|
While the press, throughout history, has been the major tool to invoke social and political change, nothing has been more effective in the last 100 years at causing sudden, mass changes than the motion picture. For a vast majority of people, a movie can do what books can't: provide people with a story, as well as a picture to back this story up. Watching a movie or television broadcast is a very passive activity, allowing a person to simply sit, stare and absorb everything that is presented to them on the screen. Unlike any form of media before it, motion pictures present leaders with a powerful tool that can spread ideas quicker than ever before. Vladimir Lenin said, "Of all the arts, film is the most important because it can be used to bend men's minds." There is no doubt as to the power that film has over people.
However, because of the power that is inherent in films, film makers often are able to manipulate their audience into believe that what they are seeing is truth. By using different techniques in their films, an audience's feelings towards one subject or another can be dramatically changed. In Griffiths' The Birth of a Nation, the audience, no matter what their political or social views, is cheering for the Ku Klux Klan at the end of the movie. This reaction is created by Giffiths' use of lighting, camera angles and overall screen play. While most people will agree that the clan, in reality, is not like this movie portrays them, this proves how powerful a force film is in the hands of a quality film maker.
In addition, it is often not professional movies that draw the greatest attention from the masses but home movies that catch a crime or great event. This can be seen in the home videos of John F. Kennedy's assassination and Rodney King's beating by the hands of Los Angles police officers. In the latter example, this film sparked national outcry in the black community not only because a man was beaten, but because the entire country could see and hear it, with their own eyes and ears. However, this outrage comes from not just seeing and hearing the video but also believing it. If this video was taken by a professional film maker, it wouldn't have been received with the reaction that it was for it would have been less believable in the eyes of many Americans.
In recent years, other stories involving minorities in America have been more horrific than King's, but yet have not drawn the amount of attention that his story did. On August 7, 1997, Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant was sodomised, with a broken broomstick, in the bathroom of a Brooklyn police station. However, most Americans have not heard of this incident. In 1998, James Byrd, a black man, was killed, in Texas, when he was tied to the bumper of a pick-up truck and dragged to death by three Ku Klux Klan members. The lawsuit filed by his children describes killers John William King, Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry as Klan members "who had hate involved in their lives by various means to inspire them to commit the most heinous acts imaginable against an African-American." However, just like the Louima case, the number of Americans that have heard of this case is far exceeded by the amount that have heard of Rodney King. The main difference between these cases: for Rodney King there was film, the others the was not.
The Rodney King incident shows the power that film, when believed to be showing truth, has on society. Because of this, responsible governments should harness this power in order to better uphold their contractual obligation to their citizens. It is clear that when the public views actual events of horrors in everyday life, people are unable to handle these things and, when exposed to them on video, behave like the savages that they were trying to escape when they banded together in the first place.
The goal of any society should be to ensure its own preservation, for without the group trying to ensure its own survival, there would have been no need for the group to form in the first place. John Locke espoused that people in the state of nature banded together so that they can work towards mutual protection. This group, as a whole, then has an obligation to each member of the group to protect them from the savages on the outside. While it can be, and has been, disputed who these savages are, one thing is for certain: without the group seeking to protect the rights of everyone inside, the group breaks its contractual obligation to that individual and, thus, becomes illegitimate.
This group, which we now call government, must do everything in its power to ensure that it does not become illegitimate. Throughout history, governments have claimed they were protecting rights to justify everything from the Trojan War to dropping the atomic bomb in World War II. Even though governments often use physical force against outsiders to protect rights, a government's greatest task today is trying to prevent group members from violating the rights of other group members. In our society, we are more afraid of what citizens in our own country will do to us, rather than what citizens of other countries will do to us. By forcing our government to spend more time protecting ourselves from each other, we have hindered government's effectiveness on the one thing that is the most important, protecting ourselves from the savages -- the very reason why government was formed to begin with.
We often see the toll that is taken on a country when its citizens are miserable and not working towards a common goal. In the 1920s, the economy and personal happiness in Germany hit rock bottom after losing World War I caused economic depression and internal strife. The German Mark had become practically worthless due to hyper-inflation and a loss of faith by the Germans in their own government. Until Hitler began his rise to power, Germany remained in this depression.
The major reason for Hitler's success, and other leaders like him, was the effective use of media as a way to refocus the attention of citizens to fighting against the savages, instead of fighting with each other. By refocusing the people on the reasons they had left the state of nature, that is rallying them all against a common, outside enemy, Hitler was able to return Germany to the superpower status that it held before the war. In just this one example, for there have been countless others, we can clearly see the power that media has on society. Whether you believe in the ideas espoused by Hitler or not, no one can deny that his use of media was able to promote German pride and stimulate Germany as a whole.
This was not the first time in history that a leader has used the media as propaganda to rally the people against a common cause. With the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, Martin Luther was able to spark the Protestant Reformation. This would not have been accomplished without the use of mass media, which was made possible by Gutenberg's press. Likewise, Sergi Eisenstien's Battleship Potemkin was made to show what could be accomplished if a nation stuck together and fought against a common enemy. These examples prove that if used correctly, media is a powerful tool that can be used to fight against the status quo.
The solution to this problem is not to eliminate video and press, but for the government to use them as a tool to heighten national pride and liven the spirts of the people in their nation. Most of the problems in our society stem from people overreacting to something that they have heard or seen on television, which is simply an extension of film. In most large cities across the country, the local news is filled with stories of murder, armed robbery, car wrecks and other events that bring fear into the hearts of many. By replacing these stories with stories of achievements and happier news, even if you are avoiding some truth, the public, in general, will be more content and happier about the condition of their society.
In films, film makers often use techniques in order to distort the truth. These techniques, such as using rolling sets and disorienting lenses, as in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and using low and high angle shots, as in Citizen Kane, often allow the film maker to subtly control the viewer's thoughts on what they are seeing. Film makers should strive to use these techniques when showing films in order to increase the morale and heighten the self confidence of the people in the nation. If something normally distressing has to be shown, it should be shown in a way that would make the viewers reflect properly on the situation. For example, if the nation's president was assassinated, it should look dignified and portray the man as a great leader to the country. Unlike the John F. Kennedy tape, in which Americans see what happened as grim and depressing, by changing the lighting and adding patriotic music, this same, grim video could be shown and the viewer's would feel a sense of pride that this man died leading the country, and not simply cringing after viewing a murder.
While the Kennedy film showed the damage caused by an assassin's bullet to the entire nation, the national response was not as horrific as it could have been. In great nations previous, the assassination of the president or emperor has caused a great civil war or social unrest. Another civil war or great social unrest could have a disastrous impact on the United States and the rest of the world. Currently, we live in an age of technology. However, our dependance on technology is now at the point of almost complete dependance. This poses a grave problem to our society as a whole. Today, we can often see the problems we face on an individual level when our computer crashes, car gets a flat tire or, God forbid, the electricity goes out. Often, we do not panic when these things happen because we know that we can reboot the computer, call AAA or use flashlights until the power company fixes the problem. While the situation is not extreme in a functional country, a civil war or great social unrest could drastically, permanently change the style of living to where most people would not be able to survive.
This might seem like an extreme situation, but, in reality, it is not that far from the truth. For example, most people know how to drive a car. They know that you need a key to start the ignition, then you press the pedal and, like magic, it goes where you steer the wheel. However, given all of the parts to a car, very few people would be able to put one together. Our society has become so specialized that we need lots of people, educated in different fields, in order to survive. Again, it's why we joined out of the state of nature in the first place -- mutual betterment and protection. However, in such a vast, modern nation, what would happen if something disabled long distance communication and electricity? The answer: complete and utter panic.
The solution to this problem might be easier than it seems. In our society, television and film says that the goal of our life should be to acquire as much money as we can, as fast as we can. However, this idea of a rich and prosperous life does not lend itself to the betterment of society. Right now, we are seeing a reduction of qualified educators and a reduction in the general education of manual skills. While kids aspire to become brain surgeons, no one is aspiring to make the tools for them to use, and even though our country is advancing at a staggering technological pace, each step we make, without the proper precautions, brings us one step closer to impending doom.
While an initial idea might be to remove all forms of formalist technique in the media, this would only lead to the disastrous effects like the ones seen in the Los Angles riots. Simply put, people want the truth but, like A Few Good Men suggests, they can't handle the truth. However, by either using formalist techniques to provide people with a distorted truth, or altering the truth all together, a government of a nation, who should be in control of the film makers, can keep the people of their nation content and productive. In addition, even within a technological society, a controlled media is able to reenforce ideas about jobs, money and power in a way that will help the nation as a whole.
Film makers, as well as media producers as a whole, often twist facts and the truth in order to have the viewer think like they want them to think. In general, this is a dangerous practice when many people possess many ideas on what they believe that the truth is. By having many opinions on a crime or on government policy, people could be hurled into social and political unrest as they react to something which they believe to be true. Strict control over the media allows the government to protect the well being of the people by providing them with a truth that will not be disputed. Only when a government is able to curb any type of internal strife can they fulfill their major contractual obligation to the people: protecting their citizens from the savages on the outside.
The thought of restricting the freedom of speech and expression is often frightening to those who don't see the problems with unrestricted speech in any technology dependant nation. In any free market society, it would be foolish to try to curb expressionism for often the people who persuade the public to see things as they do are the ones who are at the top of the country. However, the danger lies when these people compete against each other, creating social unrest. The government of a nation must strive to control all forms of media, as well as the media producers, in order to keep the people subdued and focused towards protecting themselves from the savages and not from each other. Until a government removes internal conflicts and is able to assure that citizens are protected from each other, it is not able to protect its citizens from the savages on the outside and, thus, remains illegitimate.
|
| |
