Futurama Pimps Out Young Audience to Monsanto

If you wanted to reach an audience of smart, hip young people, how would you do it? If you wanted to convince the young, energetic idealists that something was a good idea, how would you target them? One way to reach such a group would be through a fast-paced funny bit of “light entertainment” geared towards a slightly geeky, intelligent, and witty teen and young adult audience.  A simple animated television program. Take the show Futurama, for example. Aired at different points on Fox, the Cartoon Network, and Comedy Central, this show is from the creators of the iconic pop culture hit, The Simpsons. Often messages that are destined to change our perceptions are subliminal.  Not so with the recent episode, Leela and the Genestalk. (Aired on Aug 7, 2013) Subtlety is NOT really what they’re going for here.

Synopsis: 

After a rare condition causes Leela to grow tentacles, she stumbles upon a secret genetic engineering facility.

In this particular episode, the major character is Leela.  She contracts a horrible genetic condition called “squidification” that causes her to erupt with tentacles all over her body.  There is no cure – her only option is to live with the tentacles or to have repeated surgeries (very expensive ones) that provide temporary freedom from the tentacles, although they will soon grow back.

This could go either way.  It could be a moral tale about the questionable ethics of genetic engineering.  It could be a distinct lesson about how all of these horrible genetic malfunctions keep occurring in humans.  It could be a fable about how GMOs have gone wrong and how our food supply has become irrevocably tainted. It could be a treatise on the illnesses that have been linked to the consumption of GMOs or the horrible environmental costs.

Or it could be one giant advertisement for the biotech industry, portraying them as heroes and the saviors of mankind and planet earth.

Here are a few references – let me know if these sound familiar:

Momsanto :

A” floating genetic-engineering facility. It floats because if it were on the surface its experiments would be illegal.” (source)

Collasus: 

“Because Mom considers ordinary beans tiny and pathetic, Momsanto spliced elephant D.N.A. into their chromosomes for added heft. Thanks to Leela’s D.N.A. sample, the beanstalks started to have suction cups to keep them from collapsing. This unlocked a cheap, abundant source of nutrition for the world’s starving masses, which should make Mom a much richer woman.” (source) Earth: (One world government, military and currency)  Earth’s government is a planet-wide democracy … Although frequently invaded by Alien forces, Earth seems to be a military power to be reckoned with… Zapp Brannigan is responsible for protecting the world from various alien invasions as well as expanding Earth’s territorial claims…. Much like American money, Earthican currency depicts presidents…. (source)

In the episode, Leela and the Genestalk, Leela is very much against genetic modifications and DNA experiments.  She even tries to destroy the facility. In the end, wrapping things up in a warm and fuzzy fable-style ending, she changes her mind when she discovers that her “squidification” can actually be cured by…you guessed it…genetic engineering.  Because Leela’s tentacles and the DNA thereof have helped to modify the giant beanstalks that Mom is creating to “feed the world”, Mom rewards her by curing her squidification. Well, gee.  Maybe genetic engineering isn’t so bad after all. It’s pretty clear that the makers of Futurama have sold out and Monsanto was the highest bidder.

Selling out is the compromising of integrity, morality, or principles in exchange for personal gain, such as money. (source)

I wonder what the going rate is to have a subtle brainwashing message inserted into an entire episode of a popular TV show viewed by a couple million people these days? This isn’t the first time Monsanto got airtime on the show.  In the episode called “The Butterjunk Effect”  the butterfly derby contests were held at the “Monsanto Yokel Dome” and Monsanto is the sponsor of the “Goofy Gopher’s Revue” at Luna Park.

Television is a very effective medium to change perceptions because of the very way it works on the human brain.  Melissa Melton of Truthstream Media  wrote:

Type ‘television’ and ‘low vibrational energy’ into a search engine, and it’ll quickly return the fact that watching a lot of TV is like undressing your mind and submerging it into a bath of negative energy. TV effectively numbs the left side of your brain and renders you helpless to your right brain which is incapable of decoding and critically analyzing the information being presented to you. Essentially, you go on ‘auto-pilot’. Thus, everyone is put into a hypnotic state that author Wes Moore says, “produces highly functional, mobile ‘bio-survival robots.’” There’s a reason he dubbed television an “opiate of the masses“.

TV programs us. We tune in, drop out and stop asking questions.

Some of Krugman’s more interesting conclusions from his 1969 TV brainwave research include:

• “Internal Alpha responses can be stimulated by appropriate external rhythms or frequencies.”
• “The time may come when the mass media may create special programs to help people modify certain attitudes or behavior.”
• “This means that passively learned material has an important ‘advantage’ which some have also associated with so called subliminal perception, extrasensory perception, or hypnotism.”
• “For early education there may be an opportunity to accept the fact that many children fidget in class, and that this interference with their attention is not to be blamed on parents, teachers, or the child. Mild drugging of these children, or training in relaxation through Alpha driving, may be dramatically helpful to their educational achievement.” [Emphasis Added]
• “For public television there may be an opportunity to accept without shame the fact that it has taught violence to an entire generation. The clear store of television violence is not that a new generation is more violent but that the new generation knowsmore violence. The political consequences of this may yet be what some would call ‘good’ (e.g., pacifist).” [Emphasis Added]
• “It is possible that the relaxed and successful character of passive learning can be enhanced by the artificial induction of Alpha rhythm, this with the aid of a flickering light.” [Emphasis Added]

Your brain on TV, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a basic form of mind control. (source)

Melton’s article provides links to an alarming amount of research that has been done for just this purpose – to change the perspective of the audience.  To brainwash you, to control your perceptions and to provide your opinions for you. (Check it out HERE – it’s an absolute must-read!) Monsanto already deploys social media warriors to attack those who criticize them. They have created a propaganda website to provide “GMO Answers.”  This company that wants to appear so benevolent hired an army of deadly mercenaries and is rumored to have even purchased the security company itself. With this in mind, is it any surprise that the most vilified company in the world today might use popular entertainment as a tool for targeting young people in the hopes of enhancing their tarnished corporate reputation?

Thank you to Dawn for bringing this episode to my attention!