“an ancient repressive artifice, known to all churches, the typical vice of our political class…”

In truth, language is thought. Restrict one to suppress the other.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s hero, Winston Smith, worked as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. Truth, it soon becomes apparent, means untruth. The ministry is in charge of rewriting language, subverting and inverting its very meaning.

Controlling the means of expression is the means of controlling the populace, restricting their freedom, and finally controlling thought itself.

Primo Levi addressed the issue of a proscriptive and contrived use of language as a means of creating a purposeful miscomprehension. He describes using language to confuse people while upholding the pretense of offering information.

Levi described this linguistic form as, “an ancient repressive artifice, known to all churches, the typical vice of our political class, the foundation of all colonial empires.”

He described how powerful institutions use their language to do others down, to suppress dissent. Their language is too advanced and makes those ill-equipped to fully grasp it feel inferior. They cannot express their true needs.

In The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg describes another illuminating episode where language is a means of control. After the Normans took England, the language of the aristocracy was French. Suddenly words began to be used, and would filter down to the land’s vernacular, to describe things that were unobtainable for the commoners. These were words of luxury items, foods in particular, words of money, words of class and culture. They are words of law and repression.

Passport, fruit, fur, art, melody, arrest, bail, crime, debt are among the words imported by the new ruling class. The english tended the calves which produced the veal for their lords. Language gave the feudal system descriptive form.

Bibliography
Gobbledygook, Don Watson, Atlantic Books, 2003
The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg, Hodder & Stoughton, 2003
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, Penguin, 1972 edition

Original content created by: The Inquisition

Progress is a fact in every human endeavour. Cars are getting faster, or at least more efficient. Bicycle manufacturers are making them ever lighter. Records have ever greater sound depths and fidelity. Make-up is making us ever more beautiful. Well, in a way…

Tho-Radia tin, prominently displaying the quasi medical name, Dr Alfred Curie

Recently there have been several scares in the predominantly pseudo-scientific beauty industry – poisoned breasts, faces contaminated with nano-particles and infected, burnt-off faces. Scientists are crying out to help.

But how about harnessing the vivacious power of radiation?

Sounds enticing doesn’t it? Imagine immersing your entire being in an invisible radioactive haze. You could peel off untold layers of skin, to reveal the beautiful, young skin underneath. You could invigorate yourself from the inside out. Radioactive substances were used for all manner of consumer goods, as shown in this slideshow from Environmental Graffiti, but beauty products, topically applied, must be among the most concerning.

Until the 1930s, Tho-Radia was a french face cream fortified with both thorium and radium. Much like Clarins’ Rashid Enamany, Tho-Radia had its own fictional boffin; Dr Alfred Curie had no links to the discoverers of radiation.

Similar creams were marketed to women from a very early point in the last century. This was the beginning of the scientification (The Inquisition’s word) of the beauty industry. Claims went from simple beautification to the safe removal of birthmarks!

Why stop at creams?

Women could buy, at inflated costs, lipsticks, soaps, lotions, foods and more. Men were also looked after in this brave new world.

Equally pleasant to any of the women’s products was The Scrotal Radiendocrinator. Any man looking to restore reproductive function could employ this irradiated scrotum soak. Anyone stupid enough to do so should have applied it to their head instead.

Alternatively, they may also have been interested in Vita Radium Suppositories. After a 15 day course the men of Colorado, where it was produced, would have noticed remarkable changes.

All manner of ingestions were possible to receive the benefits of radiation. Radithor was a concentrated radium tonic. Eben Byers was a well known playboy and an amateur golf champion. He consumed 4 fluid ounces (approx 100ml) of it every day. He died in 1932 racked with anemia, a brain abscess and with a putrid, decaying jaw. Lovely.

Anyone looking to irradiate themselves ought to seek protection – especially for repeated exposure. Unfortunately, even mild doses of radiation are way beyond the frankly wild protective remit of Clarins Expertise 3p.

All of this questions how people still fall for the claims made by the cosmetics industry. Scientists have always brought on board to reinforce these claims, but do those creams really make you look ten years younger? Really? And do the scientists accept the limits of their knowledge – are these products not just effective but safe?

Consumers are easily swayed in a society which places the highest emphasis on physical beauty. After all, that little pot of cream might just work…

Update

Check out this infographic which shows dodgy chemicals still have a place in cosmetics.

Bibliography
Environmental Graffiti Slideshow
Radium cream advertising
Radior Product Shot
New York Times on irradiated beauty products
Quackometer on CLarins E3P
A chemist questions some products’ claims
Invented chemical ingredients
The Scotsman
Pseudoscience
Nano-particles described in the Telegraph
Multiple Exposures – Chronicles of the Radiation Age, Catherine Caulfield, Harper & Row, 1989
Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna, Maria Rentetzi, Columbia University Press, 2007 (http://www.gutenberg-e.org/rentetzi/chapter01.html)

Original content created by: The Inquisition