Subliminal Seduction: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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{{quote|'''[[The Stoner|John]]:''' By the way, Nicky, check this out... ''(plays a record backwards)'' What's [[Ozzy Osbourne|Ozzy]] trying to say there?
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Subliminal Seduction combines the worst aspects of a [[Discredited Trope]] and a [[Dead Horse Trope]]. The concept is to all practical purposes dead, but lives on in the creative imagination. Audiences see subversions and parodies of it so often that they still assume it must be real.<br/>
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The trope gets its name from the 1973 book ''Subliminal Seduction; Ad Media's Manipulation of a Not So Innocent America'' by [[wikipedia:Wilson Bryan Key|Wilson Bryan Key]]. Key claimed that ''his'' research had revealed a [[Milkman Conspiracy|massive conspiracy]] among American advertising agencies to lace both products and photographic images used in ads with subliminal references to sex, and proceeded to show every example he could find. While very popular at the time, his conclusions were controversial and have long been challenged. Key's evidence was at best
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[[Subliminal Advertising]] is what happens when marketers try to use subliminal messages to sell products anyway, either seriously or as a parody.<br/>
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* In John Carpenter's ''[[They Live!]]'', aliens control the world through subliminal messaging (backed by [[Applied Phlebotinum]]) hidden in billboards, magazines, and pretty much everywhere.
* Used as a bit of a plot point in ''[[Spy Kids]]''. Junie's favorite show employs several characters in costume speaking gibberish, but when the tape of the show is played backwards you can clearly hear their cries for help.
* The horror movie ''Trick Or Treat'' takes the urban legend about Satanic messages hidden in music and runs with it. The movie is ''about'' a heavy metal star who was into black magic (and died in the middle of a magical ritual) who put a backmasked summoning spell on his next-to-be-released album. The hero, a put-upon headbanger (played by the guy who played Skippy in ''[[Family Ties]]''), gets the only prerelease copy of the album. Playing the album backward in short bursts gives the nerd headbanger advice for defeating the jocks and preps at his school who torment him, but the album keeps wanting to be played backwards in it's
** The hero's radio DJ friend discourages a young heavy metal fan from trying to hear backmasked lyrics on records. Why? Because he insists that it's nothing more than a scam by record company executives to make kids ruin their albums playing them backwards, so they'll have to buy more. (This would've been a subversion of the trope, had the records in question not ''really'' contained hidden incantations invoking demonic forces.)
* ''[[The Exorcist]]'' has short flashes of a demonic face during some scene changes.
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'''Crow:''' "I dunno but suddenly I'm hungry for a guy with glasses." }}
* Parodied in ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]'' where a woman is suing a rockstar for backmasking, the rockstar then sings a song called 'Drop All Charges.' (She does drop the charges.)
** She also asks the judge for "permission to get out of his face"
* In an episode of ''[[CHiPs]]'' a subliminal message was inserted by a band's agent without their knowledge, found by playing the album backwards at [[Number of the Beast|66.6 RPM]].
* Done in a few episodes of ''[[The Chaser's War on Everything]]'', usually mocking the viewers who would bother to watch in slow-motion and read it.
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** And in another sketch, where someone is undergoing persuasion to quit the Masons, we see what he's seeing as a voice-over asks "do you want to stop being a Mason?". The image he's looking at is repeatedly replaced for brief intervals with an image of a naked woman alongside a large "YES". When the sequence is over, {{spoiler|he of course answers "no"}}.
* ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode "Wetwired" dealt with subliminal messaging on cable television driving people to murder. Mulder finds that he is immune to this subliminal messaging because he is red/green colorblind, and the messaging is heavily reliant on that. Scully, on the other hand, is temporarily brainwashed, convinced that Mulder is one of the men who abducted her and has been lying to her from the beginning. This almost ends tragically as she pulls a gun on him in her mother's home.
** This leads to a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] when Scully insists that Mulder never trusted her, and Mulder replies with "You are the ''only'' one I trust." On the other hand, the rest of the episode is disturbing, since it is about the furthest extreme that Mulder and Scully stray from [[The Power of Trust]] in the entire series. ''That's'' how powerful
* [[QI|STEPHEN FRY FOR POPE]]
* In an episode of ''[[Hustle]]'', the gang have a lorry of empty crates, which they're selling as crates of smuggled cigarettes. One of the crates really contains cigarettes, and has a distinctive logo on it. Apparently, arranging things so that [[The Mark]] continually sees this logo out of the corner of his eye while driving to the meeting subliminally conditions him to choose that crate to check.
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== Music ==
* [[Judas Priest]] were sued over two teenage suicides claimed to be provoked by backwards messages in their music. The claim was shredded in court. After the trial, frontman Rob Halford pointed out the logical fallacy in many of the prevalent backmasking
* A number of artists have made songs with intentional backmasking, to poke fun at the phenomenon and/or cheese off [[Moral Guardians]] and [[Media Watchdog
** The Mindless Self Indulgence song ''Backmask'' is a blatant poke at subliminal messages. When played forwards, the lyrics tell the listener to "go kill yourself", "don't forget the guns - you're gonna need 'em to destroy", et cetera; played backwards, a large section consists of a pleasant female voice telling the listener to be a good person, e.g. "Don't stay out too late", "Get dessed for church".
** The intro to [[Electric Light Orchestra]]'s "Fire On High" contains the ominous-sounding backwards message [[Nightmare Fuel|"The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back! Turn back! Turn back!"]]
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** On [[Pink Floyd]]'s album ''[[The Wall]]'', the song "Empty Spaces" contains the amusingly self-referential if kind of hard to make out since it's so buried in the mix backwards message
{{quote|'''Roger Waters''': "Congratulations, hunters, you've just discovered the secret message! Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont..."
'''James Guthrie''':<ref>One of the album's producers</ref>
'''Roger Waters''': "Okay". }}
*** This bit can also double as [[Fridge Brilliance]] since in the context of the album, it's a bit of [[Foreshadowing]] about Pink's mental breakdown. Also, one ''[[Everybody Is Jesus in Purgatory|incredibly detailed]]'' analysis of the album points out that Waters abandoning the message to pick up the phone reinforces the entire album's theme about the importance of communication.
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== Theater ==
* The [[Reduced Shakespeare Company]] usually ends their ''[[The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged]]'' act with repeated runs of their abridged ''Hamlet'', under increasingly bizarre conditions. As a finale they do it backwards, warning the audience to look for the satanic
** They change that one every
** Their radio show asserts that subliminal ''food'' messages can be found in ''Hamlet'', demonstrating by playing a recording of the "rogue and peasant slave" speech backwards to reveal the hidden message, "Mmmm... creamy and delicious!" Later, a disclaimer saying that the BBC in no way condones worship of [[Satan]] is interrupted by an unreversed message giving orders from the Dark Lord.
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* The ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' episode "Sins of Our Fathers" featured villainous character Destro performing a strange chant to lure away a monster. When played backwards, it is clear that the chant is just Destro's voice actor saying "Anybody listening to this backwards, secret, 'occult' message is a real dweeb."
* In an episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', [[Balance Between Good and Evil|the balance]] is disrupted by a bad guy taking over Hell, causing all the League's magic-users to start writhing in pain. Zatanna, who always speaks her spells backwards, says this if the episode is played in reverse: "All is lost. Faust sits on the throne of hell."
* Parodied in an episode of (what else?) ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' which focuses on Bart joining a boy band that gets caught up in the US Navy's evil scheme to corrupt the minds of the youth into supporting and joining the Navy through subliminal messages in the band's lyrics ("Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj!" - not really the message played backwards, but the message written backwards and the result sung phonetically). Upon being confronted with this, the officer in charge explains that it's part of a three-pronged approach to increase enlistment, with the prongs being subliminal, liminal and superliminal
** Also on ''The Simpsons'', [[Paul McCartney]] claims that playing his song "Maybe I'm Amazed" backwards reveals a "really ripping" lentil soup recipe. The song itself plays at the end of the episode; a version that indeed has a lentil soup recipe backward-masked into it (and it's not bad.) "Oh, and by the way, I'm not dead."
*** Also parodied in one of the blackboard segments in the titles: "I will not plant
*** And then there was Homer's ad for Marge's political party, which featured several really, really obvious appearances of "NO ON 232". Homer being...well, Homer, Marge's party needed a YES on 232, a NO on 2''4''2.
** A literal example of subliminal seduction comes with Artie Ziff's snore-sound converter, in the form of a message aimed at Marge, urging her to leave Homer for Artie. It fails when he sings out "[[Stalker with a Crush|I'm watching you through a camera!]]"
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