Find out what bacon has to do with propaganda at the next Country Day Faculty Exploration

If bacon often sizzles aside your eggs, you may want to attend Savannah Country Day School’s (SCDS) next Faculty Explorations event.

Why? Well, SCDS Latin language instructor Laura Santander’s talk will feature two great philosophers. The first is the famous Greek thinker and teacher, Plato. The second is a man that many may not know by name, but who is known historically as The Father of Spin.

Edward Bernays was a public relations pioneer who worked for many U.S. corporations including Proctor & Gamble and General Electric. He lived to be 103 (Nov. 189-March 1995) and is known for some of the world’s most notorious ad campaigns. He orchestrated Lucky Strike’s ‘Torches of Freedom’, which associated cigarettes with women’s liberation. Prior to that, in 1920, he helped the Beech-Nut Packing Company turn bacon into a breakfast staple.

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What does Plato have to do with the price of bacon?

The short answer: Nothing.

The longer answer starts with Santander initially studying literary narrative in college. A graduate class at New York University reintroduced her to Plato’s ‘The Republic’. Rereading it, she said she came across one section wherein Plato discussed “the censorship of poetry and different genres of writing, and how he will decide…what fits the ideal city that he is constructing in his story in his book.” That section helped shift her focus. She went from studying how authors could elicit certain emotions from their audiences to how authors, and leaders, might control not only how things are said but what is being said.

Bernays intertwined with her deeper study of Plato through a happy accident. “A friend of mine just happened to be reading his work called ‘Propaganda,’” she said. The friend encouraged her to read it. ‘Propaganda’ was short, so Santander opened it up. She noted how Bernays lauded the ability of propaganda to construct narratives, which, to her, echoed what Plato had written.

Santander said that she was not able to find any scholarship that connected the two men in the past. So, that led her to develop a rather unique dissertation that provides the framework for her Faculty Exploration talk.

“Today we still think about the questions like, ‘What's the best way to live life?’ That's something that the ancient Greeks and the Romans were thinking about,” she said. She argues that much of modern Western culture has built up upon that the philosophies of Greek and Roman cultures. “You have to look back at where it comes,” she said. “Would you change it? Would you not change it? That opens a whole new debate.”

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What to expect from the lecture

A debate might not be far off from how Santander will lead the lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday evening at SCDS’s Minis Hall. “I know that I called it a lecture, but I would prefer to be a bit of a discussion.”

To foster that discussion, she will proffer the question, “Why does the word ‘propaganda’ have negative connotations that cause a listener to recoil, but the word ‘persuasion’ does not?”

She hopes to examine why one of the two men is, “considered enlightened and the other malicious” with input from the Savannah community. While her own research has taken closer looks at Plato and Bernays, she plans on providing attendees with Cliff Notes on both men, especially Bernays. “When I was studying what really shocked me is how few people knew who [he] actually was,” she said. She is prepared for the discussion to evolve based on who shows up.

SCDS’s Faculty Exploration series is geared toward an adult crowd, providing them with an opportunity to go back to class. Registration closes on Tuesday evenings for each Faculty Exploration event, so be sure to register to secure a slot.

Faculty founder of the series, Adam Weber has stated that wine and snacks will be provided for the adults who attend. Bacon may not be on the menu.

If You Go >>

What: SCDS Faculty Explorations - Propaganda or Persuasion: The Problem of Democracy

When: 7 - 8 p.m.  Wednesday, Jan. 31

Where: SCDS campus, 824 Stillwood Drive, Savannah, GA 31419 at Minis Hall Room 10

Register: www.savcds.org/school-life/faculty-explorations

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Country Day’s third faculty lecture: Persuasion or Propaganda?