The Role of the Media in Contemporary Society - Term Paper Example

Media manipulates the audience There has been a significant cultural change over the years. Previously nobody ever criticized media but today peoplehave woken up and we do get to hear of public debates on the way media manipulates public opinion and presents fiction or assumptions as facts. With the advanced technology, the media is seen to have great power in the process of manipulating the viewers. At the same time, people also realize that life can be dull without media scurrying about. The change has taken place because media itself has grown out of proportion and it is not possible to hide behind a screen any more. Movie too is a media. The movie The Truman Show conveys the message that we will have to stand up to the manipulators of television if we want to protect ourselves from the falsehood that surrounds us at every point in life. The role of the media in contemporary society is also widely evident in the movie Chicago where the media portrays the murderess as a celebrity. The media can decide and manipulate its attention as it feels and this too is amply displayed when suddenly the focus shifts from Roxie to Lucy. Peter Nicholson conveys the same message of how media can make fiction appear as reality in his cartoon picture. The techniques that media use can influence the viewers’ outlook as the director Peter Weir has proved in The Truman Show. The Truman Show moves between three different worlds. The director Peter Weir and writer Andrew Nichol have made extensive use of visual language to convey some ideas about the role and power of the media in our modern society. The character Truman has metaphorical significance and is largely the result of how image is constructed to create meaning. Weir employs a set of fine cinematographic techniques which has been ironic to manipulate and control people. This makes the film very strong in its influence on the audience. The film itself also employs several themes that are the role of the media in contemporary society, illusion versus reality, corruption and the significance of consumerism/materialism in the contemporary world. With these considerations in mind, we can look in more detail at how the film manages to achieve its effect. In the process, we can compare the film’s message with relevant messages contained in the film Chicago and in a cartoon picture by Peter Nicholson in which characters’ emotional development is paralleled by their move from a superficial black and white world to a vibrant, brightly colored one. The central premise of The Truman Show is that the main character Truman Burbank has been adopted since birth by television. He was brought up and lived all through in a synthetic environment without realizing it. The film starts with the character living in an ordinary little seaside town of Seahaven Island. The director Christoff, true to his name, has been successful in creating this image on the screen. The town is enclosed in a giant dome decked out with high-tech simulations of sun and sky, in which the rain and wind are courtesy of the special effects department. An establishing shot of the sun rising over the island shows us a white neat dormitory island town with delineated boundaries. We only hear sounds of birds twittering which creates a pleasant environment. The irony is that the town is no where near this ‘pleasant environment’ which the director has tried to depict. As Truman emerges from his house we can see a neat well dressed and presentable character which symbolizes that he is an honest and innocent man. His body language conveys that he is both wholesome and contented. Again, Truman’s possessions - his car and house symbolize that he is comfortable and shows us that there are no conflicts within him. This is again ironic as it is too good to be true. The blankness and the vividness of the blue sky that Truman looks up to, create an impression of sterility of Seahaven and speak how sinister the world is. The viewers feel uneasy with the contradiction created. The image of Truman’s world is given through oval and circular frames, which indicate that this world is being shot through hidden cameras, the way it would be framed for the viewing public. The fact that cameras are hidden from the subject Truman and that he is not aware he is being filmed puts the audience including us in the position of voyeurs, or peeping toms watching private actions of someone else from a hidden position. This raises another of the films major concerns - the exploitation of individuals by media and complicity of the audience in that exploitation. Similar images are involved in the film Chicago, a lawyer Billy Flynn manipulating the press to defend for his client Roxie Hart. However, these images are not used to convey exploitation but to remind us that the world we see on television is not as perfect as it might seem. This is true of The Truman Show too. The other main series of images used in the Truman show depicts the behind-the-scenes activity that goes into creating Truman’s televised life. Christoff’s location in the lunar room is not fully exposed to us until halfway through the narrative, and Truman is not aware of it until the end of the film. We see the world beyond Seahaven through the episode in which Christoff orchestrates Truman’s reunion with the man he believes to be his father controlling every aspect of the image presented to the viewers including the use of mist and sentimental music. A more objective perspective of Christoff’s world is given in the following sequence in which he is interviewed for television program through true talk. The physical relationship of the two worlds is visually conveyed through a long shot zooming in to a close up of the big full moon over Seahaven, whilst we hear Michaelson’s voice over explaining that Christoff’s location is the lunar room in the omni cam ecosphere. The use of visual metaphor simultaneously characterizes Christoff as both a man in the moon (he is literally placed within the synthetic moon) and God. If God sees all so does Chrsitoff, since his omni cam position suggests the omnipresent position of God. The lighting and color used for Christoff’s world helps us distinguish it from Truman’s not only as a physical location but in its ethical and psychological dimensions as well. The lunar room is a shadowy place. We get a general impression of it as a television control room but the dim light and dark colors of the sets do not allow us a clear understanding of what is going on in there. A dark and colorless setting is associated with the evil intent: it is a metaphor for what the film suggests. It is the negative role of television in our society. Our first glimpse of Christoff is of a shadowy figure obscured by the shadows of the moon. The technique of showing a character in this half-hidden way signifies, in film language, an element of moral ambiguity. The physical obscurity of the figure represents the idea that he also has something to hide in moral term and we may not be able to trust him. The shot following this one shows the back of Christoff’s head so that, although it is a close up, we are still not able to scrutinize his face in order to judge his motivations and honesty. Similarly, the film Chicago uses a series of striking and contrasting images to show the difference between the real and the manufactured world of television. Messages are present in the film Chicago, which depicts America in the 1930s/40s. This film convincingly shows the enormous power that carefully elaborated words and framed up imagery displayed before public possesses. Indeed, one of the characters of the movie, the slick lawyer Billy Flynn, bases all his success on his ability to manipulate and control the public opinion. His power is so great that he can turn a convicted hero of the film into a widely acknowledged mega star. Perfectly knowing the essence of the human nature, Billy Flynn manages to carry Roxie Hart though all those status and to her miraculous acquittal and recognition as a celebrity. Here, in the episode with the court press conference, arguably one of the most powerful images of total manipulation occurs, when through the symbolic use of strings attached to puppet-like people we can see how Billy controls the course of events. At this moment, we can immediately witness how a new reality, which is different from what we know about Roxie, is being created by manipulation and control. This tendency towards escapism from the unpleasant and disturbing aspects of our reality is perhaps nowhere more prominent than in the stance that our society has towards war, about which most people have a perverted notion. In this regard, a cartoon picture by Peter Nicholson perhaps creates the most vivid image of this existing contradiction. In this picture a man is sitting in a comfortable lounge chair before a large TV screen and is watching a film about war. He is sitting amidst comforts biting into cheese, enjoying the heater and the breeze. On the screen there are hostilities represented in suitably aggressive colors, which the man takes as the truthful image of the war itself as he exclaims, "So this is what war is really like!" His emphasis on the word ‘really’ expresses sarcasm and irony. The comfortable environment of the room hardly makes it possible that the man experiences anything close to being really at war. Yet, he firmly believes in the validity of the offered media images of war, and, perhaps, revels in his `heightened` knowledge. Again, the color on the television depicting war has red and orange whereas the lounge in which he sits and watches has soft pastel shades which represent calm and peace. He has no idea about a war but tends to believe what the media projects. Here, we can hardly avoid another analogy with The Truman Show, in which the audience similarly begins to forget that the main hero is controlled, and prefers to view him as real. The audience also thinks that he is reality, yet we know that Christoff is the controller. Under this view, we come really close to the very definition of manipulation and control which permeate unthinking societies. Finally, the main task of the discussed techniques of presentation of images is to make society adequately and freely comprehend all the precautionary messages contained in the films, which, in contrast to dry sociological warnings, are impressive because they speak directly to our heart and emotions. Indeed, what is the ultimate purpose of manipulation and control as such if not the subjugation of a subject in such a way as to prevent him or her from making own judgements? Still, in order to make people see this it is not sufficient to simply make statements. It is necessary to evoke the realization in the people. In this regard, The Truman Show helps viewers to heighten their comprehension of how media uses images as a tool to manipulate and control our actions and emotions. And akin to perhaps the most important scene of The Truman Show, when Truman changes and takes control of his life by cutting the strings of manipulation, we also should realize that only by having enough courage to become ourselves can we live our own life and avoid the restraining influence and control of the media and its false imagery. Read More