In a world filled with false politicians, posed media pictures online, and media magazines filled with fake pictures taken out of context, it is easy to believe that the world has become artificial and fake. Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion presents an argument that fills the lines dictated by today's society by saying that the most essential skill for most people in political theatre or consumer cultures is in fact artificial. I believe this statement to be true as the need for honest and sincere politicians and advertisers have become irrelevant as the ability to become popular and succeed in a goal through artificial items has becomes more popular through the uses of posed media and the ability to put on the show of a different person. …show more content…
As easy as actors put on clothes and become a different person to film a movie, successful politicians appear much more heartfelt and honest as they are in real life. This is backed by the idea posed by Chris Hedges that “political leaders…..no longer need to be competent, sincere, or honest. They need only to appear to have these qualities.” If a politician were able to appear honest and heartfelt in a campaign event, they would much more likely to appeal to the audience and be able to win their trust and vote in some cases and succeed in winning an election to the benefit of the politician and not the audience. . Similar, posed propaganda and social medias of today are often used to exploit the audience and give them poorly supported feelings of support and trust for these political leaders.
In a world filled with posed medias and propaganda, politicians often use out of context uses of pictures to gain support for their causes and exploit the trusts of their
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Means of posed pictures and the false idea of a morally right person often succeed in allowing the politician or person in a consumer world to exploit the feelings and trust of a person. Posed pictures often give something for people to base their feelings and trust off of but theses medias are foten out of context or missing the entire backstory or meanings for the picture. The ability to act differently and weave a personification of a morally right person to gain people's trust, often leads the audience to trust in a veil that is not the real person that they voted for. NOw when these ways are both wrong, they often lead the the entire trust being placed in the politician and the success of the politician. That is why i believe that the success of successful politicians are often because of the use of artificial medias and even though they are wrong, they are the most effective skill if a politician wants to become
In this article Mary Kate Cary opens up with the supreme court decision to not restrict the use of corporate funds in political advertising so that she can make her point that big money ads are not the most effective way for candidates to reach American constituents. She argues that social media is a new way for politicians to connect with citizens. Her five claim are that Americans can now, choose the media they wish to consume, share the media they choose the share, like posts they agree with and dislike posts they do not agree with, connect with others on social media, and donate to candidate campaigns online. With these claims she comes to the conclusion that politicians want to go around mainstream media so that they can connect directly with the voters.
The art of artifice compels the idea of false intimacy between a leader and his or her people. This essential skill acts like a play to distract its audience from the reality behind government authority. All a country wants is a leader that can talk the talk and walk the walk, even if they are faking it. In Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, the author exemplifies the importance of artifice in political theater and consumer culture since “Those who are best at deception succeed.” Artifice masks the true intentions of political leaders, whether it’s Napoleon’s domination over Europe, Hitler’s rise to power, or Donald Trump’s proposal against illegal immigration.
Buying media slots for candidates, which used to be a small business just over half a century ago, has grown so that these companies manage “more than $170 billion of their clients’ campaign funds” (Turow 230). This fact about the growth of such an industry should at a minimum raise an eyebrow, as it characterizes the shift and importance this data analysis has become. It also serves as an important point because it fuels the common fear of corruption in politics, as this data essentially offers a window to the responses and how people think to what politicians say. This could lead to the next phase of the “polished politician” where candidates will say statements that statistically receive favorable responses from the population. This strong pathos is a central pillar of the argument Turow is trying to make, effectively playing the emotion of pity from the hypothetical family situation, and building it into a fear of the system and establishment. Such emotions are strong motivators, and this combination encourages the reader to take action, or at the very least inform someone they know about such issues they weren’t even aware were
In his essay, “The Good, The Bad, and The Daily Show,” Jason Zinser explores the vices and virtues of so-called “fake” news programs. “Fake” news, as Zinser explains, are those programs that blend newsworthy events with comedy. By examining The Daily Show, Zinser reveals both positive and negative impacts that “fake” news could have on society. As a result, Zinser concludes that there are benefits as well as potential problems with “fake” news programs but insists that the true challenge is determining the net impact on society. The essay, which first appeared in The Daily Show and Philosophy: Moments of Zen and the Art of Fake News in 2007, challenges experts on both sides of the argument who either claim fake news is for entertainment only or that fake news is an acceptable source for information on current events. On one hand, Zinser uses expert testimonies to support his argument that the end result is a better informed public but on the other, he makes logical arguments enhanced by examples to illustrate the potential impacts “fake” news can have on its viewers and mainstream media.
It is very common in the United States’ political sphere to rely heavily on T.V. commercials during election season; this is after all the most effective way to spread a message to millions of voters in order to gain their support. The presidential election of 2008 was not the exception; candidates and interest groups spent $2.6 billion on advertising that year, from which $2 billion was used exclusively for broadcast television (Seelye 2008). Although the effectiveness of these advertisements is relatively small compared to the money spent on them (Liasson 2012), it is important for American voters to think critically about the information and arguments presented by these ads. An analysis of the rhetoric in four of the political campaign commercials of the 2008 presidential election reveals the different informal fallacies utilized to gain support for one of the candidates or misguide the public about the opposing candidate. Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who belongs to the Democratic Party, broadcast the first commercial we will analyze, the title is “Seven” referring to the seven houses his opponent John McCain owns; Barack Obama tries to engage pathos which refers to the audience of the message (Ramage et Al. 2012) utilizing a form of fallacy known as “appeal to pity”, this fallacy tries to “appeal to the audience’s sympathetic feelings in order to support a claim that should be decided on more relevant or objective grounds” (Ramage et al.
With nearly global use of the television; it has become a preferred method with which to influence and regulate people’s thinking, creating an unreal and idealistic, hypothetical reality which people strive to emulate. This is accomplished through shows and movies; the majority of which emphasize a perfect world, entirely free of corruption and poverty; where everyone is physically attractive, emotionally stable, and economically wealthy; a distorted reflection of our own world. This leads real people to attempt to create this imaginary world, only to fail; thus generating in themselves a sense of unworthiness, which in turn prompts them to try harder, to stop being individuals and become uniform.
Are they telling us the whole truth? In this passage from the Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, he states “the most essential skill...is artifice.”Artifice is the action of tricking others for your benefit. This action is commonly used in the political world. They use the work of propaganda. It is information that is biased and used for political reasons from a person's own perspective. I agree with Hedges’ statement because most political leaders show what the public wants to see or hear, but I believe it is not ethical in the world we live in. Political leaders almost always tend to have money so that gives them an advantage and an easy way to hide what they don’t want the public to know about themselves. It as an effortless way of hiding their true identity. Artifice is potentially something that is going to keep happening now and in the
Politics, although a very abhorred profession, is a necessity for society, and requires good leaders who make good political decisions for their constituents. Unfortunately, there is always a negative connotation associated with politicians, as they are usually seen as corrupt, lying, and scheming people. There are many dif...
Television has affected every aspect of life in society, radically changing the way individuals live and interact with the world. However, change is not always for the better, especially the influence of television on political campaigns towards presidency. Since the 1960s, presidential elections in the United States were greatly impacted by television, yet the impact has not been positive. Television allowed the public to have more access to information and gained reassurance to which candidate they chose to vote for. However, the media failed to recognize the importance of elections. Candidates became image based rather than issue based using a “celebrity system” to concern the public with subjects regarding debates (Hart and Trice). Due to “hyperfamiliarity” television turned numerous people away from being interested in debates between candidates (Hart and Trice). Although television had the ability to reach a greater number of people than it did before the Nixon/Kennedy debate, it shortened the attention span of the public, which made the overall process of elections unfair, due to the emphasis on image rather than issue.
Politics can be a stressful topic all over the world for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is whether the people elected will actually fulfill their promises and show that they are being honest and trustworthy. Unfortunately, it is more likely than ever that they will deceive the people instead. Artifice can be essential in political theater as well as consumer culture so I agree with Chris Hedges’ statement. A myriad of people have used it to gain fame, money, or power, and eventually abuse it. This can lead to disastrous situations because they might not be qualified for the job. They just need to capture the audience’s attention and woo them into believing their facade. The audience looks for that story in political leaders, waiting for the promises of a better future in their country.
...phere as the “sphere of private people who join together to form a ‘public’” and through the celebrification of politicians, the public sphere has been widened. We live in a world where anyone in the news, a politician, a footballer, a reality TV star, is a celebrity. Although we do not need to know the behind-the-scenes of each of their lives, it is of interest to the public and stories that are interesting to the public, sell the most newspapers. But because people buy newspapers because of celebrity gossip etc, the public sphere widens as a result. This stark fact was candidly recognised by Rupert Murdoch and as the head of News International, he described his company as being “in the entertainment business” (Shawcross, 1992: 261) and for this reason, the celeberification of politicians will neither cease, nor damage democratical debate within the public sphere.
There was once a time when there were more simplistic views on life; where truth and justice prevailed above all and the main concerns of society were much more primitive. However, those times have long vanished and have now been strategically replaced by the commodity that celebrity culture fully encompasses. Guy Debord writes in The Society of the Spectacle, that the “spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation amongst people, mediated by images” (Debord, 4). By this, he simply means that the spectacle is constructed by the daily images devised by celebrities, reality television, and pseudo-events. And those images have altered and strongly influenced the way people perceive themselves and others, as well as the social
The main aim of this report is to analyze the impacts of changes in the media concerning the societal and individual view of politics and politicians. The report also describes significant milestones in mass media since the year 1960 and examines the impact of mass media on how people think politically. The report then considers the effect of technological advancements in mass media and the effect on the results of elections. The use of mass media has increased over the last fifty years in that it is a primary medium through which supporters of various campaigners share their ideas and views concerning politicians and different political parties. Through social media, behaviors and performance of several activists have brought
In extreme situations, journalists choose the angle they can find, tick the boxes to the news worthiness, but never having a stand. According to Kempf, journalists fulfill certain criteria of newsworthiness and fake empirical evidence, which implements propaganda and in the journalists’ defense “that it did not matter the pictures were faked since they only showed what people already ‘knew’ and since they served the goal of opening the eyes of the public” (Kempf 2002, p. 60). Various examples from the War on Terror, where journalists and reporters would fake evidence just to gain more audiences but examples like this could elevate the issues, and it is as if this responsibility of Journalism of Attachment only adds fuel to the fire and this is done in the name of peace (Kempf 2002).
From the beginning days of the printing press to the always evolving internet of present day, the media has greatly evolved and changed over the years. No one can possibly overstate the influential power of the new media of television on the rest of the industry. Television continues to influence the media, which recently an era of comedic television shows that specialize in providing “fake news” has captivated. The groundbreaking The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its spin-off The Colbert Report have successfully attracted the youth demographic and have become the new era’s leading political news source. By parodying news companies and satirizing the government, “fake news” has affected the media, the government, and its audience in such a way that Bill Moyers has claimed “you simply can’t understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show,” that started it all (PBS).