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THE PACIFIERS: The Six Symbols We Live By by Mack Hanan

THE PACIFIERS: The Six Symbols We Live By

By

Publisher: Little, Brown

One might wonder whether Mack Hanan woke up one morning and as a conscientious adman and responsible citizen started in horror over what he and his colleagues had wrought. Here is an adman's nightmare, a fantastic world where huckstered symbol is the master of man and lays down the laws of life to the consumer. More in anguish than anger, Mr. Hanan paints a society of Breck girls --ice princesses, and Marlboro Men who are their love slaves and best accessory. Executives, our success symbol, are required to live at jet speed, to grey their temples for the get-ahead-look and wear glasses for that short-of-perfection touch. Mother, our security symbol, has surrogates in Betty Crocker and big business comfort. We are coerced to conform and be Sociables and are envisioned as spinning a ""chummy international cocoon"" in our world travels. Hanan's feverdream rises to its crisis in his portrait of the Influentials, conveyers of a confused image. He sees the sole salvation in dissent, individuality and unorthodoxy and -- new symbols to live by. Chock full of brand names, asizzle with associations and learned responses, this is a sometimes startling, at times intriguing if frantic projection of 1960 consumer robotry, a fair warning if inconclusive call to arms.