THE MADISON AVENUE VILLAIN
577
and fatuous quality of modem advertising; the invidious control
by the ad and talent agencies over the mass media; the vacuity
and violence pervasive in TV; the slavish deference of networks
and advertisers to rating reports; and the general defeat of truth
and spontaneity by blandness and uniformity. Every day, in
fact, a new charge is added to a burgeoning list of indictments
-the latest by Newton Minow, chairman of the
F.e.e.,
who
stigmatizes the networks and the agencies for their baleful in–
fluence on the young. In short, the various institutions lining
Madison Avenue have finally become the targets for frustra–
tions and resentments which, in other forms, were once aimed
at Wall Street. Or, put into the language of allegory: the
Madison Avenue villain today holds the American Everyman
as tightly in his sweaty palm as the Wall Street villain once
held him in his powerful fist, only now the methods of control
are considered even more crafty, cunning, and subliminal.
There is one significant alteration in the substance of the
new allegory: it now has hardly any politico-economic reson–
ance at all. The Wall Street villain-whose critics were attack–
ing the nature of free enterprise itself-was considered the in–
carnation of a flawed system which permitted men to exploit
America's resources for their own profit. The Madison Avenue
villain, on the other hand, embodies no reflections on the system;
his chicanery is thought to be mainly psychological and cultural,
consisting in the manipulation of corruption of men's minds for
sinister, and often unnamed, motives. The switch from the
politico-economic to the cultural-psychological emphasis is par–
tially dictated by the nature of the new problem. It is not the
evils of unequal wealth but rather the evils of the mass media
which are now thought to be among -our most serious domestic
afflictions. Despite the special nature of this new evil, however,
it would seem perfectly logical to suspect an economic basis
for it, especially when the media representatives refer so fre–
quently to the demands of their sponsors. Yet, most critics have
been reluctant to concede such motives, preferring-like Newton
