Subliminal
scripts are required, subtitles are projected onto
separate screens at the sides and bottom of the
main screen.
Super-injunction A legal block in the UK to the
publication of information – the ‘super’ element
being that even the publication of information
that a block has taken place is banned. The
super-injunction hit the headlines in 2011 when
an anonymous twitter user posted details
of legal injunctions taken out by celebrities in
‘kiss-and-tell’ stories. According to CNET UK
news, Twitter broke all visitor records in May, as
‘gossip hungry users fl ocked to the site’.
In the UK Sunday Mirror (15 May) Vincent
Moss, defining super-injunctions as ‘gagging
orders [that] wealthy celebrities use to hide
their indiscretions’, reported that a survey by the
paper found that eight out of ten members of
the public believed such injunctions ‘are only for
the rich’. See defamation; prior restraint;
privacy.
Supervening social necessity Notion that
social or cultural pressures give the impetus
to technological development, serving as
accelerators in the process of change. Brian
Winston suggests this feature in ‘How are
media born?’ in Questioning the Media: A
Critical Introduction (Sage, 1990), edited by
John Downing, Ali Mohammadi and Annabelle
Sreberny-Mohammadi. He cites the arrival of
TV in the US as being accelerated by the ‘rise of
the home, the dominance of the nuclear family,
and the political and economic need to maintain
full employment’ after the Second World War.
Winston argues that ‘supervening social neces-
sities are at the interface between society and
technology’. Th ey may operate as a result of the
needs of corporations, or because of new or rival
technologies.
As well as accelerators, social necessities may
serve as brakes upon technological develop-
ments, which ‘work to slow the disruptive impact
of new technology. I describe the operation of
these brakes as the “law” of the suppression of
radical potential, using “law” in the standard
social science sense to denote a regular and
powerful general tendency’. In this case, new
technology, though available, is resisted, checked
or even suppressed. Says Winston, ‘the brakes
ensure that a technology’s introduction does not
disrupt the social or corporate status quo’.
Winston is of the view that while TV had been
‘accelerated’ after 1945, it had been ‘braked’ prior
to the war: ‘Th us in the case of TV, the existence
of facsimile systems, the rise of radio ... and the
need not to destroy the fi lm industry all actedpeople is now focused on communicating a
sense of personal identity, and they adopt a DIY
approach to personal appearance as a means of
declaring ‘I am here’. An individual’s style can
be assembled using a diverse range of artefacts
‘borrowed’ from numerous cultures and sub-
cultures, past and present. Speaking of Western
culture, Polhemus argues, ‘What you look like is
no longer strictly determined by social situation
and culture or even fashion. Free from rules,
appearance is now a matter of personal creativ-
ity.’ Individuals may frequently change their
personal style.
▶David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl, eds, Th e
Post-subcultures Reader (Berg, 2003).
Subliminal Signals that act below the threshold
of conscious reception. Most familiarly we use
the word in reference to subliminal advertis-
ing – the trick of fl ashing up on the screen, or
recording on tape, messages so rapid that they
are not consciously recorded but which may
subsequently aff ect future attitudes or behaviour.
In the UK, subliminal advertising is illegal and
its use in other media is banned by the Institute
of Practitioners in Advertising. In the US there
is no such control. Many department stores use
subliminal seduction to counteract shoplifting.
Messages such as ‘I am honest, I will not steal’
are mixed with background music and continu-
ally repeated. One retail chain reported a drop of
one-third in thefts in nine months as a result of
its subliminal conscience-coaxing.
Computer games escape rules concerning
subliminal messages. The UK Sunday Times
published a major story, ‘Children “drugged” by
computer games’ (8 October 1995), concerning
the Time Warner game Endorfun. Th e messages
are there, admit the manufacturers, but they
are positive, one message being ‘I forgive myself
completely’. Randeep Ramesh, author of the
article, quotes the opinion of Howard Shevrin,
Professor of Psychology at the University of
Michigan: ‘It does not pay to fool around with
subliminal messages. The results may not be
good if you are the wrong person for the wrong
message.’ See sleeper effect. See also topic
guide under media: processes & produc-
tion.
Subtitle Or striptitle, a text near the bottom of the
projected image, usually providing a translation
of foreign-language dialogue. Th ese days it is
possible with foreign-language fi lms screened
on TV to generate subtitles electronically so that
the words are not actually on the fi lm itself. In
some multilingual areas, such as Cairo, where
three or more titles in diff erent languages and