worlds of wars: Pressure Project 2
Posted: September 28, 2019 Filed under: Emily Craver, Pressure Project 2 Leave a comment »
A story told through sound alone. When thinking about how to tell a story, I meditated on the idea of context around the story, cultural and historical. How to include the feeling of the story without just telling? How to include the emotional environment without just telling? The idea of a story that is both fictional and influential and a capsule of time lead me to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds (a retelling of H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds). The myth around this story is greater than the actual story.
The layers of the hoax run deep. First off, my own knowledge of the story led me to believe that mass panic ensued surrounding the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, when in fact the panic was largely media-led (specifically the response of newspaper media).
Purposeful fake news around purposeful fictionalized fake media.
I then fell into the rabbit hole of 1938 radio. Somehow in my knowledge of this broadcast, I had always pictured panic of alien invasion without ever contextualizing the fact that invasions were indeed occurring; that within the historical context of the U.S. (as well as what was about to be the “European Theatre of WW2), drastic things were erupting. I found a 1938 Charles Lindbergh speech in which an extremely rowdy crowd responded to his jeering and raucous blame of war on three powers: Roosevelt administration, the Jewish people, and Great Britain. The reverberations of the dangers of a mob of people chanting, cheering and angrily jeering can be felt today. Echoed today in rallies, in bombastic political hatred and bigotry, similar sentiments and rhetoric continue to fuel what it means to live in America.
And then there is the absolute gold mine that is radio theater–the compression of live soundmaking into soundwaves that will reach humans gathered around the radio ready for fireside chats and thrilling Orson Welles tales.
Reflecting on the idea of trust/dependency on radio as primary immediate news source, the power structures in place to guarantee only one type of voice to be heard across all radio waves, and the difference in the flood of outlets available to sift through today.