Times is Hard on the Boulevard

In the silent film “Modern Times”, Charlie Chaplin, is depicted as your average, working class, guy during the harsh conditions of the great depression. This is the first silent film I’ve watched and I never knew how well a silent film could portray underlying social conditions of a particular time and place in history. The way the director presented industrialization in America and turned it in to a humorous story, while still capturing the cold harsh mood of this time period was brilliant.

The opening scene of the movie says it all. In the opening few scenes Charlie Chaplin, is a worker on an assembly line in a steel factory. He is frequently falling behind in the line while being harassed by his boss and one of the co workers next to him who is hammering the metal objects as they fly on the speedy conveyor belt. Charlie Chaplin’s goofy antics make a depressing situation quite funny while still exhibiting the grueling and physical strains of working in factories during industrialization. This notion is emphasized when the line stops, and Charlie Chaplin’s begins developing a uncontrollable, wrench twisting, twitch. I thought this scene was very important, setting the tone in which the rest of the movie would follow. In the film the man eventually goes on, having and mental break down, losing jobs left and right, and is thrown in and out of jail, a place which he believes to be a “relief” from the cold world outside. He eventually meets a girl, running off with her in pursuit of peace, love, and happiness.

This film really grasps environment of its time and space, and is a very important artifact in American history.

No Ideas Original

The media has an intentional and direct effect on how one understands people, things and ideas in a society. Over the course of history, propaganda has been used during war times in order to maintain a dominant ideology of a country, which in turn makes it easier to see out its political goals. In today’s society, with the current war in Iraq, after exploring some current propaganda, I have found that it is not always what they show you in the media, but sometimes what they choose to leave out, which can have the biggest impact.
I remember being in Senegal and watching close action of the war in Iraq like I’ve never seen it before. It was like some sort of wake up call. It was like a voice came to me and said “Hey look what’s poppin’ in the middle east.” There something about the image of a dead woman, baby, or soldier lying in the street that really hits home. It’s different than reading the usual headline that read “12 found dead in Baghdad” or something of that nature. Watching the shooting makes it seem more real, it’s not just a comment hear or there by a news reporter behind a desk. BBC news is a British based news broadcaster which has many subsidiaries in which are broadcasted all over the world. When comparing BBC news to American news broadcasters such as CNN, ABC, and Fox news, you will find a major difference in images used as well as different view points set by the headlines in the day to day coverage of the war in Iraq.
To start I just took a look to see BBC’s most recent Iraq headline. I found the headline which reads “Iraq Strike Kills 15 Civilian”. The U.S. military says 19 suspected insurgents and 15 women and children have been killed in an air strike operation north of Baghdad. I searched for a similar story in any of the American news broadcasters and found a similar headline on ABC news, but presented in a different manner. Underneath the headline there was a picture of a scene where a car bombing had occurred in a completely different city killing 7 people, which I found strange. One thing I found on ABC news was a piece saying that since the U.S. has sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq, the number of causalities have gone down. The number of American causalities have gone down this month, most of the reason due to the more troops around for more order. There were no such articles in BBC news.
Even when watching BBC sports, I witnessed an interview of an Iraqi soccer player who is part of the Iraq national team, which recently won the prestigious Asian Cup, a massive achievement. The player explained how important the victory was for his country and all the Iraqi people going through the rough times in of the war. He began crying with passion and said, “I don’t want to be an enemy of America, but I have to say that I hope that the Americans can leave my country and let us live”. He emphasized in a begging manner that it was extremely important that the Americans leave in order for the Iraqi people can live better lives. During that time I don’t remember seeing anything in the American news about this, so I searched online to see if there was any coverage of this. The only thing I found was a video clip of the Iraqis celebrating after the historic victory, all looking extremely happy. This is a good example of how the perspectives can differ between foreign news broadcasters and American news. It’s not always what they show in the media, but sometimes it’s what they choose to leave out.