Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Smoke and Mirrors

With the barrage of conflicting media messages and images being thrust upon us daily, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe anything you see or hear anymore.

I found two interesting examples of that today.

Here is a clip of an ex-insurance company bigwig, Wendell Potter, who apologized recently to Michael Moore for his part in a giant smear campaign at the time, funded by the big insurance companies and various influencial political figures, to discredit him and his film, Sicko, because they feared that the public might actually believe what Michael said (which Mr. Potter now admits in his new book, Deadly Spin, was the truth) and then, as a result, would demand change...which would destroy them.



It's always appalling to find out how far greedy companies, brands, and political factions will go to distract, deflect, and misinform the public about the truth on any number of real issues that affect each of us daily.

However, it's mostly just sad to think about how easily so many people accept the lies that they are told daily and then...just wait to be told what to do, rather than take the time to research the facts and form their own opinion about what is real and what is not.

For example...most people would look at this video clip and be blown away by how beautifully this director shot these simple everyday subjects.



Those people would accept it for what it was, tell their friends about it, and then move on.

However, what they would never know without doing a little research, was that nothing in that video was real.

It was all CGI.

Don't let the CGI in the media stop you from checking into reality now and then.

As Mulder and Scully have always preached "The truth IS out there."

It's up to each of us to make the effort to find it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great turn... good job Wendall. Hopefully, no one will decide you need to be "taken out". Bet we won't be seeing these guys on Fox News.

Vampire Hours said...

LOL...yeah, I doubt the FOX news team will want anything to do with information like this. However, if anyone can find a way to spin a confirmation of the truth from the source into something fearful and terrifying that will send millions of uninformed people into a frenzy...it would be FOX. =)

Roland said...

REALLY? CGI...the whole thing? Wow. A few years ago, I read an article (or saw something on TV...whatever) that said, at the time, computer animation could not accurately replicate simple things like a flag waving or crumpling a piece of paper.

Apparently, the near infinite variables that achieve those commonplace daily movements were impossible to reproduce. I imagine they've cracked that nut.

Obviously, as we traverse deeper into a world full of Angry Birds and status updates, technology will continue to shape our preception of reality.

Those movies and stories about artificially intelligent robots rising up to violently kill and enslave us all missed the mark. The machines are going to be much more subtile about it.

Vampire Hours said...

True...at least you still have Arnold watching over your state of California. If the robots rise up...he'll be there to help out. He has some experience in that...unless he's on vacation that week. If so...

He'll be back.