Subliminal Messaging

My first reaction to this assignment was if I actually believed in subliminal messages myself. I decided I didn’t but after I did further research, I was shocked. I watched you-tube videos and looked at pictures online of advertising. The biggest shock I found was in the Disney movies. After replaying certain scenes in movies I witnessed subliminal messaging first hand. Most of the messages were sexual references and I was actually quite disturbed by it. For example, in a scene of â€Å"The Little Mermaid†, as Arial was walking up to the podium with her husband to be the priest got an erection. You can clearly see it happening. I never noticed it before until I started doing research on subliminal messaging. I did further research on other Disney animated movies and I found that there were a lot more ‘sexual’ subliminal messages in the movies and advertising that you don’t notice unless you are actually paying attention. Which brings me to my next point, Dr. Brahrami states â€Å"If the brain is busy it can filter our subliminal things. The brains response to subliminal messages is not automatic and depends on how much attention the person is paying†. And that’s when I decided I completely agree. I think since I was actually paying attention and watching out for subliminal messages, I could see them. Most of the time when I’m watching movies I don’t see the sexual, demon or drug related messages companies are putting in their movies and advertising. Which leads me to my question, why would a company based on children put sexual things in a movie made for kids?! Well, then I started to think it was a coincidence to I did more research and found out there was a huge debate during this time when the Arial scene with the priest came out. What I found was that it was the priest’s knee. So for my conclusion of this paper, I think you interpret what you want to see. If your brain is actually searching for these messages, your brain will see what it wants to see.