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Media And Its Impact On Society

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"It occurred to me I was approaching the project in the wrong way. The only way to tell the story was as a black comedy, or better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at most are really the heart of the paradoxical postures that make a nuclear war possible” –Stanley Kubrick (Phillips, 97) Art and media are perhaps some of the best indicators at helping us better understand what political and social events were happening throughout history. We can look to them at pivotal times and gather what concerned and preoccupied humanity on both a national and global scale. Even today, themes in film and television reflect our current threats. Zombies and the undead for example, which seem to occupy a generous amount of screen time, are …show more content…

It was also chosen for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1989. It was an early, although not the first, satire of 1950s, 60s American ideologies, (most notably the Liberal Consensus) and society’s preoccupation with the nuclear scare. Before we dive into Kubrick’s strategies in depicting these fears, it is important to understand what was happening during the time that led him to create such a work. Victories during World War II brought both political and economic prosperity to American society. While many other countries at the time struggled with rebuilding their countries after the war, America found themselves more prosperous than ever. With the introduction of credit, Americans were now able to buy somewhat outside of their means, and contributed to economic growth by purchasing homes, cars and consumer goods. This is where the images of the typical fifties Soylent Green suburban-housewife stem from. Society at this time, furthered itself from the thriftier traditions of the past in favor of consumerism and developed a “keeping up with the Joneses” type attitude where their possessions defined them. The unstable Ideology of the Liberal Consensus also rose during this time period. The Liberal Consensus was composed of two major elements. In one hand, America enjoyed the domestic bliss that its country possessed. With democracy and the rise of blue collar workers, many Americans,

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