bumble: post class 3/27

Today’s discussion of propaganda and how it pervades our lives, made me think about how much of what we think and what we know is actually propaganda. We would not necessarily know! Reality and fiction is a strange concept with this, if we were to take the conspiracy theory approach we would realize that when we talk about someone like Anna Nicole Smith how do we know she is actually dead!? What if she were never actually in existence. All we know is what is on the media, and we are “certain” she is dead, but who has had a personal encounter with Anna Nicole Smith? If you were to be a skeptic to the level of conspiracy, then you would be able to doubt every little thing put on the air or in the media.

There is a fine line between real and fiction. The greatest examples of this, of how believable the media can be, is Orson Wells, War of the Worlds radio broadcast. This radio show was so believable that people thought that the world was under attack by extraterrestrials. People could not differentiate between reality and fiction and it caused wide spread panic. This is because it was broadcast in a news style, which implies that people automatically believe what the news says, because it is the news. Oh the power of media!

In regards to propaganda and how it might not be possible to know what we know and believe because of propaganda, I always think about the holocaust. When looking back at history we realize that there were children’s books and games which constructed the image of a Jew in a certain way. The propaganda of reaching to children, shows that they might not have a choice of how or why they believe certain things. Lego sets created a concentration camp game set. The pieces were of the Jews as skeletons, they had the ovens and nazi gaurds. Children see this as a toy and of course they are going to play with it. Images of the lego sets...

Also, there were fairy tale books made very much like Little Red Riding Hood, but the wolf or bad guy was the Jew. So, if that is the only exposure you have to this, through these media forms then you will be persuaded. How many things do we do now, are controlled in those same ways? Noam believes that everything is, and perhaps we won’t realize it until years and years from now, when we look back at history.