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Levinson constructs Wag the Dog in a way to allow audiences to perceive how truth is manipulated easily in the media. The deliberate repetition of rhetorical questions “Don’t you want to know if it’s true? What difference does it make if it’s true?” shows that it is not the objective truth but rather the ability to persuade through manipulation of representation that is essential. Through the repetition, Levinson highlights how truth is irrelevant in the media and politics, as the public are passive viewers to what is represented on their screens.
These ideas are further expanded in the mise en scene at the airport where the salience of the television screen reveals Levinson’s idea that individuals with the political motivation to influence others use the power of the media.
The panning shot in the scene shows the change to serious and sober facial expressions of the public who are fixated on the television screen reinforces how Levinson constructs the film to inform audiences of their reliance on screens as the dominant form of news and political messages.
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Furthermore, the low angle shot looking up to the screen reinforces how Levinson expresses the immense reliance and power of the media to the people, especially when considering the lack of truth.
The accusative tone in Senator Neal’s campaign “Let the American people decide” uses satire to expose the illusion of power and the manipulation of truth in politics. Levinson constructs the film so that as the audience we know it is not the people’s choice, but the manipulation of truth by the media influencing the people.
Similarly, the Pizzagate news article emphasizes the extent to which people believe and rely on the media as a source of truth.
Tim Mak provides his perspective of how the media influences the people through the clear biased tone and high modality that “they Democratic Party not only lost an eminently winnable presidential election, but now their favorite pizza parlor is under siege too.” This view highlights the intentions of the supposed ‘conspiracy theory’ as a political motivation to decrease support and create a negative image of the party, but additionally how representation readily alters the perception of individuals.
The use of high modality in “eminently winnable” convinces the readers that the theory was successful in its motivation to influence voters and that is was the main cause of the outcome of the election. Similarly, the use of hyperboles when describing the extent of the “innumerable stories about Pizzagate including Pizzagate is going global” demonstrates how Tim Mak expresses the motivation and extent to which individuals go, to publicize their perception of politics. This exaggeration highlights how a particular representation of politics, whether it is fabricated or factual, is easily spread and transmitted across the world. Additionally, “Conspiracists began seizing on pizza-related emails” emphasizes the absurdity of the theory through the use of satire to show how trivial the allegation was. Mak expresses the lengths that individuals go, to represent and communicate their political views. Composers effectively construct texts to expose the manipulation of truth within the media. The impact of the fabrication of truth is clear when examining how composers construct their texts.
In Wag the Dog, Levinson emphasizes how the manipulation of truth creates a divide between people and their politics through the use of form within the film. “Who’s gonna find out? . . . Who’s gonna tell ‘em?” accentuates how little transparency there is between politics and the public through the use of colloquial language. The misrepresentation of truth and lack of authenticity divides the two entities, which is emphasized through the casual and conversational manner when discussing their deception of truth. Thus, Levinson uses this to emphasize how the manipulation of truth is frequent within the media and how easily people are able to accept what they watch. In addition, the impact of this lack of authenticity is illustrated through Brean’s use of irony and high modality “Of course there’s a war. I’m watching it on television. ”This reinforces the motif of how people take what they see on their screens as the ‘truth’. This is ironic as Brean deceived the public by covering up the truth, and Levinson shows us how the public relies on their screens for information and the detriment of this.
The impact of Brean’s motivation to hide the truth influenced the public’s view of the president as they were unable to distinguish between the truth and the fabrication of truth. This is further reinforced in the intertextuality of “Big Bird” which satirizes the president as a fictional character to ridicule and criticize how manipulated the image of the president has become. The metaphor of the president shows how he is produced and guided by producers, similarly to a television show. Politics has become an extension of or analogue to the spectacle of Hollywood and show business. This manipulation of truth within politics show how the motivation of the president to conceal has resulted in his loss of power and authority within the political sphere, but regained his power as the president of the country. As the audience, Levinson is emphasizing how we should decipher the manipulation of truth from actual truth, unlike the public in the film.
Comparatively, in the Pizzagate new article, the impact of the manipulation of truth is emphasized through Tim Mak’s use of metaphors and recount of the events following the conspiracy theory. The metaphor “And for Podesta and other democratic Party officials . . . it is yet another slap in the face” stresses how Mak believes that the distortion of truth led to the downfall of the party during the election. The comparison of losing the election to an image of violence reveals how brutal the manipulation and fabrication of truth has become between people and their politics. Moreover, the metaphor and tricolon of “the conspiracy theory prompted a flood of death threats . . . which began arriving over texts, Facebook messages and on Twitter” reinforces how brutal and destructive the allegation of the “sex-ring” were.
Thus, Tim Mak emphasizes how detrimental the manipulation of truth is, especially when the public is unaware of the actual truth. This is evident in the visual imagery of “Edgar Maddison Welch . . . went through the restaurant carrying an AR-15 . . . fired multiple shots inside.” This illustrates the extreme to which individuals believe what they read in the media, especially when the media is the only form of representation of politics. Mak thus articulates in the article the need for individuals to question what they read and watch, as it might not necessarily represent the truth of politics. Therefore, composers construct texts to reveal the detrimental nature of the manipulation of truth by the media, as the public is unable to decipher the truth.
The Use Of Media to Manipulate Truth. (2024, Feb 23). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-use-of-media-to-manipulate-truth-essay
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