effort to debunk it. For this reason, some of the most effective advertising nowadays consists of circumstantial descriptions of how the advertising images were contrived: how tests were devised, how trademarks were designed, and how the corporate cosmetics were applied. The stage machinery, the processes of fabricating and projecting the image, fascinate us. We are all interested in watching a skillful feat of magic; we are still more interested in looking behind the scenes and seeing precisely how it was made to seem that the lady was sawed in half. The everyday images which flood our experience have this advantage over the tricks of magic: even after we have been taken behind the scenes, we can still enjoy the pleasures of deception. Paradoxically, too, the more we know about the tricks of image building, about the calculation, ingenuity, and effort that have gone into a particular image, the more satisfaction we have from the image itself. The elaborate contrivance proves to us that we are really justified (and not stupid either) in being taken in.

  On a trip to Washington, I found in the usual travel kit at my airplane seat a copy of Voyager: Capital’s Magazine for Air Travelers (May–June, 1960). A leading article, “Memory Triggers,” recounted the effort that Capital Airlines (which issues the magazine) had spent in devising a new corporate image. “The planning for Capital’s new corporate image began almost two years ago,” an Editor’s Note explained, “when the company undertook a thorough evaluation of its public identity.” Numerous firms were considered for the project, and finally, in July, 1959, Lippincott and Margulies, Inc., was assigned the task. I was taken behind the scenes. I was expected to think well of Capital Airlines, not only because the service was good, but equally because so much effort had gone into making an image skillfully designed to impress me favorably:

  The trade-mark is a kind of shorthand symbol for a corporation. It is a memory trigger. If it is a good one, it can in an instant, utilizing conscious and unconscious forces, reflect a corporate image effectively and accurately. That corporate image can be worth tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions in sales.… trade-marks should be adaptable to all media.… visually effective when reduced to the size of a dime.… effective when blown up for use on a billboard … effective in black and white or in color, on television, on letterheads, on the sides of trucks, on packages or in displays.

  A good case in point of the kind of problem faced in this connection is the new Capital Airlines symbol introduced recently. This symbol had to be effective in the highly competitive environment of the busy airport.…

  The symbol must have eye-appeal. But at the same time it is important that it reflect the image that the company is trying to create. The IBM symbol, for example, would be totally wrong for Coca-Cola; Olivetti would be equally wrong for Esso. Yet each of these trade-marks is considered an excellent one in its own right.

  In the battle for consumer recognition—1,581 messages a family every day—the shorthand message these trade-marks send is still being received.

  By being told how the corporation has worked to entice him scientifically, the consumer is reassured that the corporation is really up to date. It cares enough for him to improve its means for attracting him. Thus, in some sense or other, he is not really being deceived at all. This is the first great seduction in history where the seducer’s appeal is increased by disclosing his arts.

  At a meeting of the American Statistical Association in Chicago on March 15, 1961, Mr. David Karr, President of Fairbanks Whitney Corporation, speaking on “A Case Study in Planning a Corporate Image,” described with pride how in 1958 Fairbanks Whitney had taken over the Perm-Texas Corporation, which was then heavily in debt and had a low reputation. The subsidiary corporation was quickly put on a strong financial basis. Then, Mr. Karr explained, “the company’s image building program moved forward rapidly.” The company’s name was changed, and an expensive newspaper advertising campaign was launched. The new company’s establishment of a desalting plant at Elath, Israel, was a climax of these efforts, “typical of the importance played by research and development activities in establishing a proper corporate image.… Israel, with its injunction to ‘make the deserts bloom’ dating from biblical times, and Fairbanks Morse, with roots reaching back more than 100 years in the production of pumps and other water handling equipment, were natural partners in the desalting venture.” “American industry,” Mr. Karr concluded, “is increasingly recognizing the corporate image as a management responsibility equal in importance to finance, operations, and engineering.” But, he warned, “an image program must be built on fact, not fantasy, if it is to gain public acceptance.”

  Fact or fantasy, the image becomes the thing. Its very purpose is to overshadow reality. American life becomes a showcase for images. For frozen pseudo-events.

  II

  THE PECULIARITIES of the modern image and the consequences of image-thinking appear even clearer by contrast to what has been displaced: thinking in ideals. The English word “image,” which comes from the Latin imago, is related to the Latin word imitari, which means “to imitate.” According to common American dictionary definitions, an image is an artificial imitation or representation of the external form of any object, especially of a person.

  Images now displace ideals. But an ideal is much more difficult to define. It is, I suppose we would say now, an old-fashioned word and an old-fashioned notion. “Ideal” is related somehow to “idea.” Our dictionaries define it as a conception of something in its most excellent or perfect form—something that exists only in the mind.

  Differences between “ideal-thinking” and “image-thinking” are the differences between our thinking before and after the Graphic Revolution. An ideal, contrasted to an image, is not synthetic. When we think of an ideal we think of something already there. It was created by tradition, by history, or by God. It is perfect, but it is not simplified. It is not ambiguous (or ambiguous only in a very different sense). Its implicatio
ns are not passive. An ideal is what we actively strive toward, not what we fit into. Credibility is irrelevant. Charity, justice, equality, mercy, are no less ideals because no man or society ever lived up to them. Ideals are needed because in their perfect form they are somehow hard to believe.

  An image is something we have a claim on. It must serve our purposes. Images are means. If a corporation’s image of itself or a man’s image of himself is not useful, it is discarded. Another may fit better. The image is made to order, tailored to us. An ideal, on the other hand, has a claim on us. It does not serve us; we serve it. If we have trouble striving toward it, we assume the matter is with us, and not with the ideal.

  During the last century great historical forces have promoted both the rise of images and the decline of ideals. The Graphic Revolution has multiplied and vivified images. By new machines to make accurate, attractive replicas of face, figure, and voice, of landscape and events, and by new machines to disseminate these images. By newspapers, magazines, cheap books, telephone, telegraph, phonograph, movies, radio, television. The American system of manufacturing, mass production, which originated about a century and a half ago, was based on the revolutionary idea of interchangeable parts. For the first time, every musket or clock or lock would be an image of every other of the same design. Dies and jigs, calipers and machine tools, and thousands of refinements made each item indistinguishable from others of its kind. All this was supported and stimulated by the growth of advertising, by enlarging markets, by competition for markets—in a society where unprecedented numbers could afford to buy.