The Subliminal Man
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The Subliminal Man
James Graham Ballard
J. G. Ballard is a British writer who has been called a “poet of death.” But Ballard, especially in the early part of his career, also wrote excellent extrapolative science fiction on social themes, and this haunting story is one of his finest.
Here Ballard speaks of the enslavement of the unconscious, of an economic system that forces people to consume against their will through the use of technology. Ballard makes an important assumption-the belief (at least implicitly) that people would not want to consume at high rates if they were not “forced” to do so. In a profound sense, “The Subliminal Man” is a basic critique of the underlying dichotomy that pervades the concept of advertising-that of needs versus wants. We all have basic needs like food, sex, clothing, and shelter. Almost everything else (including the book you are now reading) is wants, often artificially created by the culture in which we live. Think how much more difficult resistance would become if the technology of subliminal advertising were forced upon us. This threat goes beyond the financial difficulties that families would be in. We would also be threatened with dehumanization, for it is the ability to think and chose that separates us from the rest of the animal world.
Ballard’s story also assumes that industry will continue to manufacture products that will easily and quickly wear out, or if this is not the case, then it will find ways to make us dissatisfied with the products we now have. There is little evidence that things will change for the better.
The Subliminal Man
J. G. Ballard
“The signs, Doctor! Have you see the signs?”
Frowning with annoyance, Dr. Franklin quickened his pace and hurried down the hospital steps toward the line of parked cars. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of a thin, scruffy young man in ragged sandals and lime-stained jeans waving to him from the far side of the drive, then break into a run when he saw Franklin try to evade him.
“Dr. Franklin! The signs!”
Head down, Franklin swerved around an elderly couple approaching the outpatients department. His car was over a hundred yards away. Too tired to start running himself, he waited for the young man to catch him up.
“All right, Hathaway, what is it this time?” he snapped irritably. “I’m getting sick of you hanging around here all day.”
Hathaway lurched to a halt in front of him, uncut black hair like an awning over his eyes. He brushed it back with a clawlike hand and turned on a wild smile, obviously glad to see Franklin and oblivious of the latter’s hostility.
“I’ve been trying to reach you at night, Doctor, but your wife always puts the phone down on me,” he explained without a hint of rancor, as if well used to this kind of snub. “And I didn’t want to look for you inside the Clinic.” They were standing by a privet hedge that shielded them from the lower windows of the main administrative block, but Franklin ’s regular rendezvous with Hathaway and his strange messianic cries had already been the subject of amused comment.
Franklin began to say: “I appreciate that-“ but Hathaway brushed this aside. “Forget it, Doctor, there are more important things happening now. They’ve started to build the first big signs! Over a hundred feet high, on the traffic islands just outside town. They’ll soon have all the approach roads covered. When they do we might as well stop thinking.
“Your trouble is that you’re thinking too much,” Franklin told him. “You’ve been rambling about these signs for weeks now. Tell me, have you actually seen one signaling?”
Hathaway tore a handful of leaves from the hedge, exasperated by this irrelevancy. “Of course I haven’t, that’s the whole point, Doctor. - He dropped his voice as a group of nurses walked past, watching him uneasily out of the corners of their eyes. “The construction gangs were out again last night, laying huge power cables. You’ll see them on the way home. Everything’s nearly ready now.”
“They’re traffic signs,” Franklin explained patiently. “The flyover has just been completed. Hathaway, for God’s sake, relax. Try to think of Dora and the child.”
“I am thinking of them!” Hathaway’s voice rose to a controlled scream. “Those cables were 40,000-volt lines, Doctor, with terrific switch gear. The trucks were loaded with enormous metal scaffolds. Tomorrow they’ll start lifting them up all over the city, they’ll block off half the sky! What do you think Dora will be like after six months of that? We’ve got to stop them, Doctor, they’re trying to transistorize our brains!”
Embarrassed by Hathaway’s high-pitched shouting, Franklin had momentarily lost his sense of direction and helplessly searched the sea of cars for his own. “Hathaway, I can’t waste any more time talking to you. Believe me, you need skilled help; these obsessions are beginning to master you.”
Hathaway started to protest, and Franklin raised his right hand firmly. “Listen. For the last time, if you can show me one of these new signs, and prove that it’s transmitting subliminal commands, I’ll go to the police with you. But you haven’t got a shred of evidence, and you know it. Subliminal advertising was banned thirty years ago, and the laws have never been repealed. Anyway, the technique was unsatisfactory; any success it had was marginal. Your idea of a huge conspiracy with all these thousands of giant signs everywhere is preposterous. “
“All right, Doctor.” Hathaway leaned against the bonnet of one of the cars. His moods seemed to switch abruptly from one level to the next. He watched Franklin amiably. “What’s the matter-lost your car?”
“All your damned shouting has confused me. ” Franklin pulled out his ignition key and read the number off the tag: -NYN 299-566-36721--can you see it?”
Hathaway leaned around lazily, one sandal up on the bonnet, surveying the square of a thousand or so cars facing them. “Difficult, isn’t it, when they’re all identical, even the same color? Thirty years ago there were about ten different makes, each in a dozen colors.”
Franklin spotted his car, began to walk toward it. “Sixty years ago there were a hundred makes. What of it? The economies of standardization are obviously bought at a price.9’
Hathaway drummed his palm lightly on the roofs. “But these cars aren’t all that cheap, Doctor. In fact, comparing them on an average income basis with those of thirty years ago they’re about forty percent more expensive. With only one make being produced you’d expect a substantial reduction in price, not an increase.”
“Maybe,” Franklin said, opening his door. “But mechanically the cars of today are far more sophisticated. They’re lighter, more durable, safer to drive.”
Hathaway shook his head skeptically. “They bore me. The same model, same styling, same color, year after year. It’s a sort of communism. “ He rubbed a greasy finger over the windshield. “This is a new one again, isn’t it, Doctor? Where’s the old one-you only had it for three months?”
“I traded it in,” Franklin told him, starting the engine. “If you ever had any money you’d realize that it’s the most economical way of owning a car. You don’t keep driving the same one until it falls apart. It’s the same with everything else-television sets, washing machines, refrigerators. But you aren’t faced with the problem-you haven’t got any. “
Hathaway ignored the gibe, and leaned his elbow on Franklin ’s window. “Not a bad idea, either, Doctor. It gives me time to think. I’m not working a twelve-hour day to pay for a lot of things I’m too busy to use before they’re obsolete. “
He waved as Franklin reversed the car out of its line, then shouted into the wake of exhaust: “Drive with your eyes closed, Doctor!”
On the way home Franklin kept carefully to the slowest of the fourspeed lanes. As usual after his discussions with Hathaway he felt vaguely depressed. He rea
lized that unconsciously he envied Hathaway his footloose existence. Despite the grimy cold-water apartment in the shadow and roar of the flyover, despite his nagging wife and their sick child, and the endless altercations with the landlord and the supermarket credit manager, Hathaway still retained his freedom intact. Spared any responsibilities, he could resist the smallest encroachment upon him by the rest of society, if only by generating obsessive fantasies such as his latest one about subliminal advertising.
The ability to react to stimuli, even irrationally, was a valid criterion of freedom. By contrast, what freedom Franklin possessed was peripheral, sharply demarked by the manifold responsibilities in the center of his life-the three mortgages on his home, the mandatory rounds of cocktail and TV parties, the private consultancy occupying most of Saturday which paid the installments on the multitude of household gadgets, clothes and past holidays. About the only time he had to himself was driving to and from work.
But at least the roads were magnificent. Whatever other criticisms might be leveled at the present society, it certainly knew how to build roads. Eight-, ten- and twelve-lane expressways interlaced across the continent, plunging from overhead causeways into the giant car parks in the center of the cities, or dividing into the great suburban arteries with their multiacre parking aprons around the marketing centers. Together the roadways and car parks covered more than a third of the country’s entire area, and in the neighborhood of the cities the proportion was higher. The old cities were surrounded by the vast, dazzling abstract sculptures of the cloverleafs and flyovers, but even so the congestion was unremitting.
The ten-mile journey to his home in fact covered over twenty-five miles and took him twice as long as it had done before the construction of the expressway, the additional miles contained within the three giant cloverleafs. New cities were springing from the motels, caf6s and car marts around the highways. At the slightest hint of an intersection a shantytown of shacks and filling stations sprawled away among the forest of electric signs and route indicators, many of them substantial cities.
All around him cars bulleted along, streaming toward the suburbs. Relaxed by the smooth motion of the car, Franklin edged outward into the next speed lane. As he accelerated from 40 to 50 mph a strident, ear-jarring noise drummed out from his tires, shaking the chassis of the car. Ostensibly as an aid to lane discipline, the surface of the road was covered with a mesh of smaller rubber studs, spaced progressively farther apart in each of the lanes so that the tire hum resonated exactly on 40, 50, 60 and 70 mph. Driving at an intermediate speed for more than a few seconds became physiologically painful, and soon resulted in damage to the car and tires.
When the studs wore out they were replaced by slightly different patterns, matching those on the latest tires, so that regular tire changes were necessary, increasing the safety and efficiency of the expressway. It also increased the revenues of the car and tire manufacturers, for most cars over six months old soon fell to pieces under the steady battering, but this was regarded as a desirable end, the greater turnover Judith started to protest he added firmly: “Look, I don’t want a new infrared barbecue spit, we’ve only had this one for two months. Damn it, it’s not even a different model.”
“But, darling, don’t you see, it makes it cheaper if you keep buying new ones. We’ll have to trade ours in at the end of the year anyway, we signed the contract, and this way we save at least twenty dollars. These Spot Bargains aren’t just a gimmick, you know. I’ve been glued to that set all day.” A note of irritation had crept into her voice, but Franklin sat his ground, doggedly ignoring the clock.
“Right, we lose twenty dollars. It’s worth it.” Before she could remonstrate he said: “Judith, pleas e, you probably took the wrong number down anyway.” As she shrugged and went over to the bar he called: “Make it a stiff one. I see we have health foods on the menu.”
“They’re good for you, darling. You know you can’t live on ordinary foods all the time. They don’t contain any proteins or vitamins. You’re always saying we ought to be like people in the old days and eat nothing but health foods.”
“I would, but they smell so awful.” Franklin lay back, nose in the glass of whiskey, gazing at the darkened skyline outside.
A quarter of a mile away, gleaming out above the roof of the neighborhood supermarket, were the five red beacon lights. Now and then, as the headlamps of the Spot Bargainers swung up across the face of the building, he could see the square massive bulk of the giant sign clearly silhouetted against the evening sky.
“Judith!” He went into the kitchen and took her over to the window. “That sign, just behind the supermarket. When did they put it up?”
“I don’t know.” Judith peered at him curiously. “Why are you so worried, Robert? Isn’t it something to do with the airport?”
Franklin stared thoughtfully at the dark hull of the sign. “So everyone probably thinks.”
Carefully he poured his whiskey into the sink.
After parking his car on the supermarket apron at seven o’clock the next morning, Franklin carefully emptied his pockets and stacked the coins in the dashboard locker. The supermarket was already busy with early-morning shoppers and the line of thirty turnstiles clicked and slammed. Since the introduction of the “24-hour spending day” the shopping complex was never closed. The bulk of the shoppers were discount buyers, housewives contracted to make huge volume purchases of food, clothing and appliances against substantial overall price cuts, and forced to drive around all day from supermarket to supermarket, frantically trying to keep pace with their purchase schedules and grappling with the added incentives inserted to keep the schemes alive.
Many of the women had teamed up, and as Franklin walked over to the entrance a pack of them charged toward their cars, stuffing their pay slips into their bags and gesticulating at each other. A moment later their cars roared off in a convoy to the next marketing zone.
A large neon sign over the entrance listed the latest discount-a mere 5 percent--calculated on the volume of turnover. The highest discounts, sometimes up to 25 percent, were earned in the housing estates where junior white-collar workers lived. There, spending -had a strong social incentive, and the desire to be the highest spender in the neighborhood was given moral reinforcement by the system of listing all the names and their accumulating cash totals on a huge electric sign in the supermarket foyers. The higher the spender, the greater his contribution to the discounts enjoyed by others. The lowest-spending were regarded as social criminals, free-riding on the backs of others.
Luckily this system had yet to be adopted in Franklin ’s neighborhood. Not because the professional men and their wives were able to exercise more discretion, but because their higher incomes allowed them to contract into more expensive discount schemes operated by the big department stores in the city.
Ten yards from the entrance Franklin paused, looking up at the huge metal sign mounted in an enclosure at the edge of the car park. Unlike the other signs and billboards that proliferated everywhere, no attempt had been made to decorate it, or disguise the gaunt bare rectangle of riveted steel mesh. Power lines wound down its sides, and the concrete surface of the car park was crossed by a long scar where a cable had been sunk.
Franklin strolled along, then fifty feet from the sign stopped and turned, realizing that he would be late for the hospital and needed a new carton of cigarettes. A dim but powerful humming emanated from the transformers below the sign, fading as he retraced his steps to the supermarket.
Going over to the automats in the foyer, he felt for his change, then whistled sharply when he remembered why he had deliberately emptied his pockets.
“The cunning thing!” he said, loud enough for two shoppers to stare at him. Reluctant to look directly at the sign, he watched its reflection in one of the glass door panes, so that any subliminal message would be reversed.
Almost certainly he had received two distinct signals-“Keep Away” and “Buy Cigarettes.” T
he people who normally parked their cars along the perimeter of the apron were avoiding the area under the enclosure, the cars describing a loose semicircle fifty feet around it.
He turned to the janitor sweeping out the foyer. “What’s that sign for?”
The man leaned on his broom, gazing dully at the sign. “Dunno,” he said, “must be something to do with the airport.” He had an almost fresh cigarette in his mouth, but his right hand reached unconsciously to his hip pocket and pulled out a pack. He drummed the second cigarette absently on his thumbnail as Franklin walked away.
Everyone entering the supermarket was buying cigarettes.
Cruising quietly along the 40 mph lane, Franklin began to take a closer interest in the landscape around him. Usually he was either too tired or too preoccupied to do more than think about his driving, but now he examined the expressway methodically, scanning the roadside caf6s for any smaller versions of the new signs. A host of neon displays covered the doorways and windows, but most of them seemed innocuous, and he turned his attention to the larger billboards erected along the open stretches of the expressway. Many of these were as high as four-story houses, elaborate three-dimensional devices in which giant, glossy-skinned housewives with electric eyes and teeth jerked and postured around their ideal kitchens, neon flashes exploding from their smiles.
The areas of either side of the expressway were wasteland, continuous junkyards filled with cars and trucks, washing machines and refrigerators, all perfectly workable but jettisoned by the economic pressure of the succeeding waves of discount models. Their intact chrome hardly tarnished, the mounds of metal shells and cabinets glittered in the sunlight. Nearer the city the billboards were sufficiently close together to hide them, but now and then, as he slowed to approach one of the flyovers, Franklin caught a glimpse of the huge pyramids of metal, gleaming silently like the refuse grounds of some forgotten El Dorado.