The Independent Group's film analysis contained the rudiments of semiology developed quite independently of the French. In "The Long Front of Culture" (1959), Lawrence Alloway wrote, "One function of the mass media is to act as a guide to life defined in terms of possessions and relationships...Consider the hero of two comparable Alfred Hitchcock films, both chase-movies. In The 39 Steps (1935), the hero wore tweeds and got a little rumpled as the chase wore on, like a gentleman farmer after a day's shooting. In North by Northwest (1959), the hero is an advertising man (a significant choice of profession) and though he is hunted from New York to South Dakota his clothes stay neatly Brooks Brothers. That is to say, the dirt, sweat, and damage of pursuit are less important than the package in which the hero comes...the urbane Madison Avenue man. The point is that the drama of possessions (in this case clothes) characterizes the hero as much as (or more than) his actions."