The Century of the Self - Part 1 "Happiness Machines"

Learn the history of propaganda in America.
This is a four part series puts focus on propaganda and consumerism in Western society. An in-depth look into the minds of certain figures like Edward Bernays the self proclaimed "Wizard of Propaganda". Known today in the academic and political world as the "Father of Public Relations" which really is just a form of open propaganda. Bernays also just so happens to be the nephew of psycho analyst Sigmund Freud. Find how deep our history goes and how many lies have been piled on top of lies to keep the "Big Lie" alive.

Adam Curtis' acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

Episode One: Happiness Machines

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticizing the motorcar.

His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.

Episodes:

1. Happiness Machines
2. The Engineering of Consent
3. There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
4. Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

https://cosmolearning.org/documentaries/the-century-of-self-2002/1/