Wag The Dog

Wag the Dog is a film from 1997 directed by Barry Levinson. The film begins with the American president getting caught in a scandal of sexual misconduct in the days leading up to the re-election. It shows how his advisors work with a Hollywood producer to fabricate a war with Albania that the president can heroically end therefore drawing the attention away from the sex scandal.

Wag the Dog shows the power of the media. Through made up story lines and special effects the media can make the public believe anything. Big media production companies who have the money and the resources can create just about any situation. In the film we see how the production company hire an American actress to play the role of an Albanian teenager running from a burning building holding a kitten. We can see all the little things considered in this scene to make it effective for the audience. The presence of a young girl and a helpless kitten would pull at viewers heart strings. A sound track of people screaming was also played to make it more believable. A green screen was used in the production process with the war zone background and even the kitten being put in digitally at the end.

We also see in the film how the people addressing the media were told what to say by the advisors. This makes me think about if anything we see in the media or at a press conference is coming from the actual person themselves or have they been trained by advisors on what to say and how to 'sell' what they are saying. Even when the presidents opponent in the film ends the war to the public, the presidents advisors come up with another 'brilliant' idea to make him look like a hero. They create a war hero who has gone missing so the president can rescue him and be the hero again.

I don't think that something to this extreme is possible in the real world but I do believe that some people would be willing to go to these lengths of deception to make themselves look good and to avoid a scandal. The public look to the media for advice and trust that the media have done their research, so having said that I don't think the public are the gullible ones here I believe that it's the news reporters who are gullible and will report on anything with very little evidence just so they have news to broadcast.

Although very controversial and raw at the moment are the recent bombings at the Boston marathon. They are a lot of conspiracy theories on the Internet at the moment about how this was a set up. There is a picture circulating online of an army vet, who took part in the marathon, in a wheel chair with his legs blown off. The internet posts are talking about how there doesn't seem to be a trail of blood behind him or any blood still coming from him and that if he has bled out completely he would be passed out. In the picture he is awake and sitting up in the wheelchair. Some posts also say that this army vet has already landed himself an acting role with out any acting skills. Now I am not saying that this is true or is at all possible I am just using it as an example as a potential similar event occurring in the real world and to demonstrate how the public are becoming more and more suspicious of the media and the government. People are no longer believing everything they are seeing in the media and are becoming more suspicious and critical of these kind of events.