VI. HISTORY, A TOOL OF ENLIGHTENMENT

WHY SHOULD YOU READ ABOUT PARIS IF YOU HAVE NO PLAN TO GO THERE, OR ABOUT FRENCH OR AFRICAN HISTORY WHEN YOU HAVE OTHER THINGS TO DO ?

What counts is the approach, which shows how all aspects of life buttress the powerful, making the rest of the population complicit: The insult among the humble, "your father was a valet!," in Old Regime France is an example. 

For our times, apply that reasoning to ads. Some hover over great cities like Big Brother... 

            Paris / Richard Nahem

             Union Square in Manhattan  / Elisabeth Rawson

They follow a formula that goes far beyond promoting the product. It...

• Presents an idealization, with which the spectator will hopefully identify. Ethnic models follow the same stereotype as white ones (young, handsome, happy) because the underlying goal is to create interchangeable consumers.

 

   Métro Bastille

The conventional view of Paris fits that objective by a postcard vision that ignores whatever contradicts it.  

• Applauds irrationality: No logical reason is given for purchases, a mindlessness that discredits expertise and leads to accepting authority. 

      At the Châtelet crossroad in central Paris

Facts divorced from the underlying economy do the same because they make no sense.

• Glamorize isolation: Figures are often alone. What counts is buying.

Downplaying insurrections (and popular energies generally) fits that emphasis.

• Suggest the wider world irrelevant:  The background is a void, bringing focus on the product...

Overlooking the Seine

...but an engaged brand fills the void with people:

For more, please click and scroll down.

The limited view of Paris fits that absence, and now even the past is being suppressed.  

That evolution is recent. The changes shown through the link above begin in 2017. The Opéra became the backdrop for ads in 2023.

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History as it should be told shows the role of underlying economic change: The question "What gave you all that wealth? You took the trouble to be born" spread in the years before the French Revolution, when nascent capitalism was starting to defy landowners' hereditary ruling class.

Knowing that helps grasp how today, as advanced capitalism blows away what people everywhere hold dear...

Harald Wolff

...they resist. The immediate reasons may be local, but the root is the same. 

The struggle is between über-capitalism backed by far-right parties and democratic socialists providing solutions to the problems that face us all.

Robert Reich

Throwing light on conditioning with which we grew up is part of that fight. 

Harald Wolff

If you find these ideas useful,

please pass on the blooks.

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