This weeks reading deals with text, media and society (like most weeks). It starts by analysing about the similarities between the attacks on the world trade towers of September 11, and the imagery found in a blockbuster Hollywood film. The writer lists of all the films they can think of with visceral scenes of cities and buildings being destroyed.
The writer then goes on to talk about the differences, concentrating mainly on the fact that one is fiction and one is reality. The writer discusses how film-makers use techniques like 'shaking camera' and 'awkward zooms', to impose the quality of realism.
The writer then goes into great detail on how the media manipulates their images to look more film-like and how film-makers manipulate their images to look more news-like.
In my opinion this is another inevitable side-effect of out times. fiction writers often seek to replicate reality. This way you become more invested and the images you see have more of an impact on the viewer. By the same token, the media is always trying to portray the world in a film-like manor. To prove this, one needs only look at the pattern of stories during a news program.
The program will usually start with local news (establishing setting, much like the beginning of films where the character is often comfortable in a familiar place).
As the program reaches the mid-point the more 'heavy' news stories feature (the climax, the action at the centre of the film that grips you to the end).
Then finally news programs end on sport and a human interest story (the ending on a human interest story, is like the end of a film when the character comes back home after a harrowing journey and finally gets to smile).
