Print the Legend: Media Manipulation in American Films

The Sound of Fury (French poster)

A revised (i.e. "censored) version of Jonathan Rosenbaum's original draft which, for comparison purposes, can be accessed here. You won't be surprised to see which parts were eliminated. This was for a programme Jonathan and I curated in Ankara, Turkey. -- EK


Print the Legend: Media Manipulation in American Films
Jonathan Rosenbaum & Ehsan Khoshbakht

Living in the age of "post-truth", "fake news" is a term one can hardly avoid. In American films of the 1950s, this meant a way of manipulating the masses by distorting facts, turning social events of grave importance into a sideshow, even mobilising mobs, from whom those manipulating the dominant narrative would benefit. Today, however, somewhat paradoxically, it can also mean something else: a denial of the lies or acts of corruption exposed by trustworthy media sources, evoking the Newspeak described in George Orwell’s dystopic novel Nineteen Eight-Four, with its famous slogans, "War is Peace" and "Ignorance is Strength".