Episode four illustrates how political campaigns adopted the tactics of sales departments to sway voters.
It's available at the internet archive. I HIGHLY recommend watching it, at least part 4 from about 35 minutes on.
http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart4of4_0Download the MPEG4 file and watch at your convenience. I'd be interested in hearing what you think if you get to watch it.
NYC_SKP :hi:
snippet from description of episode 4:
Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
Thursday 2 May 7pm-8pm
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.
The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them. :hi: