Argument on Advertising

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 664, 28 March 1952, Page 20

Argument on Advertising

— ENRY STEELE COMMAGER, the | American historian, had strong views about advertising. "Advertisers," he wrote, "appeal to fear, snobbery, and self-indulgence, and American society, as seen in popular advertisements, is a ‘nightmare of fear and jealousy, gossip and slander, envy and ambition, greed and lust... where sentiment is meretricious, ideals tarnished, and virtue debauched." This was the red rag which Edgar Lustgarten waved before the BBC London Forum panel which met to answet the question: "Does Advertising Distort Human Nature?" Professor C. E. M. Joad and Gilbert Harding both affirmed that advertising does distort human nature, but they didn’t have it all their own way, for their opponents, Ian Harvey and Mark Abrams, _ directors of advertising agencies, believe that in causing people to become discontented advertising is

SS a means of implementing change, and therefore of improvement. Just how the argument developed listeners will hear if they tuné to 3YC at 8.29 p.m. on Wednesday, April 2. . What is Appeasement? APPEASEMENT, a word which became highly coloured in the late 1930’s and has remained so ever sincé, is discussed in another London Forum session which 1YC will broadcast at 10.0 p.m. on Wednesday, April 2. Sir Charles Webster, Professor of International History at the London School of .Economics, Harold. Nicolson, wellknown writer and broadcaster, and an American, Arthur Newell, who at the time held the John Winant Lecture Fellowship, comprised the panel, who were asked: "What is Appeasement?" They decided that in the modern, international sense, it is giving in, from fear and weakness and not from principle, to unjustifiable demands. Friends Behind the Curtain, a BBC programme which 4YA at 9.15 p.m. on Friday, April 4, will broadcast, tells the story of four years recently spent in Czechslovakia. The speaker is R. A. Close, who represented the British Council in Prague.