We all know that the media massages the message, but these two recent incidents of audience manipulation have caused me to sit up and take notice.
First, here is a very friendly and seemingly openhanded video about why the Burger you order at McDonalds looks nothing like the one you see on the menu:
At one level, the friendly host models transparency and shows you how they create the picture you see but not the burger you eat.
It warms me to McDonalds and somehow makes me trust them more. This video has been watched 6 million times and has probably helped customers feel less hacked off with why their burgers look such a mess. But McDonalds have spent a lot of money helping me see behind the scenes – revealing the whole industry of audience manipulation. The need for beauty and perfection in advertising -the hours to create the perfect looking burger, complete with syringed in ketchup, the finessing a rogue piece of cheese in postproduction. all to create a fiction of the perfect burger that no one will ever eat.
The second incident involves a German lady apparently crying when Mario Balotelli scores a goal against Germany in the European football championships.
But the reality is – the lady was crying at an earlier incident before the game started and it was inserted into the live television stream after Balotelli scored. It definitely made exciting television and we emotionally engaged with the match at a different level. But it was not what really happened. Should we feel outraged at this – or is this par for the course in a culture when the hyper real replaces the actual. It makes for a better experience but is not what really took place.
We must develop a healthy skepticism in our relationship with the media, enjoying its beauty and the industry of those who work hard to inform and entertain us. But these incidents remind me of the need for a critical distance – the need to keep asking questions about the reality that has been presented to me. That in the bid for rating and advertising revenue – I am being manipulated.
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Several things have happened to me recently that have made me reconsider this.
There was an interview on the radio in Australia, which was reported with the headline "Salvation army captain says gay people should be put to death". Of course he said no such thing. This was an easy one though because they posted the interview in it's entirety. How much false reporting goes on that is not subject to the same scrutiny.
Second. Someone who should have known better (you probably know who) tweeted "woman tazed for playing tambourine too loud in church". Of course the woman wasn't tazed for that. She was escorted out of church by the deputy sheriff because for being unruly, then she assaulted him, then he tazed her. It still sounded a bit much to me and to be honest I'd rather see the back of tazers, but the whole truth needs to be told!
Third, the whole raucous over creationism's inclusion at the Giant's Causeway is all becoming very reactionary.
Basically. The media feeds off sensationalising EVERYTHING. If it's a mundane story they don't want it, unless (as is often the case in Northern Ireland), there are ONLY mundane stories. Then they have to spin them into life like little Rumpelstiltskins.
And it's easy to get caught in the little man-made teacup storms and forget what was once a virtue. Sober-mindedness.
Thanks Krish for a thought-provoking piece which raises all sorts of interesting questions.
My first thought is that the McDonalds clip not only explains how they created the image, but also hints at WHY they did it. It is not JUST the creation of the image of a "perfect" burger, but that in a sense it conveys more information about the reality than a shot of the "real" burger would have done. If you are marketing in a world where people rely on the image to tell tham about what they will eat, then you need to be able to SEE the bits that are hidden in the shop-bought burger. Otherwise you need to translate "two meat patties...all in a sesame seed bun" into every language where you have a market.
Secondly, film makers, even documentary film-makers, are telling a story and routinely edit to convey the story they wish to tell. At what point does this become deceitful? In this particular incident I would say it is probably just the wrong side of the borderline but not really that significant or serious. But change this to, Oh let's say, portraying an IDF soldier comforting a fellow Israeli as if it were evidence of the IDF acting brutally towards a Palestinian, then we have problems.
Finally, if I may raise this question here, ANY storytelling is necessarily selective in what is told. In most cases we have learnt to apply the hermeneutic of suspicion and ask ourselves questions about who is telling this story and why? Why has this particular information been selected, why is it presented in this particular way and what/whose interests are at stake? So my question - to what extenet do/should we do this with the Biblical texts?
Krish, this needs to be expanded to problamatise our own relation to reality as human beings. Our own memory does this when we relate to people we love. Our memory, or how we relate to what is real, through past experiences, in relation to our experience of it, does this. In other words, we apply the same sort of "filter" or engage in a "distorted" explanation of what actually "is" when we relate to that which is closest to us. AS parents, because we love our children, we "distort" "reality". Following Zizek, Lacan, or Freud, offer us a personal view of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdpudWL5i68&feature=related
The question for me is what do we do with the virtual?
Really interesting, I have not seen that McDonalds clip before but I love the fact they had the guts to do it and make it public but yes like you say, let us be aware.
Mich x
Thanks for this! Eye opening!