The Art of Seduction (90 page)

Stahl decided to assemble a news piece that would show the public how Reagan used television to cover up the negative effects of his policies. The piece began with a montage of images that his team had orchestrated over the years: Reagan relaxing on his ranch in jeans; standing tall at the Normandy invasion tribute in France; throwing a football with his Secret Service bodyguards; sitting in an inner-city classroom. . . . Over these images Stahl asked, "How does Ronald Reagan use television? Brilliantly. He's
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been criticized as the rich man's president, but the TV pictures say it isn't so. At seventy-three, Mr. Reagan could have an age problem. But the TV

pictures say it isn't so. Americans want to feel proud of their country again, and of their president. And the TV pictures say you can. The orchestration of television coverage absorbs the White House. Their goal? To emphasize the president's greatest asset, which, his aides say, is his personality. They provide pictures of him looking like a leader. Confident, with his Marlboro man walk."

Over images of Reagan shaking hands with handicapped athletes in

wheelchairs and cutting the ribbon at a new facility for seniors, Stahl continued, "They also aim to erase the negatives. Mr. Reagan tried to counter the memory of an unpopular issue with a carefully chosen backdrop that actually contradicts the president's policy. Look at the handicapped Olympics, or the opening ceremony of an old-age home. No hint that he tried to cut the budgets for the disabled and for federally subsidized housing for the elderly." On and on went the piece, showing the gap between the feelgood images that played on the screen and the reality of Reagan's actions.

"President Reagan," Stahl concluded, "is accused of running a campaign in which he highlights the images and hides from the issues. But there's no evidence that the charges will hurt him because when people see the president on television, he makes them feel good, about America, about themselves, and about him." Stahl depended on the good will of the Reagan people in covering the White House, but her piece was strongly negative, so she braced herself for trouble. Yet a senior White House official telephoned her that evening:

"Great piece," he said. "What?" asked a stunned Stahl.
"Great piece,"
he repeated. "Did you listen to what I said?" she asked. "Lesley, when you're showing four and a half minutes of great pictures of Ronald Reagan, no one listens to what you say. Don't you know that the pictures are overriding your message because they conflict with your message? The public sees those pictures and they block your message. They didn't even hear what you said. So, in our minds, it was a four-and-a-half-minute free ad for the Ronald Reagan campaign for reelection."

Interpretation.
Most of the men who worked on communications for Reagan had a background in marketing. They knew the importance of

telling a story crisply, sharply, and with good visuals. Each morning they went over what the headline of the day should be, and how they could shape this into a short visual piece, getting the president into a video opportunity. They paid detailed attention to the backdrop behind the president in the Oval Office, to the way the camera framed him when he was with other world leaders, and to having him filmed in motion, with his confident walk. The visuals carried the message better than any words could do. As one Reagan official said, "What are you going to believe, the facts or your eyes?"

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Free yourself from the need to communicate in the normal direct manner and you will present yourself with greater opportunities for the soft sell. Make the words you say unobtrusive, vague, alluring. And pay much greater attention to your style, the visuals, the story they tell. Convey a sense of movement and progress by showing yourself in motion. Express confidence not through facts and figures but through colors and positive imagery, appealing to the infant in everyone. Let the media cover you unguided and you are at their mercy. So turn the dynamic around—the press needs drama and visuals? Provide them. It is fine to discuss issues or "truth" as long as you package it entertainingly. Remember: images linger in the mind long after words are forgotten. Do not preach to the public—that never works. Learn to express your message through visuals that insinuate positive emotions and happy feelings.

4.
In 1919, the movie press agent Harry Reichenbach was asked to do advance publicity for a picture called
The Virgin of Stamboul.
It was the usual romantic potboiler in an exotic locale, and normally a publicist would mount a campaign with alluring posters and advertisements. But Harry never operated the usual way. He had begun his career as a carnival barker, and there the only way to get the public into your tent was to stand out from the other barkers. So Harry dug up eight scruffy Turks whom he found living in Manhattan, dressed them up in costumes (flowing sea-green trousers, gold-crescented turbans) provided by the movie studio, rehearsed them in every line and gesture, and checked them into an expensive hotel. Word quickly spread to the newspapers (with a little help from Harry) that a delegation of Turks had arrived in New York on a secret diplomatic mission.

Reporters converged on the hotel. Since his appearance in New York

was clearly no longer a secret, the head of the mission, "Sheikh Ali Ben Mohammed," invited them up to his suite. The newspapermen were impressed by the Turks' colorful outfits, salaams, and rituals. The sheikh then explained why he had come to New York. A beautiful young woman

named Sari, known as the Virgin of Stamboul, had been betrothed to the sheikh's brother. An American soldier passing through had fallen in love with her and had managed to steal her from her home and take her to America. Her mother had died from grief. The sheikh had found out she was in New York, and had come to bring her back.

Mesmerized by the sheikh's colorful language and by the romantic tale he told, the reporters filled the papers with stories of the Virgin of Stamboul for the next several days. The sheikh was filmed in Central Park and feted by the cream of New York society. Finally "Sari" was found, and the press reported the reunion between the sheikh and the hysterical girl (an actress with an exotic look). Soon after,
The Virgin of Stamboul
opened in New York. Its story was much like the "real" events reported in the papers. Was this a coincidence? A quickly made film version of the true story? No
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one seemed to know, but the public was too curious to care, and
The Virgin
of Stamboul
broke box office records.

A year later Harry was asked to publicize a film called
The Forbidden
Woman.
It was one of the worst movies he had ever seen. Theater owners had no interest in showing it. Harry went to work. For eighteen days straight he ran an ad in all of the major New York newspapers: WATCH THE

SKY ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 21ST! IF IT IS GREEN—GO THE CAPITOL IF

IT IS RED—GO THE RIVOLI IF IT IS PINK—GO TO THE STRAND IF IT IS BLUE—

GO TO THE RIALTO FOR ON FEBRUARY 21ST THE SKY WILL TELL YOU WHERE

THE BEST SHOW IN TOWN CAN BE SEEN! (The Capitol, the Rivoli, the

Strand, and the Rialto were the four big first-run movie houses on Broadway.) Almost everyone saw the ad and wondered what this fabulous show was. The owner of the Capitol asked Harry if he knew anything about it, and Harry let him in on the secret: it was all a publicity stunt for an unbooked picture. The owner asked to see a screening of
The Forbidden
Woman;
through most of the film, Harry yakked about the publicity campaign, distracting the man from the dullness onscreen. The theater owner decided to show the film for a week, and so, on the evening of February 21, as a heavy snowstorm blanketed the city and all eyes turned to the sky, giant rays of light poured out from the tallest buildings—a brilliant show of green. An enormous crowd flocked to the Capitol theater. Those who did not get in kept coming back. Somehow, with a packed house and an excited crowd, the film did not seem quite so bad.

The following year Harry was asked to publicize a gangster picture

called
Outside the Law.
On high-ways across the country he set up billboards that read, in giant letters, IF Y O U DANCE O N SUNDAY, Y O U ARE OUTSIDE T H E

L A W . On other billboards the word "dance" was replaced by "play golf" or

"play pool" and so on. On a top corner of the billboards was a shield bearing the initials "PD." The public assumed this meant "police department" (actually, it stood for Priscilla Dean, the star of the movie) and that the police, backed by religious organizations, were prepared to enforce decades-old blue laws prohibiting "sinful" activities on a Sunday. Suddenly a controversy was sparked. Theater owners, golfing associations, and dance organizations led a countercampaign against the blue laws; they put up their own billboards, exclaiming that if you did those things on Sunday, you were not "OUTSIDE THE LAW" and issuing a call for Americans to have some fun in their lives. For weeks the words "Outside the Law" were everywhere seen and everywhere on people's lips. In the midst of this the film opened—on a Sunday—in four New York theaters simultaneously, something that had never happened before. And it ran for months throughout the country, also on Sundays. It was one of the big hits of the year.
Interpretation.
Harry Reichenbach, perhaps the greatest press agent in movie history, never forgot the lessons he had learned as a barker. The carnival is full of bright lights, color, noise, and the ebb and flow of the
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crowd. Such environments have profound effects on people. A clearheaded person could probably tell that the magic shows are fake, the fierce animals trained, the dangerous stunts relatively safe. But people want to be entertained; it is one of their greatest needs. Surrounded by color and excitement, they suspend their disbelief for a while and imagine that the magic and danger are real. They are fascinated by what seems to be both fake and real at the same time. Harry's publicity stunts merely re-created the carnival on a larger scale. He pulled people in with the lure of colorful costumes, a great story, irresistible spectacle. He held their attention with mystery, controversy, whatever it took. Catching a kind of fever, as they would at the carnival, they flocked without thinking to the films he publicized. The lines between fiction and reality, news and entertainment are even more blurred today than in Harry Reichenbach's time. What opportunities that presents for soft seduction! The media is desperate for events with entertainment value, inherent drama. Feed that need. The public has a weakness for what seems both realistic and slightly fantastical—for real events with a cinematic edge. Play to that weakness. Stage events the way Bernays did, events the media can pick up as news. But here you are not starting a social trend, you are after something more short term: to win people's attention, to create a momentary stir, to lure them into your tent. Make your events and publicity stunts plausible and somewhat realistic, but make their colors a little brighter than usual, the characters larger than life, the drama higher. Provide an edge of sex and danger. You are creating a confluence of real life and fiction—the essence of any seduction.

It is not enough, however, to win people's attention: you need to hold it long enough to hook them. This can always be done by sparking controversy, the way Harry liked to stir up debates about morals. While the media argues about the effect you are having on people's values, it is broadcasting your name everywhere and inadvertently bestowing upon you the edge

that will make you so attractive to the public.

Selected Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean.
Seduction.
Trans. Brian Singer. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Bourdon, David.
Warhol.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989. Capellanus, Andreas.
Andreas Capellanus on Love.
Trans. P. G. Walsh. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1982. Casanova, Jacques.
The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova, in eight volumes.
Trans. Arthur Machen. Edinburgh: Limited Editions Club, 1940.

Chalon, Jean.
Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney.
Trans. Carol Barko. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1979.

Cole, Hubert.
First Gentleman of the Bedchamber: The Life of Louis-François Armand,
Maréchal Duc de Richelieu.
New York: Viking, 1965.

de Troyes, Chrétien.
Arthurian Romances.
Trans. William W Kibler. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Feher, Michel, ed.
The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in
Eighteenth-Century France.
New York: Zone Books, 1997.

Flynn, Errol.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959. Freud, Sigmund.
Psychological Writings and Letters.
Ed. Sander L. Gilman. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1995.

——.
Sexuality and the Psychology of Love.
Ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Touchstone, 1963. Fülöp-Miller, René.
Rasputin: The Holy Devil.
New York: Viking, 1962. George, Don.
Sweet Man: The Real Duke Ellington.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1981.

Gleichen-Russwurm, Alexander von.
The World's Lure: Fair Women, Their Loves,
Their Power, Their Fates.
Trans. Hannah Waller. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.

Hahn, Emily.
Lorenzo: D. H. Lawrence and the Women Who Loved Him.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1975.
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Hellmann, John.
The Kennedy Obsession: The American Myth of JFK.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Kaus, Gina.
Catherine: The Portrait of an Empress.
Trans. June Head. New York: Viking, 1935.