The United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once stated, “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.” Nowadays, this cogitation is all too common with modern media and the people behind it. It is a shame that the only thing that captures Americans’ attention is whether or not some celebrity did something unusual, instead of genuine news stories that are affecting hundreds if not thousands of people around the globe. We let the media take control of our daily life, whether it be through advertising, through manipulation of news and television, or by even letting them spy on us every second of our lives through the NSA and other government surveillance programs. The government and the media are holding hands to keep the masses in line and to keep them distracted so they do not unearth all of the evil that they are conducting behind our backs. Director Peter Weir was able to portray and predict the state of our media today all too well in his film The Truman Show (1998). The Truman Show tells the story of 30-year-old Truman Burbank and how he was born into a bubble society created by a mass-media corporation. Truman grows up in this dome world that is veritably a set filled with hidden cameras and he is filmed every second of his life without his knowledge. Peter Weir with his film The Truman Show predicted what would happen in the future if we continued with patterns of letting the media and government control our lives through advertising, manipulation of news and television, and allowing them spy on us every second of our lives through surveillance programs.
One of the leading prophecies Peter Weir has made through The Truman Show is the mass surveillance that occurs through modern me...
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...hem can also purchase it too. It has become so engraved into the American lifestyle to consume it might be difficult to stop it.
By watching the film The Truman Show by Peter Weir it is shown how much the film relates to modern day America. Our ignorance and consumerism is what makes this film prophetic. Weir provided the call of action for change back in 1998 and today in 2014 it still has not changed for the better and has only gotten worse. The motivation for a radical change in American government and media corporations is there, but will we finally take the chance and push for a better way of life. Or, will we simply continue to allow the media and government to spy on its citizens, manipulate our news, and pressure us to be the biggest consumers in the world. We can only hope that one day we, like Truman Burbank, can break out of this corrupted system.
“When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.” During the late 1940s and early 1950s, these words of Abraham Lincoln were all on the minds of Americans (McCarthyism). After fighting against Communism for decades, the fear of it taking down the country terrorized people’s thoughts. Even more so, people were extremely frightened of the idea that there could be Communists within the spotlights of American influence that were plotting the destruction of the United States. A fear swept the country for almost a decade, and it transformed every aspect of American culture. This transformation began in the entertainment industry and hit here the hardest. The fear of Communism completely spun the industry upside down and distorted everything that made American showbiz so distinct. Even today, the controversies of the 1940s and 1950s have left an impression on the current entertainment industry.
One of the most interesting features about today’s media is that it connects many individuals in perplexingly short amounts of time. Through constant streaming, society has become extremely vulnerable by allowing themselves to be engrossed by the presented reality. The outcome is unsuspecting citizens that are mentally deformed by the adverse lies told to them. Gary Shteyngart exploits this reality through his successful novel, Super Sad True Love Story (2010) in which he creates a fictional world focusing on consumerism and commercialism. This fictive work creates an environment of secrecy in which the government actively displays more cover-ups and less controversial activity. Similarly, but to a much larger extent, Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show (1998) presents a city consisting of theatrical illusions surrounded by
The reality of the world and the truth of it is questioned everyday, especially when something goes wrong. This is shown in the Truman show, when Truman finally starts to question the reality of the world and the truth of the people that surrounds him. So we need to ask to following questions to understand what the film is essentially about. Firstly, do we agree with the statement- We accept the reality of the world which we are presented? Secondly, what messages is the director trying to give us about modern society? Last of all, explain the part which the media plays in this and power and control it has over individuals? In this essay, I will discuss human nature, our controlling society and how they hide the truth, and the influence of media on us.
People are exposed severally on the government gallery, and they are little things they can always do to protect them from such. Unregulated surveillance could in a greater manner strip individuals of their privacy rights, and by addition, restrict coming together of people, organizations and in such a comprehensive way that could vindicate us back to the most grievous errors in history swinging back to the present day (Boghosian 89). People, non-governmental institutions are living under such oppressive realms but cannot clearly articulate their concerns and issues that affect the society for fear of state cameras (Song
Whether man is escaping his plight through alcohol, through climbing mountains in an SUV, penetrating nature in a BMW convertible, or finding warmth in nicotine addiction, certain truths remain: the illusions created by the media reshape culture and consequently reshape the truths we perceive through the many levels of meaning hidden in their core. How much courage and wisdom will it take for men and women to rebel against these media executives who force-feed images promoting subservience to wealth and position in order to keep their pockets full. Studying media forces a re-examination of all that we see — just as Oscar Wilde suggests: ìTo look at a thing is very different from seeing a thingÖî
January 6, 1973, famous anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide in which she addressed her view of PBS’s series “An American Family.” This series was groundbreaking during that time because is followed the Loud’s, a California family who were neither actors nor public figures just average middle-class family, which was unheard of at the time. The Louds were filmed for seven months and the product was twelve one-hour episodes which showed everything from the monotony of their everyday life to the corrosion of Bill and Pat Loud’s marriage. Meade called this series “a new kind of art form” and marveled at the shows ability to show the drama and entertainment value of the average human condition. Forty years later, as Meade had predicted, reality based television and films have become more understood, respected and prevalent in our modern culture. Extreme success stories of documentaries such as Justin Bieber’s 2011 “Never Say Never” and countless reality shows indicates that a celebrity’s presence , musicians particularly, on reality media channels can change audience’s perceptions, promote new material and help them to stay relevant in the public eye. These “reality” documentaries and TV shows present the audience with carefully edited material that conveys only a fraction of that individual’s personality and character yet has profound effects audience perception and acceptance. The British boy band One Direction is a prime example of how using the model of framing in reality television shows and documentaries effectively promotes projects, molds the opinions of audiences, allows artist to appear more open and relatable and leads to extreme monetary success.
Mass surveillance is a word that has been thrown around every so often in the last few decades, especially ever since George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although this book was released over 60 years ago, some aspects of the book are seeming to become true in the United States, and other parts of the world today. The idea of mass surveillance isn’t so taboo anymore, as there are several programs ran by sovereign countries around the world which monitor their domestic citizens, as well as citizens and leaders of other foreign countries. With all of our technological communication advances since 1949, this age of information is only going to get more severe, and more tracking and monitoring will be done. The biggest offender of doing this is the NSA, shortened for National Security Agency. The NSA is an organization that was made by the US Government to monitor intelligence, and collect, translate and decode information. What’s important about the NSA, is that this most recent summer, a program named PRISM was revealed by a whistleblower, and in summary, PRISM monitors everything it can, including our own citizens in the United States. This “scandal” had a lot of air time for many months, and is still in the news today. The revelation of what the NSA is doing behind our backs is what made the basis of this essay, and made me think of how similar this entire situation is to Nineteen Eighty-Four.
David. "Mass Media and the Loss of Individuality." Web log post. Gatlog. N.p., 11 Sept. 2007. Web. 10 May 2014.
The media’s manipulation of society is a real and scary issue that leads to many of the psychosocial, financial, and political issues that the American populace faces on a daily basis. The factual events skewed by subliminal manipulation of information has been blinding the American people from the realities of global and local events that the media has tried to twist and cover up for generations for their gain, for the benefit of businesses the affiliate with, or to make their personal belief on an issue stand out more than the truth.
1984, a novel by George Orwell, represents a dystopian society in which the people of Oceania are surveilled by the government almost all the time and have no freedoms. Today, citizens of the United States and other countries are watched in a similar way. Though different technological and personal ways of keeping watch on society than 1984, today’s government is also able to monitor most aspects of the people’s life. 1984 might be a dystopian society, but today’s condition seems to be moving towards that controlling state, where the citizens are surveilled by the government at all times.
In the novel 1984, the characters are always being watched. They feel as if there is no benefit to being watched, especially when they get arrested for things they say. Technology is at the point where, “Who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell
Thus, when he saw a light fall from the sky and he heard the director’s voice on the radio, Truman began to become suspicious. He remembered Lauren, an actress who had told him that it was just a TV show and so, he went to find her. He travelled across the sea, talked to Christof and then climbed a flight of stairs in the sky, escaping into the outside world. Unbeknownst to him, Truman Burbank's whole life has been the subject of a hugely popular 24-hour-per-day television show entitled “The Truman Show” (Propagandee, 2012).
Popular culture and media are deeply ingrained in contemporary society. Influenced heavily by modernity and the process of modernisation, the importance of these models is constantly changing. Indeed, the power and agency afforded to the media and elements of popular culture are similarly evolving, as the society they represent evolves politically and economically. Walter Cronkite argued that the task of a journalist is “only to hold up the mirror, to tell and show the public what has happened” (Groeling, 2008, p633). However, this concept applies wholly to media and popular culture as well, as ultimately these cultural phenomena are reflections of the society they are intertwined in. Media and popular culture are constantly evolving and shifting, reflecting the societies they are the very product of.
One of the main activities that American's participate in during their free time is watching the television. Since its invention over sixty years ago, the television has been a source of enjoyment and information for the American citizen (Pember, 1981). Though what one sees on the television is not what one should always believe. Many people look at television with the "camera never lies" attitude, and are easily manipulated by this medium. People are manipulated by television because most television programming is controlled by a small number of companies, this is a main source of information, and people all too often trust what they witness in the media. Because television is controlled by an oligolistic market, the few companies that do control television programming are able to benefit from a great deal of selectivity, and would not put something on a news cast that would harm their business. The media is also able to manipulate people because television is one of the main sources of information in this country; from local news casts, to news related magazines like 20/20 and Dateline. These programs show a very limited view of the facts due to time restraints and company wide bias (Kaufman, 1998). And many people do not question what they witness on news shows, which can be very detrimental the their own knowledge of the facts. These three causes promote a society where the media many times has the upper hand in directing people's decisions, and therefore manipulating society as a whole.
How does the NEWS shape the way we see the world? While other countries, such as those in Europe, show important, life-changing events and how they take place, the United States is more focused on the daily lives of their celebrities. For example, when Anna Nicole Smith died of an apparent drug overdose, this story eclipsed the IPCC report by more than ten times the average amount. We do not hear more about the world, and see what happens in other parts of the world due to the reduction of foreign bureaus in the United States. At one time, the reduction was so severe that it dropped by more than fifty percent. For this reason we, as Americans, are more ignorant than ever, but this is not our fault. It is the fault of higher powered parties placing censorships on what television channels are allowed to convey of both our country and that of others. Some people may point to the costs of overseas coverage being more expensive than that of local coverage, but this is not necessarily true. While this may be a concern, my paper will focus on how th...