I was brought up in the 70s and ran through teen life in the 80s with many great movies and ideas. And what clicked most deep in me was about dystopian future. Growing up with Orwellian ideas left and right, dystopia forms large part of my imagination until now.
I love all of them dystopia fiction, even though some of the ideas are laughable at that time, especially about corporate media taking over human lives which was perfectly portrayed in Videodrome. It was a bit too radical to be true in the future. Or so I thought that time.
Flash forward to NOW. I’m seeing before my eyes the grotesque power of the media. Enslaving almost everyone, doing it’s master’s bidding without them knowing it. Media has warped the minds up to a level where a mere video on youtube has become the de facto source for Truth. *MTV has change the youth so drastically that speeches and body languages (along with musical taste) were changed hideously.
* MTV - a general title I use to describe a collective of entertainment-oriented culture altering media.
If I were to highlight these arguments with youth of today, I’d be laughed at. Just like me in my teen years, I’d laugh at the idea of Videodrome and it’s media-controlling plot – simply because the director and storyteller told it in quite a fantastical ways, much like watching Star Wars. But I realised Media is a much more powerful beast. Full of cunning and guile. Deceiving with the face of Truth. Until we’d feel stupid not to believe in the Media.
Now, Video really has killed the Radio star. And we have become the Sheeple.
