It is any type of stimulus captured by the human brain in a non-conscious way. In other words, they are messages that enter our heads without realizing it. Some specialists believe that subliminals do not exist, but others guarantee that we are surrounded by “ghost” stimuli – visual and sound, mainly.
The most obvious examples of subliminal messages are phrases and images inserted into the middle of movies so quickly that you cannot consciously pick them up. There is often doubt whether you saw something or not, but your brain certainly got the message.
The boundary between conscious and unconscious perception is uncertain, because it varies from person to person. “I work with a limit of 1 frame (0.04 seconds), but the English accept up to 3 frames (0.12 seconds)”, says advertiser Flávio Calazans, professor at Faculdade Casper Líbero and author of the book Propaganda Subliminar Multimídia. A famous case is that of publicist Jim Vicary, who, in 1956, inserted the messages “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Eat popcorn” between the scenes of a movie, which would have increased the consumption of soda by 57% and that of popcorn at 18% when leaving the cinema.
Experts consider these numbers a bit exaggerated, but few deny the advertising power of subliminals, especially with already known and low-value products. In Brazil, the laws do not prohibit this type of strategy, although the Consumer Defense Code gives room for lawsuits if you feel cheated. In the United States and Europe, laws are stricter.
In 1973, for example, the Federal Communications Commission of the United States took down the advertising film for the game Kusher Du on the charge of going against the public interest by flashing several times, in fractions of a second, the expression “Buy it” .
eye on bidsupernatural heartthrob
In the movie Fight Club, the character played by Brad Pitt is a crazy person who works, among other things, in a movie theater. One of his diversions is inserting pornographic images into children’s films. Coincidence or not, images of the heartthrob flash on the screen (for 0.04 seconds) in four scenes before his real appearance for the viewer. At the end of the film, just before the credits roll, a penis takes over the entire screen for 0.1 seconds – too long to go unnoticed.
Scandal at Disney
In January 1999, fans of the Disney studios were shocked by a statement released by the company: all 3.4 million tapes of Bernardo and Bianca would be recalled from stores and rental companies because the drawing contained the image of a naked woman hidden in a of the scenes. At 28 minutes into the film, the couple of mice passes in front of a building full of windows and, in one of them, is the busty woman. Disney called the case an intern’s prank.
noises in silence
There’s no doubt that the scenes of the little girl Regan, from The Exorcist (1973), being possessed by the devil would be enough to rob us of many nights of sleep, but what you don’t know is that the film is made much scarier thanks to resources subliminals. The soundtrack is full of disturbing sounds in imperceptible frequency. There are noises like the buzzing of bees and the screams of pigs during slaughter, inserted even in scenes of total silence. The technique earned the film an Oscar for Best Sound.
Read too:
– What is subliminal advertising?
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