Hollywood is home to the most notorious box- office competitors. They’re always trying to see who is able to come up with the most realistic disasters, so that the audience is in awe and come back to see the movie again and again. Hollywood has caught on to America’s obsession with disasters. As a result of Hollywood, our reaction to disasters has become fictionalized and desensitized.
Directors, producers, and editors are always trying to out do each other in box- office sales. These people are trying to produce images on screen that mimic the most realistic disaster in order to keep the audience coming back for more. From the movie Earthquake in 1941 to 2004′s Day after Tomorrow, audiences around the world are captivated by what they see on screen. We feed off the images of disasters: ranging from Aliens blowing up the white house in Independence Day to pieces of meteors slamming into the earth in Armageddon. Jerry Bruckheimer plays Mother Nature and box-office sales skyrocket.
When a disaster happens in real- life, people’s reactions are something along the lines of, “That’s looks like something out of the movies”. When people woke up on September 11, 2001 and flipped on the television and saw the image of an airplane flying into one of the towers, we all thought that we got a free subscription to HBO or some other cable movie channel. But then we realized that this was not a movie. It was real life and we all had the same reaction: we wanted more. We wanted to know more about why it happened, who was involved, and what happened to the people involved. It was like watching a movie, only we caught it right in the middle, without any explanation of whom and why.
We sat and watched news coverage in awe, the same way we watched the digital tsunami in The Day After Tomorrow. We watched people fall out of the buildings as they crumbled to the ground. The anchor men and women were our directors; giving instructions and updates of the status of the situation. This was a twenty-four hour movie and we could not pull ourselves away from the television set. We cried when we saw the reactions of the “actors”: the people. We felt empowered and united from the speech given by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a speech comparable to the speech by actors Bill Pullman in the movie Independence Day.
Fast forward 39 months and 15 days from September 11th 2001, and we found ourselves watching another tragedy of a different genre. The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia flooded the channels and once again we were devastated by what we were viewing. George Lucas was no match for Mother Nature. She had created a disaster that no other producer would be able to replicate. She had put on a brilliant cinematic presentation of the tsunami. It had been about 39 months and 15 days since the world had gone to the movies together. We watched forty foot waves wash away the hard work, the memories, and loved ones of the victims. As Americans, we tried to empathize with the situation, but we had never seen something quite like the tsunami, and we became more engrossed with the natural phenomena, we kind of missed the actors on the screen. Eventually we came to our senses and like the great Americans we are, we sympathized with the actors and felt pain when they felt pain, cried when they cried, and felt relieved when they felt relieved.
What movie would be complete without a soundtrack? Shortly after September 11th, many famous music icons got together and put together an album America: A Tribute to Heroes. During the movie, we heard their voices sing out with songs of patriotism, hope, and love for New York City. Was this their way of telling terrorists that we shall overcome? Could music icons single handedly stop the terror and give Americans hope that everything will be okay. The music icons were playing the roles of the “Whoos of Whooville” and Osama Bin Laden was the “Grinch who stole Christmas”. To think that music would unite us and turn a bad situation into something positive was something that only the pompous jerks at the five major record labels could have thought of.
The same is happening for the tsunami tragedy. Musicians are holding benefit concerts to raise money for the tsunami victims. These are the songs that will act as a soundtrack for this major motion picture. Americans will spend their money on albums and donate what they can to these benefits because of the effect the tsunami had on them.
Directors often choose their actors and actresses based on their ability to portray emotions to fit that specific movie. When people go to the movies, they often emulate the actors and actresses to the actions going on in the movie. So when we watch a traumatizing event on television like 9/11 or the tsunami, are our reactions then desensitized due to our viewing of movies? Are our emotions authentic or are we merely acting like the Hollywood actors and actresses?
We keep treating these tragic events like they are movies. The news anchors are the directors, the victims the actors, and the music icons are providing the soundtrack. We are the audience and we cannot seem to pull ourselves away from the television set. We are obsessed with tragedies and disasters of any genres and we want more. When the next disaster strikes, don’t forget to make popcorn and to buy goobers because we’ll all be watching together.
Valerie Heruska
Valerie Heruska
Collateral tsunami
Hollywood is home to the most notorious box- office competitors. They’re always trying to see who is able to come up with the most realistic disasters, so that the audience is in awe and come back to see the movie again and again. Hollywood has caught on to America’s obsession with disasters. As a result of Hollywood, our reaction to disasters has become fictionalized and desensitized.
Directors, producers, and editors are always trying to out do each other in box- office sales. These people are trying to produce images on screen that mimic the most realistic disaster in order to keep the audience coming back for more. From the movie Earthquake in 1941 to 2004′s Day after Tomorrow, audiences around the world are captivated by what they see on screen. We feed off the images of disasters: ranging from Aliens blowing up the white house in Independence Day to pieces of meteors slamming into the earth in Armageddon. Jerry Bruckheimer plays Mother Nature and box-office sales skyrocket.
When a disaster happens in real- life, people’s reactions are something along the lines of, “That’s looks like something out of the movies”. When people woke up on September 11, 2001 and flipped on the television and saw the image of an airplane flying into one of the towers, we all thought that we got a free subscription to HBO or some other cable movie channel. But then we realized that this was not a movie. It was real life and we all had the same reaction: we wanted more. We wanted to know more about why it happened, who was involved, and what happened to the people involved. It was like watching a movie, only we caught it right in the middle, without any explanation of whom and why.
We sat and watched news coverage in awe, the same way we watched the digital tsunami in The Day After Tomorrow. We watched people fall out of the buildings as they crumbled to the ground. The anchor men and women were our directors; giving instructions and updates of the status of the situation. This was a twenty-four hour movie and we could not pull ourselves away from the television set. We cried when we saw the reactions of the “actors”: the people. We felt empowered and united from the speech given by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a speech comparable to the speech by actors Bill Pullman in the movie Independence Day.
Fast forward 39 months and 15 days from September 11th 2001, and we found ourselves watching another tragedy of a different genre. The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia flooded the channels and once again we were devastated by what we were viewing. George Lucas was no match for Mother Nature. She had created a disaster that no other producer would be able to replicate. She had put on a brilliant cinematic presentation of the tsunami. It had been about 39 months and 15 days since the world had gone to the movies together. We watched forty foot waves wash away the hard work, the memories, and loved ones of the victims. As Americans, we tried to empathize with the situation, but we had never seen something quite like the tsunami, and we became more engrossed with the natural phenomena, we kind of missed the actors on the screen. Eventually we came to our senses and like the great Americans we are, we sympathized with the actors and felt pain when they felt pain, cried when they cried, and felt relieved when they felt relieved.
What movie would be complete without a soundtrack? Shortly after September 11th, many famous music icons got together and put together an album America: A Tribute to Heroes. During the movie, we heard their voices sing out with songs of patriotism, hope, and love for New York City. Was this their way of telling terrorists that we shall overcome? Could music icons single handedly stop the terror and give Americans hope that everything will be okay. The music icons were playing the roles of the “Whoos of Whooville” and Osama Bin Laden was the “Grinch who stole Christmas”. To think that music would unite us and turn a bad situation into something positive was something that only the pompous jerks at the five major record labels could have thought of.
The same is happening for the tsunami tragedy. Musicians are holding benefit concerts to raise money for the tsunami victims. These are the songs that will act as a soundtrack for this major motion picture. Americans will spend their money on albums and donate what they can to these benefits because of the effect the tsunami had on them.
Directors often choose their actors and actresses based on their ability to portray emotions to fit that specific movie. When people go to the movies, they often emulate the actors and actresses to the actions going on in the movie. So when we watch a traumatizing event on television like 9/11 or the tsunami, are our reactions then desensitized due to our viewing of movies? Are our emotions authentic or are we merely acting like the Hollywood actors and actresses?
We keep treating these tragic events like they are movies. The news anchors are the directors, the victims the actors, and the music icons are providing the soundtrack. We are the audience and we cannot seem to pull ourselves away from the television set. We are obsessed with tragedies and disasters of any genres and we want more. When the next disaster strikes, don’t forget to make popcorn and to buy goobers because we’ll all be watching together.