Subliminal Messages

Subliminal messages or "gobbledygook?" That was a key question explored in a Washoe District Court here during the first week of a trial in which British rock group Judas Priest is accused of causing two teen-agers to shoot themselves in a suicide pact on Dec. 23, 1985. Attorneys for the parents of Raymond Belknap and James Vance are trying to persuade Judge Jerry Whitehead that subliminal messages in the band's "Stained Class" album led to the shootings.

"Uneasy lies the dead" is both the title of one of David Bunn's new works at the Angles Gallery and a basic premise of his enterprise of the last dozen years. In 1990, he acquired the Los Angeles Central Library's card catalog, which had been replaced by a digital database. The 2 million well-fingered cards have, since then, served as the raw material of his art. Corpse, archive, ruin -- the card catalog is dead, but it lies uneasy.

Even if the attorneys for the parents of the two dead youths can prove that subliminal messages exist on Judas Priest's "Stained Class" album, Washoe District Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead must still decide whether those messages were a legal cause of the shootings. Whitehead, who is hearing the case without a jury, ruled in August that the music and the words on the album are protected from liability by the First Amendment.

Deep within a Russian television advertisement for a local beer, Klinskoye, lurked a split-second message for another thirst-quencher: Pepsi. An image of Palmolive Fruit Essentials soap was there and gone in a blink on the NTV television network. Young viewers of Russian MTV unconsciously absorbed marketing messages for Secret deodorant, the New Musical Express newspaper and the Red Hot Chili Peppers album, "By the Way."

Soft classical music plays from an overhead sound system in the offices of Mind Communication Inc. as telephone operators take orders for the company's subliminal self-help audio- and videocassettes. It may seem that they are hearing Mozart, but the 40 employees are test subjects for the company's theory that subliminal suggestions offer an easy way to improve people's lives. The music masks suggestions designed to motivate the employees to overcome procrastination and to be more productive.

The judge's verdict is all that remains in the multimillion-dollar product-liability suit against the British rock group Judas Priest after final arguments were concluded Friday in a Reno courtroom. Washoe District Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead said he expects to issue his ruling by Friday. The unprecedented product-liability lawsuit, which charges the heavy-metal quintet with causing the suicide attempts of two Sparks, Nev., youths in 1985, has drawn international attention.

Rock music is back in the courtroom--on death charges. Six weeks after the British rock group Judas Priest was absolved of causing the suicide-related deaths of two Sparks, Nev., youths, fellow British rocker Ozzy Osbourne faces similar charges in Macon, Ga.

The artist was obsessed with hell, death and Satan. One of the works that made him famous inspired suicides. Clergy condemned it; local governments banned it. And all of this happened more than 200 years before Ozzy Osbourne ever chomped on a bat. These days Osbourne's darker preoccupations are being picked apart in a Georgia court, where he is accused in a civil suit of causing the deaths of two teen-agers who did themselves in after listening to his song, "Suicide Solution."

Two young men did not kill themselves because they heard alleged subliminal messages in the heavy metal music of Judas Priest, a judge in Reno, Nev., ruled on Friday. Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford called the ruling a victory for rock 'n' roll. "It's a great day for Judas Priest. It's a great day for heavy metal and artistic expression," Halford said in a telephone interview from Mexico, where he is vacationing.

As lead singer of veteran British heavy-metal band Judas Priest, Rob Halford is used to being photographed and signing autographs. But that's usually backstage at one of the group's head-banging concerts. For the past two weeks, Halford, 38, has been approached by fans in a place he never expected to be: the steps of the Washoe County Courthouse, where his band is being blamed in the deaths of two local youths.

"You're not voting George W., are you?" asks my neighbor. "I'd rather eat rats," I say. "Like on 'Survivor.' " "Democrat, huh?" He looks me over for the Mark of the Beast. "No," I say. "Green. Voting Nader." "Can you do that here?" he asks. Being Green in Orange County means being voted off the island by the Democrats and the Republican rats together and, unwilling to play "Who Wants to Be a Social Darwinist?" on their "Gilligan's Island," embracing the protest vote. Protest.

On Tuesday, Vice President Al Gore described a television advertisement that flashes the word "RATS" on screen for a split second while discussing the Gore health plan as "a very disappointing development." When questioned whether subliminal techniques had been used in this advertisement, Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush stated that he found these allegations "bizarre and weird." Bizarre and weird the whole situation surely was.

This 2-hour, 37-minute account of Sublime's career combines the informational and performance elements of a standard music documentary with the silly, sentimental, just-hanging-out-among-ourselves feel of a family album.

Background music can strongly influence buying decisions in supermarkets, a finding that lends new legitimacy to the largely discredited concept of subliminal advertising. Researchers from the University of Leicester in England set up flag-laden displays of four French wines and four virtually identical German wines in a supermarket, then alternated playing French and German background music over a period of two weeks.

Truth be told, Hot Wheels and Acuras have very little in common. (When was the last time you tripped on your kid's Integra in the middle of the night?) But in the world of automotive advertising--where truth is what you make it--the two are both just toys, although for kids of different ages. So it made perfect sense to Acura's ad folks when they struck upon the idea of comparing the sporty Integra to the miniature die-cast cars.

Driving north on Van Nuys Boulevard a few weeks ago, I was returning from my first audition in several months. It had not gone well. I began visualizing my New Year's resolution, "Better Than '95," when I saw it towering above the street as I approached Nordhoff. Then there it was again, this time on Nordhoff facing east, high above a video store. I was outraged! Who was responsible for this indecency?

First came the command, "Eat Popcorn," flashed on a movie screen too fast for the naked eye to see. Then the pronouncement, "It's OK for you to be relaxed," its endless reprise on a self-help cassette tape masked by the lapping of waves. Now, into the murky, quirky nether world of the subliminal, where information is conveyed below the threshold of conscious perception, enter the video game Endorfun.

If audiences watching the murder mystery "Jade" think they can sense plot twists ahead of time, that may be because of the "subliminal" clues director William Friedkin says he has inserted throughout the Paramount Pictures film. By inserting images that flash for only a split-second amid the film's normal sequencing, Friedkin says he hopes to induce a jarring effect in the audience, as well as portend certain clues.

First came the command, "Eat Popcorn," flashed on a movie screen too fast for the naked eye to see. Then the pronouncement, "It's OK for you to be relaxed," its endless reprise on a self-help cassette tape masked by the lapping of waves. Now, into the murky, quirky nether world of the subliminal, where information is conveyed below the threshold of conscious perception, enter the video game Endorfun.