Social Media, Broadcast News, Events, Film, Animation and Television are primary examples where we can influence or persuade our audiences.
Considering that media is becoming a powerhouse of entertainment, it becomes a powerful tool to express opinions, ideas, and beliefs to the general public.
Media is also another way to describe emotional presence in the past to explain choices made (Maybe a political power chose to make a new rule based on experience), or at least they may lead us to believe.
Personal connection is what allows the audience to understand the choices made through politics, whether it may be about legitimizing gay marriage or telling the general public to fight for your country.
Sometimes, we’re unaware of political inclusion through our daily lives. We’re so adjusted to watching movies or playing games for the idea of being entertained, but ignore the subliminal metaphorical frames that capture those political views.
Politics in film and the discussion of how it can be positively or negatively used for persuasion
Messages in Moving Images
Subliminal frames (messages) appeared by showing a single frame in a 24 frame film. This idea can lead to psychological warfare by forcing ideas and opinions onto the viewer without intention.
Examples of politics in film can be political persuasion, race, gender, ethics etc… These forms of politics can be shaped into forms such as documentary films, cinema, television, games or even advertising. Being able to shape this towards a viewer with some form of ‘personal connection’ can heavily influence the mass in a positive or negative way depending on the writer’s political view-point.
A recent example within games can be a popular franchise with their latest release: Far Cry 6. There are hard, relevant discussions in Far Cry 6 about the conditions that lead to the rise of fascism in a nation, the costs of imperialism, forced labor, the need for free-and-fair elections, LGBTQ+ rights, and more within the context of Yara, a fictional island in the Caribbean.
Games have become a strong form of political advertisement or awareness for people of all ages, including young people who have yet to form a political opinion. Far Cry 6 in this case has developed a western opinion that communism and fascist imperialism is wrong, and exploits their own exaggerated opinion of it. Attached below is the release trailer for the video game Far Cry 6, which is very expressive in how communism and fascism are superior, delivered by voice lines and actions with an iconic grenade that gets delivered to the public as a power statement.
Fighting a revolution with power and control
Animation and Documentary
Documents are based on facts and reality, and is about the world rather than a world.
In some light, animation can be seen as something that is not so serious, as animation can be seen as an exaggerated view point of a subject(s). Whereas, on the other hand, some may argue that animation can depict anything depending on the tone and delivery of the internal message that the director shows through screenplay.
Animation has evolved tremendously, leaving us today to have a better understanding of how animation can aid documentaries. However, some time ago some people saw animation and documentary as a juxtaposition, two estranged forms that were combined, which felt weird.
However, animation has always played a part in documentary as an illustrative tool that can illustrate ideas that we as humans can’t record yet (such as the solar system).
Animation is a great tool for also documenting aspects that can only be delivered by deep emotional impact, which can’t normally be expressed through human visuals, therefore allowing animation to explore human feelings in a different form of visuals. An example of what I mean can be seen in the video ‘A.Is.For.Autism.(Tim.Webb,1992)’ directly below.
Referring back to how animation can be considered as not-so-real (or non-genuine), that doesn’t mean that a photograph or recorded imagery is real, genuine or factual. Real images only depict one side of a story and can make anything look out of place. Animation can be quite compelling and story-like, but it’s again, very useful for describing scenes, emotions and conveying part of a documented piece of life with a level of immersion.
Persepolis is quite a well-known story talking about the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi. The story follows a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution and the oppression that occurs, especially on women from a woman’s perspective. Just because the story is an animation and some scenes are exaggerated to tell a story, does not mean that it is completely fictitious. The events that occurred were real. The oppression was real. The killing was real. But it has been put in a bite-sized version that is far less gruesome, but can still express the same political view and voice an opinion.