Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Forget that,” said Louie. “Look here’s a true classic from the middle ages! See that? First the problem has to be established. This poor dumb sap is wearing a shirt that has not been appropriately laundered and is therefore soiled in a visible area. Here comes the penalty. See how he’s being rightfully ostracized by those who would otherwise be dear friends? Now the problem has to be given a name, but not just any name, a name catchy enough to stick in the head of the human wallet that’s watching. There it is: Ring Around the Collar . You have to love it. It doesn’t get any more lyrical than that. Now comes the rescue. Back then, the rescuer was always another person but even so the rescue always came in the form of the true hero, the product. See? She’s telling his wife about Wisk. Now they show the product at work as a celestial voice, in this case the great Bob McFadden, takes over the narration. Finally, we get the closing shot of heaven. You see? Collars don’t come any cleaner than that. Look at the expression of joy on the wearer and the unconditional acceptance from his peers. Then a final shot of Wisk. Forty-five seconds tops. Beautiful seconds. That, my friends, is true art.”

“What did you mean when you said it was an ad from the middle ages?”

“Beautiful right Casi? Art right?”

“Yeah beautiful, what did you mean?”

“Huh?”

“Middle ages?”

“Yeah, that was an ad in the seventies.”

“How’s that middle ages?”

“Oh right. I should explain.”

“No, not again. I’m actively begging,” said a seemingly pained Alyona.

“I know you’ve heard it before but he hasn’t. He also deserves exposure to my wisdom does he not? It’s simple Casi. Television advertising can be broken down into three separate stages. The early years, which consisted of really straightforward stuff like Jack Paar saying he uses Right Guard or whatever and it’s good for such and such reasons, spans from the invention of Television to maybe the mid-sixties. Note that in this era it was still considered important to at least pay lip service to logic by, for example, listing positive features the product allegedly had. The middle ages, from which we just saw probably the classic example, takes us from there to the eighties and mostly features adherents to these mini-narratives. What we have now, of course, is nothing short of a golden age where man has achieved near-transcendental technique and skill that bypasses altogether the need to supply information. It may even seem, as some have argued, that there’s no more development to be had. But most are confident that a few pioneers will emerge to develop the field even further. I of course plan to be one of them.”

“You plan to be one of the people who’s confident that pioneers will emerge?”

“No, wiseguy, I plan to be one of the pioneers.”

TELEVISION:… call 1-800-PLASTIC for a free consultation .

“Hey I know her,” I said. “I went out to dinner with her about a week ago.”

“She’s hot.”

“She better be, she’s selling good looks,” said Angus.

“Good point,” said Louie.

“That’s a lot of noses,” said Angus

“Sure is,” said Louie.

“Some of these before-noses don’t look so bad. In fact, a lot of them seem perfectly fine,” said Angus.

“Beautiful,” said Louie.

“I don’t know that I would go so far as to say they’re beautiful but they do look fine.”

“No, the noses aren’t beautiful. The advertising technique is beautiful. This is what I mean about how far we’ve come. Here is a commercial which is clearly a low-rent piece of crap not even worthy of being on this channel. Nonetheless, even this pedestrian effort obeys established advertising stratagems that would have seemed amazingly nuanced as little as ten years ago. Of course the before-noses look fine. If they didn’t, if they were obviously flawed, you the viewer might be able to distance yourself from the patients. Instead, the idea is that you, the viewer, will look at your nose differently after seeing this ad. In other words, you thought your nose was fine, never gave it a second thought, until you saw this ad and saw all these noses that look similar to yours, maybe even better, being labeled before-noses in need of repair. The advertising doesn’t address a need, it creates it. It is self-sustaining.”

Zzzzt!

“What the—”

“You must have fallen in love with her, she’s gorgeous.”

“No.”

“She’s not?”

“I didn’t fall in love with her. Didn’t even fall in like.”

“You going to see her again?” asked Louie.

“No. You’re free to call her, want her number?”

“Funny.”

“She’s famous now too,” added Angus.

“Yes, among the literally hundreds of AD TV viewers.”

“It’s something. Though nowhere near the level of fame I will soon achieve.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I say nowhere near the level of fame.”

“I heard you,” I said.

“I will soon achieve.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t you want to know—

“No.”

— how?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“What, because of Kramden?”

“No, in my chosen field of psychology.”

“Fine, how?”

“Should we tell him Louie?”

“Sure go ahead, it’s Casi.”

“Phobophobia.”

“Phobiwhat?

“Phobophobia, the fear of becoming phobic.”

“No such thing right?”

“That’s right not yet. That’s where I come in.”

“You’re going to discover, diagnose, and categorize it?”

“No, I’m not going to discover it. That involves far too many variables. I’m going to create or invent it. With Louie’s help of course. Louie here will hypnotize the subjects.”

“Yeah, I’m getting good from studying Dullen.”

“Anyway once hypnotized, the subjects, in their highly suggestible states, will be taught to fear, beyond all rationality, the prospect that they will become phobic. This will not be very difficult to do by the way because it turns out that there are about a million phobias. Take Triskadekaphobia, the fear of the number thirteen or Sciophobia, the fear of shadows. Maybe our subject is pentheraphobic and irrationally fears his mother-in-law, or is hobophobic and therefore fears bums or beggars. Maybe he suffers from Ostraconophobia, the fear of shellfish. Or maybe he suffers from Enissophobia, the fear of having committed an unpardonable sin. You get the point right? By the time I finish cataloguing and detailing all the possible phobias to my subjects, they will fear that phobias are lurking around every corner ready to invade their system. I will foster this feeling, and augment their fear, to the extent that they will become phobic about this fear. They will be phobiphobic. Get it? Don’t you just love the irony?”

“Love,” said Louie.

“What’s the name for the fear of being drawn into bizarre and ultimately irrelevant conversations?” I wondered.

“So they’ll be afraid of everything?” said Alyona.

“No, not at all. They won’t be afraid of anything specific like snakes or the dark, instead the only thing they’ll fear is fear itself! Nothing specific will scare them but they’ll nonetheless be deathly afraid that something specific will irrationally scare them in the future. The sheer number of phobias out there will serve to convince the subjects that they will assuredly succumb to one of them in the near future. But they won’t, instead they’ll just create their own phobia. With my help of course.”

“Where does the fame come in? Because I cannot name a single person who once classified even legitimate phobias.”

“That’s the easy part. I’ll use the best results anecdotally, meet the bare requirements of my field, which are a joke, and turn the whole thing into a study for publication in the prestigious Journal of Psychology. The study will become an emblem for our anxious times. The media, led by high-school-level newsweeklies, will jump all over the study and mindlessly trumpet my conclusion in lieu of analysis. The national gaze will finally be on me. Just like that. Fame. Finally.”