This documentary, part of Bill Moyer's PBS series, The Public Mind, looks at a society inundated with visual images. "We live in a world of the mass producing and consuming of images which shape our lives and the public mind" says Moyers.From tv to billboards, magazines to bus stops, news stands to rock videos, mass-produced images have become the very air we breathe. (This film was made in 1989, before the web!). What is this cultural atmosphere saying to us and about us? Why should we care? Ever since the pioneers of public relations and advertising spoke about the "engineering of consent," social critics have analyzed its effects. For some, it reveals pure manipulation — the appropriation of language and meaning, the trivializing of life and thought. For others, it is the dawning of a new era — the printed word is dead and art and commerce are now joined in ever more sophisticated ways. "If our most prolific image is the commercial, the stakes are not only about meaning, but about citizenship and our democracy, truth and beauty" claims Moyers.