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Nightcrawler Research Paper

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Ghazal Al Awad Professor Brownell English 103 06 December 2016 Nightcrawler: “If It Bleeds, It Leads” It is said that “perfection is unattainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence” (“Vince Lombardi”). Lombardi is saying that people are always encouraged to do the best they can, but they can never be perfect. However, excellence can be attained if someone keeps up the hard and stays motivated. When people are not good enough, vicious, bad, or even worse, they seem to want to relate to others and try to relieve themselves that they are not the only bad people out there. To relieve themselves, they tend to watch movies, specifically, movies about antiheroes. Antiheroes as defined in the Signs of Life in the USA book are …show more content…

Consequently, Nightcrawler is a critique of capitalism and it shows how the effects of a struggling economy can affect people’s lives and morals because often people, like Lou, cannot find jobs. Therefore, they are left to make their own immoral decisions on how to earn money and survive. Apparently, Lou is rewarded instead of being punished for tampering with crime scenes, sabotaging his competitor’s van, and causing Rick’s death at the police chasing scene. As Lou and Rick are waiting for the assailants of the homicide, they are talking about increasing Rick’s payment. However, Rick is not satisfied with the 75 dollars per day. After their discussion in the car, a chasing scene occurs between the assailants, Lou and Rick, and the police. Obviously, Lou and Rick are chasing the killers for the camera footage. Lou told Rick that the assailant driver is dead, so Rick goes to film the car, but the assailant is alive and shoots Rick to death. Lou did not care about his partner’s death, all he cared about is the fifty thousand dollars on the chasing scene. This illustrates capitalism. As Lou represents capitalism that survives on the destruction of people’s money needs and in this case, destruction of people’s lives. He exploited Rick’s abilities and need for money by disregarding Rick who navigates and sometimes photographs scenes. Lou is able to accomplish a lot with …show more content…

“Gilroy offers provocative commentary on the creation and consumption of [the] news in 21st century America. This may be true, but Nightcrawler is a powerful reminder that the situation has only gotten worse” (Nightcrawler). It is known that the purpose of local television news is to inform people about what is happening in their communities. For example, when Lou captured the homicide scene, Nina insisted on making the scene more dramatic by telling the [presenters to keep repeating] some strong words that would scare the audience and give more fame to her TV station. Nina says, “hit it harder. Build it. Say ‘vicious attack’” (Gilroy). “Nightcrawler takes it a step further by showing us how local news operates when crime rates have dropped. This dearth of violence means there will be a frantic fight to be the first on the scene when a crime does occur; furthermore, in Lou’s case, there will also be fabrication in order to make the scene more dramatic” (‘Nightcrawler’). To succeed as a TV station, news should be exclusive and unique. However, Nightcrawler has shown how news can fabricate a crime scene in order to make it look more dramatic and more frightening. It seems as if Gilroy is questioning the credibility of news and at the same time accusing the news of obtaining their news immorally. The Nightcrawler insinuates

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