33strats-ch30-penetrate-minds

PENETRATE THEIR MINDS COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to advance, to penetrate their defenses and occupy their minds. Anything else is ineffective communication, self-indulgent talk. Learn to infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details, luring people into coming to the conclusions you desire and into thinking they’ve gotten there by themselves. Some you can trick by cloaking your extraordinary ideas in ordinary forms; others, more resistant and dull, must be awoken with extreme language that bristles with newness. At all cost, avoid language that is static, preachy, and overly personal. Make your words a spark for action, not passive contemplation. VISCERAL COMMUNICATION To work with the film director Alfred Hitchcock for the first time was generally a disconcerting experience. He did not like to talk much on the sets of his movies–just the occasional sardonic and witty remark. Was he deliberately secretive? Or just quiet? And how could someone direct a film, which entails ordering so many people about, without talking a lot and giving explicit instructions? This peculiarity of Hitchcock’s was most troublesome for his actors. Many of them were used to film directors coddling them, discussing in detail the characters they were to play and how to get into the role. Hitchcock did none of this. In rehearsals he said very little; on the set, too, actors would glance over at him for his approval only to find him napping or looking bored. According to the actress Thelma Ritter, “If Hitchcock liked what you did, he said nothing. If he didn’t, he looked like he was going to throw up.” And yet somehow, in his own indirect way, he would get his actors to do precisely what he wanted. The most superficial way of trying to influence others is through talk that has nothing real behind it. The influence produced by such mere tongue wagging must necessarily remain insignificant.

THE I CHING, CHINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C. On the first day of shooting for The 39 Steps in 1935, Hitchcock’s two leads, Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat, arrived on the set a little tense. That day they were to act in one of the movie’s more complex scenes: playing relative strangers who, however, had gotten handcuffed together earlier in the plot and, still handcuffed, were forced to run through the Scottish countryside (actually a sound stage) to escape the film’s villains. Hitchcock had given them no real sign of how he wanted them to act the scene. Carroll in particular was bothered by the director’s behavior. This English actress, one of the most elegant film stars of the period, had spent much of her career in Hollywood, where directors had treated her like royalty; Hitchcock, on the other hand, was distant, hard to figure out. She had decided to play the scene with an air of dignity and reserve, the way she thought a lady would respond to the situation of being handcuffed to a strange man. To get over her nervousness, she chatted warmly with Donat, trying to put both him and herself in a collaborative mood. When Hitchcock arrived on set, he explained the scene to the two actors, snapped a pair of handcuffs on them, and proceeded to lead them through the set, across a dummy bridge and among other props. Then, in the middle of this demonstration, he was suddenly called away to attend to a technical matter. He would return soon; they should take a break. He felt in his pockets for the key to the handcuffs–but no, he must have mislaid it, and off he hurried, ostensibly to find the key. Hours went by. Donat and Carroll became increasingly frustrated and embarrassed; suddenly they had no control, a most unusual feeling for two stars on set. While even the humblest crew members were free to go about their business, the two stars were shackled together. Their forced intimacy and discomfort made their earlier banter impossible. They could not even go to the bathroom. It was humiliating. Hitchcock returned in the afternoon–he had found the key. Shooting began, but as the actors went to work, it was hard for them to get over the experience of that day; the movie stars’ usual cool unflappability was gone. Carroll had forgotten all her ideas about how to play the scene. And yet, despite her and Donat’s anger, the scene seemed to flow with unexpected naturalness. Now they knew what it was like to be tied together; they had felt the awkwardness, so there was no need to act it. It came from within. Four years later Hitchcock made Rebecca, with Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Fontaine, at twenty-one, was taking her first leading role and was horribly nervous about playing opposite Olivier, who was widely recognized as an actor of genius. Another director might have eased her insecurities, but Hitchcock was seemingly doing the opposite. He chose to pass along gossip from the rest of the cast and crew: no one thought she was up to the job, he told her, and Olivier had really wanted his wife, Vivien Leigh, to get her part. Fontaine felt terrified, isolated, unsure–exactly the qualities of her character in the film. She hardly needed to act. And her memorable performance in Rebecca was the start of a glorious career. When Hitchcock made The Paradine Case, in 1947, his leading lady, Ann Todd, was appearing in her first Hollywood movie and found it hard to relax. So in the silence on set before the director called, “Action!” Hitchcock would tell her a particularly salacious story that would make her laugh or gasp in shock. Before one scene in which she had to lie on a bed in an elegant nightgown, Hitchcock suddenly jumped on her, yelling, “Relax!” Antics like this made it easy for her to let go of her inhibitions and be more natural. When you are trying to communicate and can’t find the point in the experience of the other party at which he can receive and understand, then, you must create the experience for him. I was trying to explain to two staff organizers in training how their problems in their community arose because they had gone outside the experience of their people: that when you go outside anyone’s experience not only do you not communicate, you cause confusion. They had earnest, intelligent expressions on their faces and were verbally and visually agreeing and understanding, but I knew they really didn’t understand and that I was not communicating. I had not got into their experience. So I had to give them an experience. RULES FOR RADICALS, SAUL D. ALINSKY, 1971 When cast and crew were tired on set, or when they’d gotten too casual and were chatting rather than concentrating on their work, Hitchcock would never yell or complain. Instead he might smash a lightbulb with his fist or throw his teacup against a wall; everyone would quickly sober up and recover his or her focus. Clearly Hitchcock mistrusted language and explanation, preferring action to words as a way of communicating, and this preference extended to the form and content of his films. That gave his screenwriters a particularly hard time; after all, putting the film into words was their job. In story meetings Hitchcock would discuss the ideas he was interested in–themes like people’s doubleness, their capacity for both good and evil, the fact that no one in this world is truly innocent. The writers would produce pages of dialog expressing these ideas elegantly and subtly, only to find them edited out in favor of actions and images. In Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), for example, Hitchcock inserted mirrors in many scenes; in Spellbound (1945) it was shots of ski tracks and other kinds of parallel lines; the murder in Strangers on a Train (1951) was revealed through its reflection in a pair of glasses. For Hitchcock, evidently, images like these revealed his ideas of the doubleness in the human soul better than words did, but on paper this seemed somewhat contrived. On set, the producers of Hitchcock’s films often watched in bewilderment as the director moved the camera, not the actors, to stage his scenes. It seemed to make no sense, as if he loved the technical side of filmmaking more than dialog and the human presence. Nor could editors fathom his obsession with sounds, colors, the size of the actors’ heads within the frame, the speed with which people moved–he seemed to favor these endless visual details over the story itself. The letter set Cyrus thinking of the means by which he could most effectively persuade the Persians to revolt, and his deliberations led him to adopt the following plan, which he found best suited to his purpose. He wrote on a roll of parchment that Astyages had appointed him to command the Persian army; then he summoned an assembly of the Persians, opened the roll in their presence and read out what he had written. “And now,” he added, “I have an order for you: every man is to appear on parade with a billhook.”…The order was obeyed. All the men assembled with their billhooks, and Cyrus’ next command was that before the day was out they should clear a certain piece of rough land full of thorn bushes, about eighteen or twenty furlongs square. This too was done, whereupon Cyrus issued the further order that they should present themselves again on the following day, after having taken a bath. Meanwhile Cyrus collected and slaughtered all his father’s goats, sheep, and oxen in preparation for entertaining the whole Persian army at a banquet, together with the best wine and bread he could procure. The next day the guests assembled, and were told to sit down on the grass and enjoy themselves. After the meal Cyrus asked them which they preferred– yesterday’s work or today’s amusement; and they replied that it was indeed a far cry from the previous day’s misery to their present pleasures. This was the answer which Cyrus wanted; he seized upon it at once and proceeded to lay bare what he had in mind. “Men of Persia,” he said, “listen to me: obey my orders, and you will be able to enjoy a thousand pleasures as good as this without ever turning your hands to menial labour; but, if you disobey, yesterday’s task will be the pattern of innumerable others you will be forced to perform. Take my advice and win your freedom. I am the man destined to undertake your liberation, and it is my belief that you are a match for the Medes in war as in everything else. It is the truth I tell you. Do not delay, but fling off the yoke of Astyages at once.” The Persians had long resented their subjection to the Medes. At last they had found a leader, and welcomed with enthusiasm the prospect of liberty.

THE HISTORIES, HERODOTUS, 484-432 B.C. And then the film would be a finished product, and suddenly everything that had seemed peculiar about his method made perfect sense. Audiences often responded to Hitchcock’s films more deeply than they did to the work of any other director. The images, the pacing, the camera movements, swept them along and got under their skin. A Hitchcock film was not just seen, it was experienced, and it stayed in the mind long after the viewing.

Interpretation In interviews Hitchcock often told a story about his childhood: When he was around six, his father, upset at something he had done, sent him to the local police station with a note. The officer on duty read the note and locked little Alfred in a cell, telling him, “This is what we do to naughty boys.” He was released after just a few minutes, but the experience marked him indelibly. Had his father yelled at him, as most boys’ fathers did, he would have become defensive and rebellious. But leaving him alone, surrounded by frightening authority figures, in a dark cell, with its unfamiliar smells–that was a much more powerful way to communicate. As Hitchcock discovered, to teach people a lesson, to really alter their behavior, you must alter their experience, aim at their emotions, inject unforgettable images into their minds, shake them up. Unless you are supremely eloquent, it is hard to accomplish this through words and direct expression. There are simply too many people talking at us, trying to persuade us of this or that. Words become part of this noise, and we either tune them out or become even more resistant. To communicate in a deep and real way, you must bring people back to their childhood, when they were less defensive and more impressed by sounds, images, actions, a world of preverbal communication. It requires speaking a kind of language composed of actions, all strategically designed to effect people’s moods and emotions, what they can least control. That is precisely the language Hitchcock developed and perfected over the years. With actors he wanted to get the most natural performance out of them, in essence get them not to act. To tell them to relax or be natural would have been absurd; it would only have made them more awkward and defensive than they already were. Instead, just as his father had gotten him to feel terror in a London police station, he got them to feel the emotions of the movie: frustration, isolation, loss of inhibition. (Of course he hadn’t mislaid the handcuffs’ key somewhere on the set of The 39 Steps, as Donat later found out; the supposed loss was a strategy.) Instead of prodding actors with irritating words, which come from the outside and are pushed away, Hitchcock made these feelings part of their inner experience–and this communicated immediately onscreen. With audiences, too, Hitchcock never preached a message. Instead he used the visual power of film to return them to that childlike state when images and compelling symbols had such a visceral effect. It is imperative in life’s battles to be able to communicate your ideas to people, to be able to alter their behavior. Communication is a form of warfare. Your enemies here are defensive; they want to be left alone with their preexisting prejudices and beliefs. The more deeply you penetrate their defenses, the more you occupy their mental space, the more effectively you are communicating. In verbal terms, most people wage a kind of medieval warfare, using words, pleas, and calls for attention like battle-axes and clubs to hit people over the head. But in being so direct, they only make their targets more resistant. Instead you must learn to fight indirectly and unconventionally, tricking people into lowering their defenses–hitting their emotions, altering their experience, dazzling them with images, powerful symbols, and visceral sensory cues. Bringing them back to that childlike state when they were more vulnerable and fluid, the communicated idea penetrates deep behind their defenses. Because you are not fighting the usual way, you will have an unusual power. The priest Ryokan…asked Zen master Bukkan…for an explanation of the four Dharma-worlds…. [Bukkan] said: “To explain the four Dharma-worlds should not need a lot of chatter.” He filled a white tea cup with tea, drank it up, and smashed the cup to pieces right in front of the priest, saying, “Have you got it?” The priest said: “Thanks to your here-and-now teaching, I have penetrated right into the realm of Principle and Event.” –Trevor Leggett, Samurai Zen: The Warrior Koans (1985) THE MASTERMIND In 1498 the twenty-nine-year-old Niccolo Machiavelli was appointed secretary of Florence’s Second Chancery, which managed the city’s foreign affairs. The choice was unusual: Machiavelli was of relatively low birth, had no experience in politics, and lacked a law degree or other professional qualification. He had a contact in the Florentine government, however, who knew him personally and saw great potential in him. And indeed, over the next few years, Machiavelli stood out from his colleagues in the Chancery for his tireless energy, his incisive reports on political matters, and his excellent advice to ambassadors and ministers. He won prestigious assignments, traveling around Europe on diplomatic missions–to various parts of northern Italy to meet with Cesare Borgia, to ferret out that ruthless statesman’s intentions on Florence; to France to meet with King Louis XII; to Rome to confer with Pope Julius II. He seemed to be at the start of a brilliant career. Not all was well, however, in Machiavelli’s professional life. He complained to his friends about the Chancery’s low pay; he also described doing all the hard work in various negotiations, only to see some powerful senior minister brought on board at the last moment to finish the job and take the credit. Many above him, he said, were stupid and lazy, appointed to their positions by virtue of birth and connections. He was developing the art of dealing with these men, he told his friends, finding a way to use them instead of being used. Before Machiavelli’s arrival in the Chancery, Florence had been ruled by the Medici family, who, however, had been unseated in 1494, when the city became a republic. In 1512, Pope Julius II financed an army to take Florence by force, overthrow the republic, and restore the Medicis to power. The plan succeeded, and the Medicis took control, well in Julius’s debt. A few weeks later, Machiavelli was sent to prison, vaguely implicated in a conspiracy against the Medicis. He was tortured but refused to talk, whether about his own involvement or that of others. Released from prison in March 1513, he retired in disgrace to a small farm owned by his family a few miles outside Florence. Machiavelli had a close friend in a man called Francesco Vettori, who had managed to survive the change in government and to ingratiate himself with the Medicis. In the spring of 1513, Vettori began to receive letters in which Machiavelli described his new life. At night he would shut himself up in his study and converse in his mind with great figures in history, trying to uncover the secrets of their power. He wanted to distill the many things he himself had learned about politics and statecraft. And, he wrote to Vettori, he was writing a little pamphlet called De principatibus–later titled The Prince–“where I dive as deep as I can into ideas about this subject, discussing the nature of princely rule, what forms it takes, how these are acquired, how they are maintained, how they are lost.” The knowledge and advice imparted in this pamphlet would be more valuable to a prince than the largest army–perhaps Vettori could show it to one of the Medicis, to whom Machiavelli would gladly dedicate the work? It could be of great use to this family of “new princes.” It could also revive Machiavelli’s career, for he was despondent at his isolation from politics. Vettori passed the essay along to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who accepted it with much less interest than he did two hunting dogs given to him at the same time. Actually, The Prince perplexed even Vettori: its advice was sometimes starkly violent and amoral, yet its language was quite dispassionate and matter-of-fact–a strange and uncommon mix. The author wrote the truth, but a little too boldly. Machiavelli also sent the manuscript to other friends, who were equally unsure what to make of it. Perhaps it was intended as satire? Machiavelli’s disdain for aristocrats with power but no brains was well known to his circle. Soon Machiavelli wrote another book, later known as The Discourses, a distillation of his talks with friends since his fall from grace. A series of meditations on politics, the book contained some of the same stark advice as the earlier work but was more geared toward the constitution of a republic than to the actions of a single prince. Even more foolish is one who clings to words and phrases and thus tries to achieve understanding. It is like trying to strike the moon with a stick, or scratching a shoe because there is an itchy spot on the foot. It has nothing to do with the Truth. ZEN MASTER MUMON, 1183-1260 Over the next few years, Machiavelli slowly returned to favor