Mark Crispin Miller’s How to Be Stupid: The Lessons of Channel One discusses television advertisements and how they are a dangerous stimulant that sends subliminal messages to its audience to urge them to buy their product. In this article, Miller focuses primarily on adolescents since Channel One is a television program commonly shown in schools. To explain why adolescents are so affected by advertisements, Miller uses psychoanalysis.
In his article, Miller separates each of the subliminal messages into lessons and analyzes how the ads have manipulated adolescent’s psychology to remain oblivious to the misleading information. In total, there are six lessons. The first two lessons expose the ad companies' wishes for what they want their audience …show more content…
In lesson three Miller discusses how ad are, essentially, a platform to show off their technology (147). Miller states, “It is their mystique of high technology that finally makes those ads and goods alike appear so very powerful…the ads on Channel One routinely try to wow their audience with brisk bits of pseudo-scientific hooey, along with many clever mock-explanatory visuals” (147). The use of technology to prove what is fact is very misleading, yet adolescents almost exclusively believe the things that have these explanations. Mixing fact with fiction is misleading as the viewers often do not know when the facts have stopped. In lesson six Miller explains this. Miller explains how Channel One often has PSA to remind its audience not to smoke, drink and drive, etc,. However Miller explains, “… the PSAs actually make Channel One a more effective means of selling teenagers on all that dubious merchandise- for those kinder, gentler spots actually enhance the crass commercial pitch by masking its true character” (149). Showing how PSAs actually stabilize advertisment's credibility is what leads to adolescents believing that the advertisements will provide the power, complete transformation, and happiness that comes with purchasing their …show more content…
Throughout this passage, Miller constantly refers to the ads being bright, dazzling, luminous, illuminating etc,. In essence Miller is trying to make us understand that the advertisements act as stimuli to our brain and that is why we remember them and listen to them so well. With Miller attaching the look of the ads to how they are interpreted in our brain, it allows the reader to fully understand the full effect ads have on adolescents. For example, in the first few sentences of the portion Ads in Context, Miller compares the ads to the news stories by describing the ads as, "So brightly focused and so dazzlingly insistent, each stands out luminous and sharp in the bewildering murk of factoids like a high-tech lighthouse in a blinding fog" (143). Making the comparison that the ads act as a lighthouse through a fog implies that the ads are guiding the viewer from the boring, dreary and regular world and into the fantastic, bright and euphoric world that they can have once they buy what is being
In his article, Miller separates each of the subliminal messages into lessons and analyzes how the ads have manipulated adolescent’s psychology to remain oblivious to the misleading information. In total, there are six lessons. The first two lessons expose the ad companies' wishes for what they want their audience …show more content…
In lesson three Miller discusses how ad are, essentially, a platform to show off their technology (147). Miller states, “It is their mystique of high technology that finally makes those ads and goods alike appear so very powerful…the ads on Channel One routinely try to wow their audience with brisk bits of pseudo-scientific hooey, along with many clever mock-explanatory visuals” (147). The use of technology to prove what is fact is very misleading, yet adolescents almost exclusively believe the things that have these explanations. Mixing fact with fiction is misleading as the viewers often do not know when the facts have stopped. In lesson six Miller explains this. Miller explains how Channel One often has PSA to remind its audience not to smoke, drink and drive, etc,. However Miller explains, “… the PSAs actually make Channel One a more effective means of selling teenagers on all that dubious merchandise- for those kinder, gentler spots actually enhance the crass commercial pitch by masking its true character” (149). Showing how PSAs actually stabilize advertisment's credibility is what leads to adolescents believing that the advertisements will provide the power, complete transformation, and happiness that comes with purchasing their …show more content…
Throughout this passage, Miller constantly refers to the ads being bright, dazzling, luminous, illuminating etc,. In essence Miller is trying to make us understand that the advertisements act as stimuli to our brain and that is why we remember them and listen to them so well. With Miller attaching the look of the ads to how they are interpreted in our brain, it allows the reader to fully understand the full effect ads have on adolescents. For example, in the first few sentences of the portion Ads in Context, Miller compares the ads to the news stories by describing the ads as, "So brightly focused and so dazzlingly insistent, each stands out luminous and sharp in the bewildering murk of factoids like a high-tech lighthouse in a blinding fog" (143). Making the comparison that the ads act as a lighthouse through a fog implies that the ads are guiding the viewer from the boring, dreary and regular world and into the fantastic, bright and euphoric world that they can have once they buy what is being