Subliminal Brainwashing

Something that I have been thinking about for quite sometime now in the way the news media sinks to new lows on a daily basis. I have always thought the media are more interested in gore, sex and ratings rather than looking at events from a neutral point of view. They do not seem to take any responsibility to the fact that they are influencing opinions of millions of people and biasing their thoughts in such convoluted fashion that the truth has no value anymore. And the people don’t seem to care less to the idiocy that they are being subjected to.. they are willing to take the media at its face value.

I read a book a couple of year’s back.-“Vernon God Little”. When I read the reviews of the book I must say I was quite put off and was contemplating even skipping this supposedly dark gross book. I had bought the book though and decided might as well give it a chance. It was something I had never expected it to be – in my opinion “Charming”. It talked of a lot of issues that I had been thinking about put things in perspective and had an ending that I admire and -call me conventional- that can be termed “happy”! It showed to what depths the media could sink to- not very far from a true scenario- it talked abut all those dirty issues we like to brush below the carpet not address in front of others and seem to want to completely ignore. There are people who get off from seeing “amputees”.. there are perverts who abuse young ones.. they are all a part of the modern society. They seem to exist everywhere. Of course back home (in India) people seem to come up with an argument that these are just problems of the west and are non existent in the “Sacred” east. I say bull. Just look at our news channels ad the war of the media for ratings that has been going on for the last 10 years. Just look at all the stories of child abuse that come out on a daily basis and then there was the gore of the serial killers- it seems like a bad typical American movie from the eighties. We seem to no better and the news media as bad.. just trying to pep up non issues in order to get more advertising space. The book I love- because it gave me hope that however perverse our civilization might become there is still some innocence left and in the long run some good is retained in all people.

Another influencer for me was this documentary by Michael Moore “Bowling for columbine “. It had this cartoon about one of the reasons behind the gun culture here in the states. All you need to do is switch on any news channel at primetime and all you will hear and see are car chases people being killed shootouts and what not. It is a theory that the average person gets psyched by all the violence and needs some sort of a cure for his fears and here in the states the answer is seen as owning a weapon of sorts. It makes sense once you think about it. I grew up in big cities back home and consider myself lucky in the sense that I have been exposed to freedom of thought a lot more than most people. Of late I hear a lot of these stories of young women being raped and most of the cases that are publicized seem to point towards these big cities. There is a strong school of thought that these women that get raped are to blame themselves because they flaunt and go out at night after 10 and some pity for the actual “raper” so to say- what non-sense! And the news channels make a mockery of these cases by reporting some of the high profile cases through the day trying to interview the family of the victims the victim herself and torturing them more and of course this helps improve ratings! A lot of the cases of crime that comes out in the city involve kids in 10th 11th and 12th grade who in my opinion are extremely influenced by the media! It might not be gun culture that is promoted in countries outside the states but the problem is as deep rooted as it is here.
On the one hand I thought that “Bowling for columbine” was a “commercial“ documentary so to say but the issues that it raises are extremely valid though only one side of things is presented in it and I must say it influences your thinking towards one side rather than provoking a neutral thought process. But it did get me thinking and that’s why I liked it so to speak.

The modern society seems to be degrading on constant timeline and things that would shock my mom seem to have become a normal scenario for me.. and sometimes I worry where this is all taking me .. but I would like to believe that there is still some integrity left in all of us that comes out in times of adversity in a way that is shown in a movie that I watched recently- “Crash”……