{"id":6988,"date":"2025-08-26T10:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T10:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alettafocusmarketing.com\/when-the-tail-wags\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T10:05:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T10:05:33","slug":"when-the-tail-wags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alettafocusmarketing.com\/en\/when-the-tail-wags\/","title":{"rendered":"When the tail wags"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

“Why is the dog wagging its tail? Because the dog is smarter than his tail. If the tail was smarter, it would wag the dog.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The manipulation of reality<\/h2>\n\n

We watched the 1997 classic “When the tail wags the dog”.The story is brilliant. The US president is hit by a sex scandal just before the election. A political consultant\/PR man (Robert De Niro) and a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) team up to make the world believe that America is at war with Albania. <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Creating reality<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

The film shows exactly how powerful storytelling can be. The two main characters build a complete reality from scratch, using the tools of the film industry. Fake songs, staged rescue missions, and one of the most absurd yet brilliant scenes in film history: an Albanian girl squeezing a cat, fleeing the ‘war’ in a studio. \ud83e\udd2b While the American people pray as one for the heroic soldiers and the little refugee, who cares that the President had a good time with an underage girl scout in the White House? And this is the strongest message of the film: anything can be sold through the power of distraction and perception.<\/strong>Cinema is the most serious lesson in the art of creating reality. Condensed into a single film, it illustrates the most basic strategies of manipulation, many of which are associated with Noam Chomsky: 1\ufe0f\u20e3 The strategy of distraction: divert attention from the real problems.2\ufe0f\u20e3 A strategy of gradualism: take small steps to accept a big change.3\ufe0f\u20e3 The strategy of procrastination: present a painful decision in the future so that people will accept it.4\ufe0f\u20e3 Treat people like toddlers: create simple, emotional narratives that are easy to absorb.5\ufe0f\u20e3 Appeal to emotion rather than reason: don’t rely on logic, but on fear or redemption.6\ufe0f\u20e3 Keep people ignorant and mediocre: educate a passive mass who are addicted to pop culture.7\ufe0f\u20e3 People should be encouraged to accept their mediocrity: make them believe that stupidity is cool.8\ufe0f\u20e3 Make people think they are to blame for everything: lower their self-esteem so they feel guilty about the problems.9\ufe0f\u20e3 You need to know people better than they know themselves: use the data you collect about them to manipulate them.Why it matters to us<\/strong>Your product or service is much more than its features. It’s the story you build around it and the brand experience you deliver. The modern equivalents of the tricks in the film come to us every day in the age of social media and fake news. Reality is malleable, and the most powerful tool is a good story! Have you seen this film? How did you like it? <\/p>\n\n

LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Why is the dog wagging its tail? Because the dog is smarter than his tail. If the tail was smarter, it would wag the dog.” The manipulation of reality We…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[192,127,273,1333,1335,155,212,1334,1330,1332,920,1331],"class_list":["post-6988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing-en","tag-business","tag-communications","tag-content-marketing","tag-film-analysis","tag-manipulation","tag-marketing-en","tag-media-en","tag-political-communication","tag-propaganda-en","tag-reality-check","tag-storytelling-en","tag-when-the-tail-wags"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen the tail wags - Aletta Focus Marketing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Through an analysis of the film "When the tail wags the dog", we show how the film industry uses the tools of power to construct a false reality\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/alettafocusmarketing.com\/en\/when-the-tail-wags\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The manipulation of reality\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Discover how storytelling manipulates reality. 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