Tuesday, September 22, 2009
WARNING: It's the End of the World.
While doing some reading I came across the concept of apocalyptic warnings. Apocalyptic warnings are meant to inject a fear about something to get the point across that "if we don't act now this is going to happen", or that's how I understood it anyways. Are they natural occurances or things that are made by people? For example, the movie The Day After Tomorrow was all about climate changes and melting polar ice caps and if we don't act now then the whole northern hemisphere is going to freeze. I feel that that movie scared people because of how realistic it could potentially be. I also feel that a lot of the times fear is what triggers our motivation to get things done, but at the same time that fear could backfire. What if the fear got out of control? Would anything get accomplished and would there ever be solutions to our problems? Probably not. Fear is a touchy subject. It can easily get out of control. So my point is, are apocalyptic warnings good or bad? You decide.
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I think apocalyptic warnings are good if given correctly and under certain circumstances. For instance, the movie "Earth" had a subtle "end-of-the-world" feeling to it when it documented the struggle of a polar bear. To make a long story short, a male left in search of food and swam for days. He couldn't find any food, and once he finally came across ice to settle upon the only other organisms were walruses (which polar bears normally avoid due to their dangerous tusks). Driven by hunger, he fought a walrus and obviously lost. He died there, starved and bloody.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a direct apocalyptic warning, but it does lead up to it. Your example of "A Day After Tomorrow" is a good one (another one would be something like "The Core"). Such movies promote people to be more aware of their impact on the environment.
However, apocalyptic messages (and related things) can certainly backfire. In 1938, Columbia Broadcasting System broadcasted a radio drama called "War of the Worlds", which was about an alien invasion. It triggered a mass hysteria. People literally thought aliens had landed on the this planet (likely because the radio drama was performed in a news format), and panic swept through the nation. While that was not exactly an apocalyptic warning, I do think such an outcome could happen...