Feldman begins explaining how today the media has made our culture accustomed to seeing threatening images or terror, suffering, and violence as part of our every day lives. He claims this could all easily be part of a very carefully constructed plan to serve various political agendas, that change how the public views global risk. This could be useful to our government, for example, to rally people together to back certain wars, for example, the war on terror we find ourselves in today. The surfacing of these kind of images into our daily news is both an 'enchainment' and an 'enchantment'. We are enchanted by this in a morbid sort of fascinated way, and it captures us and moves us to support whatever it is our government wants to do to handle it unquestioningly, and this part of it, the blindly following, is our enchainment. We lose our own sovereign rights to our right not to be subconsciously influenced by the media who intern are influenced by ill intentioned governments to get us to think a certain way in order to support their own twisted agenda's.
One of Feldman's sources, Junger, is quoted on page 204 of the essay saying, "As during the inflation, we continue for a time to spend the usual coins without sensing that the rate of exchange has changed." This quote is incredibly fitting. We continue today going about our business as usual without even realizing things are rapidly changing as far as or visual influences and where they are coming from and who's ideas and desires are behind them. Whether used by terrorists or non-terrorists methods of image making and imposition don't simply record an event but become the event by forcing onto our consciousnesses the political 'code' of people above us in the hierarchy of government officials. One might even say we are in evolving into people of double-consciousnesses. The new harsh conscious having the possibility to see oneself as merely an object, and above and beyond the realm of mental or bodily pain. In this day and age we are more succumbed than ever to things that can harm us, even irreversibly, that we aren't even aware of. We continue to remain blissfully unaware of our greatest dangers as a society as they continue to elude us.
One of the dangers we face as a society post 9/11 and the War on Terror is our growing unreasonable judgement since then of people or race, especially that of middle eastern decent. In this way the media and thorough press coverage of the war, of 9/11, of Abu Ghraib, have changed us for the worse. How many times since 9/11 have we seen people judge the person wearing the turban the second they see them walking through the airport or getting on the bus. On page 206 Feldman states, "We cannot ignore the violence generated by interventions to reduce harm." And this is a perfect example of this. It is because of this that the motives and reasons behind what is flushed into our media, however true must be analyzed for the greater good. While ideologies and agendas can be resisted, the power of the publics 'actuarial gaze' onto the intense, obscene, and threatening images in the media today cannot be denied.
Throughout Feldman's essay, there is a strong feeling of professionalism and strong personal attention to the intricate care to detail of the research he chose. He works around many angles and uses direct, specific, and easily relatable examples to drive his points home to his audience. His sources come from wide spectrum of people, offering possible new angles, and keeping the piece very open and very fair. His thoughts are well organized, thought out, and written effectively to achieve the exact purpose he had in mind when he set out to begin his research writing.
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