Fear and Intimidation

We often hear of a “Campaign of Fear and Intimidation”. One college professor was bold enough to say President Bush’s White House resembled a Nazi organization. The President didn’t like Dan Rather’s reporting on his war record, and it seems the same was true for Ward Churchill. Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and Tony Snow all have resigned. Evidently these men didn’t worry too much about finding jobs in the private sector, or were they all ready considered to be working in the private sector? Al Gore didn’t have any trouble landing a job as a college professor at Georgetown University. It seems unless you are indicted by federal prosecutors fear and intimidation doesn’t apply. A slew of federal prosecutors were fired, many after receiving favorable appraisals of job performance. Does a “Campaign of Fear and Intimidation” apply to us? If so whence does it come? A few years back a marked difference in television and motion picture production and direction began. The aesthetic of this media changed. Once television and film were filled with warm and bubbly content that enticed audiences to want to participate. Even when suspense, action, and horror were the selected medium, there was an underlying sentiment that allowed viewers the confidence to lose themselves in the picture without fear. That changed. Violent video games produced by the Japanese began to infiltrate film. The martial arts, war, and mythological characters all began to dominate what once was very American and humane content. Films such as American Graffiti and The Lords of Flatbush were replaced with graphics-based edgy post modern depictions of violence. Instead of drawing the viewer into deeper and more rewarding dramatic and emotional content, filmmakers became content with comic book-type diversion. Evidently the ADHD that has reached epidemic proportions in the United States began to dictate rather than succumb to film directing. If viewers were unable to hold a thought or feeling for more than a few seconds how could a director and his or her actors? “Shoot the shot and we will fix it in the mix,” as a visit to George Lucas’s facility on the web shows. Digitization created with the Renderman software created by Steve Jobs has proven to have all but replaced traditional celluloid film making. No more worry about lighting design, art direction, or costuming. “We can create it all on the computer.” The trouble is most people outgrow puberty. There comes a time when adults choose to put down the joystick and hot pockets and grow up. We become more interested in what other human beings are thinking and feelings. A game programmers concept of a stunted and truncated reality no longer will suffice for pleasant diversion. Let’s hear it for the humanities! If one were to pinpoint a source of Extremism in America other than patriotic militias, it would have to be the mediums of television and film. If one did choose to not turn on the television after rising from bed, it might be the “Campaign of Fear and Intimidation” would not exist at all.