Michel Foucault believes that the knowledge surrounding us is what shapes us, for example a child cannot know anything but what is communicated by those around them. Therefore, he believes that we are hugely influenced by the information presented to us by the media and ultimately it creates our identity.
This got me thinking...What do I believe? Do we have our own minds?
Can we be entirely influenced by the images that we see?
MY EXAMPLE: After contemplating these tricky questions I have come to the conclusion based on my own experiences and opinions on the power of the media. The example I am going to use relates to a modern day issue concerning young females and males with weight issues. The media has drove in to our minds and depicted to us through films, magazines, shop advertisements the 'correct' way to look, mainly conveying body shapes as unrealistically skinny.
Over the last 5 years I think that the media has begun to realise the effect that this unhealthy image that they have been conveying has had on people and have now begun to use more plus size models and almost trying to rectify their mistakes.
Despite being smart enough to realise that the media is conveying false representations of how I should look, I still think that what they are conveying can have a subconscious effect on people. For example, when I look through fashion magazines and see perfect looking females with slim physiques, I know that they probably don't actually look like that and have probably been manipulated on Photoshop, however it still subconsciously has an effect on me and makes me want to look like that because that is what the media is feeding to me, as the 'correct' way to look. I think that the media does have more power over our thoughts and opinions than we like to think, even if we don't always realise it.
I then began to look into how Foucault's theory could relate to the film genre that my group is going to pursue which is...'Documentary Thriller' and here are some questions I came up with:
Does the media shape our fears?
Could Horror/Thriller films be mentally dangerous for us, perhaps de-sensitizing our brains when it comes to reality?
I found this website on desensitization...
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/can-media-violence-desensitize-you
I think that this article is really interesting and I believe that we have been exposed to so many action/horror scenes through the media that now when we witness horrible things in real life, such as terrorism acts, our brains almost don't know how to react anymore, switching to and from what is actually real and what's not.
By producing a realistic short film we could evoke these different emotions in our audience, making our film more engaging and perhaps relatable to them in some way. After all, after doing some research into why people enjoy thrillers to begin with, I found that it is because our brains like that feeling of being scared and movies are ideal because people know that they will still come out of the cinema alive!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/25/why-our-brains-love-horror-movies-fear-catharsis-a-sense-of-doom.html
Foucault also claims that 'we believe what we are shown' and I do think that there is some truth to this statement. Below I have related this to our Thriller genre. The images show two different perspectives of a forest, the first image looks peaceful and inviting, however, the second looks much more daunting.
Refering back to the theory, these pictures of forests should not create any fear to us humans, but they do, and I believe that this is because of the media and how they convey to us that forests are dark places where murders happen and we believe them.
When ultimately isn't the idea that the media can actually make our hearts beat faster about something, our hands grow sweatier and actually control our fears, much scarier than a simple forest?
This theory really got me thinking and has offered me some very interesting things to consider when creating our own film.
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