If we pretend with the help of media, does the world become what we pretend? Yes, it often does.
Debbie Schlussel (via Michelle Malkin) reports today that telling the truth about Detroit is a violation of political correctness. The Maloof brothers, owners of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, were fined $30,000 by the NBA for showing real images of burned out homes and cars in Detroit. Schlussel reports:
“It’s not acceptable, not politically correct to tell the truth about Detroit. Why? Because Detroit is a Black-dominated city. Therefore, any criticism of the city is off-limits. It’s ‘racist.’”
On the other side of the spectrum, pretending that white Christians in the U.S. pose a threat to Muslims is OK, and the NBC show Law and Order recently did just that.
Since I work at times in corporate video, I can attest to the fact that we pretend all the time. One of the favorite pretenses of the corporate video world is that large numbers of black men inhabit the executive ranks. TV also engages in this pretense. Bones, a TV show on Fox, pretends that you’re likely to find numerous black men at the highest levels of the medical profession.
If we continue to pretend in this way, will black men eventually enter the ranks of corporate executives and surgeons in large numbers?
Political propaganda works. That’s why people engage in it and spend so much money producing it. I can think of a very negative example of this type of propaganda succeeding… the creation of the myth of the motorcycle outlaw.
The myth of the wild motorcycle outlaw gang holding a town hostage and terrorizing the inhabitants is an invention of the San Francisco Chronicle. At the top, I’ve posted the legendary picture from the 1947 Hollister Rally that served as the basis for the classic Marlon Brando movie The Wild One. In the movie, an outlaw motorcycle gang blows into town, terrorizes the natives and engages in a drunken brawl.
The truth about the 1947 rally is, unfortunately, pretty dull. A group of veterans did stage a rally in Hollister, but it was calm and peaceable. The town authorities even allowed the boys to block off the main street and stage races. A reporter for the Chronicle was not satisfied with this, so he staged the picture of a drunk on a Harley. The drunk wasn’t even drunk and didn’t ride a Harley. He was just a local who agreed to sit on the bike for a picture. The reporters gathered up empty beer bottles and spread them around the street under the bike.
But a myth was created… the myth of the outlaw biker. The movie starring Brando was a smash hit, and throughout California bikers began to ape the swagger, rebellion and daring of “The Wild One.” America’s most famous outlaw biker gang, The Hell’s Angels, morphed out of this world of make believe.
So, yes, pretending in media does make the pretend real.
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