The inequality between one who gives orders and one who must obey is not as radical as that between one who has a right to demand an answer and one who has the duty to answer. That is why the right to demand answers has, since time immemorial, only been accorded in exceptional circumstances. For example, to a judge inquiring into a crime. In our century, fascist and communist states have appropriated this right, not only in exceptional circumstances but permanently. The citizens of these countries have known that at any time there might come a moment when they would be called on to answer: what they did yesterday; what they think deep in their hearts; what they talk about when they get together with A, and if they have an intimate relationship with B. It was precisely this sanctified imperative, 'Tell the truth," this Eleventh Commandment, whose force they were unable to withstand, that turned them into a throng of infantilized wretches. Occasionally, of course, some C could be found who would steadfastly refuse to reveal what he and A had talked about, and as an act of rebellion (it was often the only possible way of rebelling), he would lie instead of telling the truth. But the police were aware of this and secretly installed listening devices in his apartment. The police did not do so from any disreputable motives, but only to arrive at the truth that
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the liar C was concealing. They merely insisted on their right to demand an answer.
In democratic countries anyone can thumb his nose at a policeman who dares to ask what he talked about with A or whether he has intimate contact with B. Nevertheless, even here the authority of the Eleventh Commandment is in full force. After all, people do need some commandment to rule over them in our century, when God's Ten have been virtually forgotten! The whole moral structure of our time rests on the Eleventh Commandment; and the journalist came to realize that thanks to a mysterious provision of history he is to become its administrator, gaining a power undreamed of by a Hemingway or an Orwell. This phenomenon became unmistakably clear when the American journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward uncovered the sordid dealings of President Nixon during his election campaign, forcing the planet's most powerful man to lie in public, then to admit publicly that he had lied, and finally to leave the White House with bowed head. We all applauded because justice had been done. Paul applauded all the more because he regarded this episode as a sign of a great historic transition, a milestone, an unforgettable moment, a changing of the guard; a new power had appeared, the only one capable of toppling the former professional power brokers, until then the politicians. Toppling them from their throne not by means of arms or intrigues, but by the mere force of questioning.
'Tell the truth," says the journalist, and of course we may ask just what the word "truth" means to the administrator of the Eleventh Commandment. To prevent misunderstanding we stress that it is not a question of God's truth, for which Jan Hus died at the stake, nor a question of the truth of science and free thought, for which they burned Giordano Bruno. The truth elicited by the Eleventh Commandment is not connected with religion or philosophy, it is truth of the lowest ontological story, a purely positivist factual truth: what did C do yesterday? what is he really thinking deep in his heart? what does he talk about when he gets together with A? and does he have intimate contact with B? Nevertheless, even though it is on the lowest ontological story, it is the truth of our time and contains the same explosive
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force as did the truth of Hus or Giordano Bruno. "Did you have intimate contact with B?" asks the journalist. C lies and insists that he doesn't know B. But the journalist laughs up his sleeve, for the photographer on his newspaper has already secretly snapped B naked in the arms of C, and it is entirely up to him when the scandalous photos will be made public, along with quotes from C, the cowardly liar impudently denying that he ever knew B.
The election campaign is on, the politician jumps from plane to helicopter, from helicopter to car, exerts himself, perspires, bolts his lunch on the run, shouts into microphones, makes two-hour speeches, but in the end it will depend on Bernstein or Woodward which of the fifty thousand sentences that he uttered will be released to the newspapers or quoted on the radio. That's why the politician would prefer to address the radio or TV audience directly, but this can only be accomplished through the mediation of an Oriana Fallaci, who sets the media rules and asks the questions. The politician will want to exploit the moment when he is finally seen by the entire nation, and to say everything that's on his mind, but Woodward will ask him only about things that aren't on the politician's mind at all and that he has no desire to talk about. He will thus find himself in the classic situation of a schoolboy called to the blackboard and will try to use the old schoolboy trick: he will pretend to be answering the question but in reality will use material he has specially prepared at home for the broadcast. This trick may have worked on his teachers, but it does not work on Bernstein, who keeps reminding him mercilessly: "You haven't answered my question!"
Who would want to be a politician these days? Who would want to spend his whole life being tested at the blackboard? Certainly not the son of Deputy Bertrand Bertrand.
Imagology
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he politician is dependent on the journalist. But on whom arc the journalists dependent? On those who pay them. And those who pay them are the advertising agencies that buy space from newspapers and time from radio and TV stations. At first glance it may seem that the agencies would unhesitatingly approach all the high-circulation newspapers capable of increasing the sale of their products. But that's a naive view of the matter. Sales of products are less important than we think, Just look at the communist countries: the millions of pictures of Lenin displayed everywhere you go certainly do not stimulate love for Lenin. The advertising agencies of the Communist Party (the so-called agitprop departments) have long forgotten the practical goal of their activity (to make the communist system better liked) and have become an end in themselves: they have created their own language, their formulas, their aesthetics (the heads of these agencies once had absolute power over art in their countries), their idea of the right life-style, which they cultivate, disseminate, and force upon their unfortunate peoples.
Are you objecting that advertising and propaganda cannot be compared, because one serves commerce and the other ideology? You understand nothing. Some one hundred years ago in Russia, per-secuted Marxists began to gather secretly in small circles in order to study Marx's manifesto; they simplified the contents of this simple ideology in order to disseminate it to other circles, whose members, simplifying further and further this simplification of the simple, kept passing it on and on, so that when Marxism became known and powerful on the whole planet, all that was left of it was a collection of six or seven slogans so poorly linked that it can hardly be called an
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ideology. And precisely because the remnants of Marx no longer form any logical system of ideas, but only a series of suggestive images and slogans (a smiling worker with a hammer, black, white, and yellow men fraternally holding hands, the dove of peace rising to the sky, and so on and so on), we can rightfully talk of a gradual, general, planetary transformation of ideology into imagology.
Imagology! Who first thought up this remarkable neologism? Paul or I? It doesn't matter. What matters is that this word finally lets us put under one roof something that goes by so many names: advertising agencies; political campaign managers; designers who devise the shape of everything from cars to gym equipment; fashion stylists; barbers; show-business stars dictating the norms of physical beauty that all branches of imagology obey.
Of course, imagologues existed long before they created the power ful institutions we know today. Even Hitler had his personal im-agologue, who used to stand in front of him and patiently demonstrate the gestures to be made during speeches so as to fascinate the crowds. But if that imagologue, in an interview with the press, had amused the Germa
ns by describing Hitler as incapable of moving his hands, he would not have survived his indiscretion by more than a few hours Nowadays, however, the imagologue not only does not try to hide his activity, but often even speaks for his politician clients, explains to the public what he taught them to do or not to do, how he told them to behave, what formula they are likely to use, and what tie they are likely to wear. We needn't be surprised by this self-confidence: in the last few decades, imagology has gained a historic victory over ideology.
All ideologies have been defeated: in the end their dogmas were unmasked as illusions and people stopped taking them seriously. For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, they felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother,
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who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time in an office, where he sits for eight hours lacing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.
Public opinion polls are the critical instrument of imagology*s power, because they enable imagology to live in absolute harmony with the people. The imagologue bombards people with questions: how is the French economy prospering? is there racism in France? is racism good or bad? who is the greatest writer of all time? is Hungary in Europe or in Polynesia? which world politician is the sexiest? And since for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less
often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have be-
some a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth. Public opinion polls are a parliament in permanent session, whose function it is to create truth, the most democratic truth that has ever existed. Because it will never be at variance with the parliament of truth, the power of imagologues will always live in truth, and although I know that everything human is mortal, I cannot imagine anything that could break this power.
I want to add to this comparison of ideology and imagology: ideology was like a set of enormous wheels at the back of the stage, turning and setting in motion wars, revolutions, reforms. The wheels of im-agology turn without having any effect upon history. Ideologies lought with one another, and each of them was capable of filling a
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whole epoch with its thinking. Imagology organizes peaceful alternation of its systems in lively seasonal rhythms. In Paul's words: ideology belonged to history, while the reign of imagology begins where history ends.
The word "change," so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as it was understood by Vico, Hegel, or Marx), but a shift from one side to another, from front to back, from the back to the left, from the left to the front (as understood by designers dreaming up the fashion for the next season). Imagologues decided that in Agnes's health club all the walls should be covered by enormous mirrors; this was not done because gymnasts needed to observe themselves while exercising, but because on the roulette wheel of imagology mirrors had landed on a lucky number. If at the time I was writing these pages everyone decided that Martin Heidegger was to be considered a bungler and a bastard, it was not because his thought had been surpassed by other philosophers, but because on the roulette wheel of imagology, this time he had landed on an unlucky number, an anti-ideal. Imagologues create systems of ideals and anti-ideals, systems of short duration that arc quickly replaced by other systems but that influence our behavior, our political opinions and aesthetic tastes, the color of carpets and the selection of books, just as in the past we have been ruled by the systems of ideologues.
After these remarks I can return to the beginning of the discussion. The politician is dependent on the journalist. On whom are the journalists dependent? On imagologues. The imagologue is a person of conviction and principle: he demands of the journalist that his newspaper (or TV channel, radio station) reflect the imagological system of a given moment. And this is what imagologues check from time to time when they are trying to decide which newspaper to support. One day they turned their attention to the radio station where Bernard worked as a commentator and where every Saturday Paul broadcast his brief feature Rights and the Law. They promised to obtain many advertising contracts for the station as well as to launch a poster campaign all over France; but they insisted on certain conditions, to which the program
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director, known as the Bear, was forced to submit: he gradually began to shorten the commentaries, so that the listeners would not be bored by long discussions; he allowed the commentators' five-minute monologues to be interrupted by the questions of another broadcaster, in order to give the impression of conversation; he added many more musical interludes, frequently even inserting background music under the words; and he advised everyone talking into a microphone to put on a relaxed, youthful, carefree air, an air that fills my morning dreams with bliss and turns weather reports into comic operas. Because he considered it important that his subordinates should continue to sec him as a powerful Bear, he tried as hard as he could to safeguard the jobs of all his fellow workers. He surrendered on only one point. The imagologues found Rights and the Law so obviously boring that they merely showed their excessively white teeth and refused to discuss it. The Bear promised to cancel the feature, and then he became ashamed of his surrender. He was all the more ashamed because Paul was his friend.
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The brilliant ally of his own gravediggers
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he program director was called the Bear because that was the only possible name for him: he was stocky, slow, and though he was good-natured everyone knew that his huge paw could pack quite a blow when he got angry. The imagologues who had the temerity to instruct him how to do his work all but drained the last drops of his bearish goodness. He sat in the studio cafeteria, surrounded by a few colleagues, and said, "Those ad-agency swindlers are like Martians. They don't behave like normal people. When they say the most un-pleasant things to your face, they have a gleam in their eyes. Their vocabulary is limited to fewer than fifty words, and their sentences mustn't contain more than four words each. Their speech is a combina-tion of three technical terms I don't understand and of one or two breathtakingly banal ideas. These people aren't ashamed of being them- selves and haven't the slightest inferiority complex. And that is precisely the proof of their power."
At this point Paul appeared in the cafeteria. When they saw him, everyone became embarrassed, all the more so because Paul seemed to be in an excellent mood. He picked up a cup of coffee and joined the others at the table.
The Bear felt uneasy in Paul's presence. He was ashamed of having thrown him to the wolves and of not having the courage now to tell him to his face. He was seized by a new wave of hatred for the imagologues and said, "I'd be willing, when it comes to it, to give in to those cretins and change the weather reports into a dialog
ue between
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clowns, the trouble is that right after that Bernard might talk of a plane crash in which a hundred passengers died. I may be willing to sacrifice my life to amuse my fellow Frenchmen, but news reports are no laughing matter."
They all looked as if they agreed, except for Paul. He laughed the laugh of a joyous provocateur and said, "My dear Bear! The imagologues are right! You confuse news with school teaching!"
The Bear recalled that while Paul's commentaries were sometimes quite witty, they were generally too complex and also full of unusual words that the whole staff would afterward secretly look up in the dictionary. But he didn't feel like mentioning this now and said with great dignity, "I always had a high opinion of journalism and I don't want to lose it."
Paul said, "Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray."
"That's just what I find so hard to accept," said the Bear.
"But you are an inveterate smoker! So why do you mind that news reports are like cigarettes?" Paul laughed. "Cigarettes are bad for your health, whereas the news does you no harm and is even a pleasant diversion before the start of a long day."
"The war between Iran and Iraq is diverting?" asked the Bear, and his compassion for Paul was slowly becoming mixed with irritation. "Today's disasters, that railway accident, you find them amusing?"
"You make a common error, namely considering death a tragedy," said Paul, and it was evident that he had got up that day in excellent form.
"I must admit," the Bear said in an icy voice, "that I have indeed always considered death a tragedy."