TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES AND SOCIAL VALUES 71 new desires: they offer them no toothpaste but a "dazzling smile", not television but "release from worry", not a car but ^social prestige." The force behind this mass production and mass consumption machine is, of course, no selfless endeavour to provide men with everything they need as well as many commodities for which they have no use, but the quite logical deduction that in order to obtain a car or television set a man is prepared to work far harder and more productively than he would if he was merely concerned with supplying himself with food and clothing. The "hidden persuaders," as the capitalist advertizers were aptly branded by American publicist Vance Packard, developed in the consumer artificial reflexes even more successfully than one does scientifically in laboratories in^the experiments with monkeys. As a result of the onslaught of advertizing the motto "Keep up with the Joneses" has become an all-important creed of the philis-tine in the United States of America who lives and works with one aim in mind, the acquisition of material goods and services not because he has any vital need for them, but first and foremost because other people already possess them. A man and his social status is judged by what he possesses, and not by what he is. Culture and art are also at the mercy of this commercial approach to life. They are coming more and more to resemble mass-production industries, as output is standardized to suit the requirements of the philistine. This "mass culture", or as it has been more recently christened "mass cult" and "popart", is produced, advertized and sold like any other commodity. The producer's ideal and the bait for the consumer is the so-called "best-seller", that is, a work of art, regardless of whether it be a book or a film, for which there is the maximum demand. Precisely this purely quantitative appraisal of the number of copies or tickets sold becomes almost the sole cirterion of the success of an artist, and it goes without saying, of the success of a firm as well. In order to achieve this success, a work of art is deliberately designed to appeal to mass tastes and interests and reduced to the highly primitive common denominator: sex, the cult of violence, entertainment pure and simple, and sensations of the moment. As •soon as any book or film, television programme or tune becomes a success, it immediately gives birth to scores of variations and imitations, as long as the public does not tire of watching and reading- the same thing over and over again. Then the old cycle gives way to a new one. It is important for the director and publisher to be well versed not merely in the laws of art but also in