Tag Archives: paranoia

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The TUBE: Can you handle the truth?

After looking at the blog assignment, a YouTube video popped into my head. It was over a year ago that my friend sent me this clip from the 1976 satirical movie “Network.” I didn’t think too much about it then, besides finding it ironic that the clip showed a man ranting against the “Tube” while being a YouTube clip. To provide you a bit of background, the movie is about tv anchorman Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch and how he is shaken by his network for his poor ratings. He goes mad while live on camera and his ratings skyrocket. The network then gives Beale his own show where he rants and raves. In this particular segment, he speaks about his disillusionment with the media and how the television, man’s miracle invention, is filled with propaganda and lies that the public feed into without knowing any better.

Barely three minutes long, this clip touches heavily upon the topics of fear, anxiety, and paranoia that our class is based on in relation to the notion of “truth”. I have below the part of his impassioned speech that really hit home for me:

“We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true […] We’re all you know! You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here! You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you– You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even THINK like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name you people are the real thing, we are the illusion!”

The words were so powerful, especially in the frenzied way Finch plays his character. With each angry word, I was filled with anxiety. We take what we see on television and other digital media, as the unspoken truth. We learn our values from television, and we just hope that we’re being taught the right things. Isn’t it worrisome that what we see impacts how we think, and if we just watched or heard something else, maybe we wouldn’t think/act a certain way?

I know this kind of diatribe against the media is nothing new. No one can trust the media because it is biased, no matter which way you cut it. From Fox to CNN, all major news channels have their own motives for getting out certain stories while minimizing others. Then again, if we choose to never watch television or connect to the world through the media, does that mean that we’re too paranoid and choose to be ignorant of the world?

In relation to the movies we’ve watched, I thought the idea of truth, how we consciously (or subconsciously) try to hide from it, and how it can destroy the best and worst of us is evident in movies like in Touch of Evil and Memento. Quinlan in Touch of Evil hides the truth and frames people for committing crimes. Yet it catches up with him and he dies for what he’s done. Then in Memento, Leonard is forever on a quest to find the truth behind his wife’s murder, yet he’s actually sabotaging his own pursuits to fulfill his own needs. Just as striking was the fact that in this YouTube clip, Beale was a man denouncing the media while he himself is a player in the arena. It was insane that right as he was on the verge of finishing his speech telling people to turn the television off in the middle of his sentence, that he should faint in the middle of his sentence!

I don’t know whether he was staged to faint, but it’s still nevertheless an eerie omen–as though the truth is too much for one man to bear alone.

Also, you can find a longer version of the movie clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qfqZ1ZIx_U&feature=related

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The Cold War Through Music

The Cold War lasted approximately from 1947 to 1991 and it was a period of high tension and political conflict between the USSR and the US. There was not any physical fighting, but there was conflict behind the scenes: military alliances, espionage, propaganda, the nuclear arms race, and a race for technological innovations. 

I came across this song by Sting from his debut solo album, The Dream of Blue Turtles called Russians. In it, he sings of the consequences of the Cold War and of what we could do to save the world from the escalating shows of power. 

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4rk78eCIx4E” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

The lyrics are: 

In Europe and America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Khrushchev said we will bury you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It’d be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy
There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the president
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us me and you
Is if the Russians love their children too 

Source: http://www.lyrics007.com/Sting%20&%20Police%20Lyrics/Russians%20Lyrics.html

Please take the time to read the lyrics. Each line is really very meaningful. The song’s lyrics and Sting’s mournful voice really portray the despair of the situation. He wants the everyone to get along to ensure that a future will exist for generations to come.  The last four lines are really poignant. Sting says, we are all human beings; you and I are made of one and the same. Why can’t we just get along and live in peace and harmony?

I think Sting’s debut of this song was very taboo, but I applaud him for being courageous enough to come out with this radical song. People were very frightened by the prospect of another World War and there was a lot of hatred towards foreigners. They were anti-Russian, anti-Communist, and anti-foreigner. Sting tries to soothe people by singing about the innocence of sons and daughters, trying to convince them to unite peacefully for their sake. 

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The Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist: For Tuesday

As you’ll see on the calendar page, our viewing for Tuesday is The Front, a 1976 comedy starring Woody Allen about McCarthyism’s impact on the entertainment industry and Trumbo, a 2007 documentary about Dalton Trumbo, a well known screenwriter who was blacklisted but continued to write and and win awards under psuedonyms. Both are available for streaming on Netflix.

Also, please take a look the following films. Together, they’ll give you some additional context for the two films as well as our reading from Whitfield’s The Culture of the Cold War. Most of these are already in our Delicious feed.

“Hollywood ‘Red’ Probe Begins, 1947/10/20 (1947)” A newsreel on the beginning of HUAC’s probe of alleged communist activity and influence in Hollywood.
I Married a Communist(a.k.a. The Woman on Pier 13)(1949). An RKO feature starring Robert Ryan and an exemplary red scare propaganda film along with My Son John and I Was A Communist for the FBI.

“The Hollywood Ten” (1950), a 16mm short critical of McCarthyism and the blacklist. The director, John Berry, was blacklisted after the film’s release and fled to France where he worked until his return to the US in the 1970s.

“Make Mine Freedom” (1948). A propaganda cartoon on the virtues of democracy and what Americans stand to lose if communism should prevail.
“Communism,” a 1952 educational film about the threat of Soviet Communism.