The Media’s Effects on Films
Media, Technology & Film.
News media desensitizes the consumers of its content via the use of wartime images, emaciated women in advertisement and a plethora of other demoralizing advertising ploys. During this process, the media works under the guise of promoting a sense of national security. Since broadcast news started, it has provided awareness rather than security. All too often this awareness leads to social chaos—a breakdown of the social structure to a degree dependent on the magnitude of the news. Images of dead soldiers will create more of an outcry than portraits of soldiers returning home. We the people have unfortunately contributed to this trend. As the media has increasingly uncensored its content, so too has film, creating an interesting parallel continuing through the years.
The rise in industrialization led to higher advertising percentages on the part of media conglomerates, which, in turn, prompted the rise in television consumerism. Americans watched television at this point for entertainment, and the trend continued through the present. Technological potential, with respect to photography, was suppressed during this time because no one had the knowledge to produce a camera capable of capturing motion. Photographs were only available to the bourgeoisie in portrait form due to the high expense. Even the photos available to the aristocrats were staged, and therefore contained no vulgar content. They used family portraits to send off as a tangible means to keep in touch with relatives. Not quite desensitized yet, do not worry, the advancement of time and technological innovation fixes that.
As technological advancements took place, photography and television were beneficiaries. World War Two photography provided the first images in motion. Viewing images relieved Americans, and they were provided with a sense of hope. Advertising led to even more consumerism; the people, forced to view what the media showed them, were undoubtedly influenced positively and negatively. An indelible image at the time, and still today, was the raised flag shot by Joe Rosenthal, which put an end to the inconclusive feelings Americans had about the war. Independence and freedom was depicted through the shutter of a lens. For the first time relatives could keep up with loved ones. This period, marked with rapid technological advancement, certainly alluded to the advancement of film production. In subsequent years, the media used war images in a different fashion; they used them as marketing tools to gain revenue. Today, media personnel prompt images with “be aware of the following images as they contain explicit content.” At what point do these images need to be censored? The answer is unclear, but if the trend continues, we the people can expect the Motion Picture Association of America’s lenient rating system to fall off the deep end.
Technological advancement allowed for the use of controversial images on the part of media. Now that the media had the capability to use such images, they began to use them in increasingly unpalatable ways. For the most part, the media self regulate the use of their images, but how much self-regulating do they actually do? Wartime images during World War Two, and later Vietnam, suggest that self-regulating practices were employed less and less. For example, there are more personal images of people in photographs during the Vietnam War than during World War Two. World War Two captured events. This path towards bloodshed as entertainment also snuck its way into the film genre; as people viewed more and more gory images they no longer had the same impact on them as before. Hostel provides the latest example of a film pushing the boundaries with regard to explicit content. Producers exploit the need audiences have to be entertained. As part of a consumer society, we like to indulge in the most recent technologies. The same holds true for storytelling and cinematography. As consumers are accustomed to more and more uses of film, they expect those uses to be carried out to the greatest potential, hence the increasing exploitation of mutilation on the part of films from the start of the zombie film genre until now. This leads to a crucial point of comparison.
I Walked With a Zombie represents the first point of comparison, which parallels the media usage of images and those used in film at the given time. In 1943, the date of the film’s release, the media, as previously mentioned, dabbled with wartime images. Globally, humans were still very sensitized to the images they saw. An image of a girl as seen in Vietnam Photos had less emotional appeal than it would have during World War Two, but it still had appeal. Filmmakers, like the media, have a duty to produce content that fits within certain parameters; a film cannot be x-rated if it is to be distributed nationally under an R-Rating. An interesting point is brought forth via this comparison. Would Hostel’s rating been within the restrictive parameters for violence when I Walked With a Zombie was released? It is doubtful. Consumers had not yet been desensitized to the horrors of themes and images on the screen, for there is a relentless use of the human body, and viewer response would have been ghastly. Later, events such as the Vietnam War opened the media up to even more unconscionable uses of photographs. Meanwhile, they gained national appeal. The media hoisted itself up via the commingling of forces; the citizens need for entertainment on the one hand, and the media ever so willing to feed it on the other. Ratings determine the success of broadcasters, and therefore it is clear as to why the media insists on using controversial images, and also relaying messages at continuous intervals. As media hype grew, so too did the interests of the people. The same phenomenon occurs in film. However, initially, there are barriers that the respective industries must break. For instance, the media has to slowly desensitize consumers at intervals that would not withdraw the consumer. If achieved successfully, as it has since the advent of television, the media will condition them to accept less than moral images. Said differently, if I Walked With a Zombie employed the same techniques as Hostel, it never would have made it out of pre-production because it would not have passed the standards set forth by the Motion Picture Association of America, nor would the people have adopted it in their homes. Radical potential of this nature would not suffice the demands of a moral culture, yet to be demoralized by the media. Instead, it used images and themes that were only as controversial as the content the media put out at the time. In essence, the media tested the waters, and film came gliding right behind.
Years progressed and so did the media. The Vietnam War, a tragic event, marked a point in time when the media used images at free will. One image displayed a little girl stricken with napalm, which shows her skin melting away. Interestingly, the aforesaid film and Night of The Living Dead were both released during times of war. This provides an easy avenue for comparison, and certainly further shows the paralleled trends of the media and film. I Walked With a Zombie broke controversial barriers with respect to social norms at a rate equivalent to the media. The film never used cannibalism, a theme that had not yet been introduced to humans on the screen. However, in 1968, after the media had already played its part in the desensitization of humans through the use of vulgar images, Night of the Living Dead gladly used cannibalism as an idea, and images were shown, the result was catastrophic. Interestingly, films have progressively displayed more and more personal race issues such as cannibalism, which is eminently displayed in 28 Weeks Later.
Film, for the first time, presented gruesome events as they happened in Night of the Living Dead. The media played a role in this film that is representative of their historical progression. A radiation satellite, projected from Venus, causes the dead to reanimate themselves as the “living dead.” They walk with much the same poise as the children struck by radioactive napalm in the images produced by the media during the Vietnam War: slow, tainted and corrupted, moving with no clear direction. As the events unfolded, humans relied on the media for information, which proved misleading and unrehearsed, as they had no concrete plan for survivors. This caused even more uproar. The media, in an interview said, “we do not know how many there are, we only know that they are easy to kill.” Much like the Vietnam War, this movie had no concrete, conclusive ending. As the stories have told, Americans viewed the war as merciless, and the zombie war in the film, too, was merciless and unending.
Inevitably, technological advancements have allowed the media to use photographs on a wide range of platforms, and as these capabilities arose, they were also able to boost ratings; they desensitized humans one step at a time, until they controlled consumer demand. Humans now find it entertaining to see gory events depicted in films. The media broke the ice and film followed suit. Tragic wars aided this movement; images used during war, and later, the commercial use of striking photographs, has transformed the zombie genre of the past as depicted in I Walked With a Zombie, into what it is known as today: blood, guts and a last pitch effort to save the world.
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