mutter line

whichbe commented on the word mutter line

"The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association. When the lines are cut the associational connections are broken. You can cut the mutter line of the mass media and put the altered mutter line out in the streets with a tape recorder. Consider the mutter line of the daily press. It goes up with the morning papers, millions of people read the same words. In different ways, of course. All reacting one way or another to the paper world or unseen events which becomes an integral part of your reality. You will notice that this process is continually subject to random juxtapostation. Just what sign did you see in the Green Park station as you glanced up from the PEOPLE? Just who called as you were reading your letter in the TIMES? What were you reading when your wife broke a dish in the kitchen? An unreal paper world and yet completely real because it is actually happening. Mutter line of the EVENING NEWS, TV. Fix yourself on millions of people all watching Jesse James or the Virginian at the same time. International mutter line of the weekly news magazine always dated a week ahead. Have you noticed it's the kiss of death to be on the front cover of TIME. So stir in news stories, TV plays, stock market quotations, adverts and put the altered mutter line out in the streets.

The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing power and more sophisticated technique used by establishment mass media to falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a PRIORI ridiculous or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest."

                 -- From "The Electronic Revolution" by William Burroughs

May 20, 2008