Captain Planet 08/30/09

Fear is the aesthetic du jour… what does this mean, and is it true? Saying that fear is the ‘aesthetic du jour’ means that fear is the current trend. Our society has monopolized on fear - making it the center driving force in our lives. All the mass media we encounter during an average day is anchored by this ‘fear du jour.’ Today’s headlining stories on the news are about the new greatest threat, the H1N1 flu – followed by kidnapping, crime, al-Qa’ida, and natural disasters. Everything we read evokes that feeling of fear. Even blockbuster films use fear to sell tickets. District 9 earned the top spot in the box office, raking in $30 million in the first weekend it was out. Other movies like, Gamer, 9, and Surrogates, are driven by the same idea of fear that District 9 used… the fear of the future. Movies are now even making us fear girls. Sorority Row, a movie about a group of sorority girls that kills one of their sisters hits theatres in early September, and Jennifer’s Body climaxes on the fear of teenage girls with a plot about a girl that eats boys. It really does seem that fear is the ‘aesthetic du jour.’ An interesting point to note is that although fear is the du jour, this sense of fear goes unnoticed by the everyday individual. We, as a culture, have become accustom to living in this world driven by fear. It is because of our gained knowledge through the CMC classes that we all can so easily see that fear is the underlying force in mass media. People outside of this major are viewing advertisements, and watching the news, and going to these movies, and soaking in all the fear that is instilled in them without knowing that the fear is placed there for a reason. And so when asking is it true that fear is the aesthetic du jour, I say yes absolutely.