Week 7: Cronenberg –Cinema and Technology

Reading: The Military-Entertainment Complex

This paper discusses war and the use of propaganda in America. It shows how they use the media to manipulate and misinform the population about military decision for the war by giving false justifications. Manipulation of information is the key to divulgate the ‘truth’. By changing the information, new perspectives can be created to achieve a specific objective. It is said in the paper that it is common that military use directors or screenwriters to write fictional terrorist scenarios to ‘prepare’ them to any eventual attack. The use of media is also discussed as an ‘entertaining way’ of keeping the population interested in militaries operations. . It gives evidence on how military and entertainment have always been interlinked. The overall theme of this paper for me is how the media controls and manipulates the population in showing them what they should or should not believe through TV, Radio etc…

Lecture:

In this week’s lecture we watched eXistenZ, directed by David Cronenberg made in 1999. The film is about Allegra Geller, a passionate and really talented video game designer. Allegra has designed a new game called eXsitenZ. As they are about to play, she is taken away with her game. After some time Ted (a man who appears like her bodyguard in the film) and Allegra finally get to play to her new designed game for the first time. This let them experience some really intense things, from terribly bad to terribly good. This movie looks at the idea of a virtual reality. This let us think about where the line is between real and virtual?


No tutorial this week.