My wife and I went to see the movie Quarantine last night. I tend to like scary movies, and my wife tends to like them until she is actually watching one - she still maintains she was scarred for life by 28 Days Later, yet she was still up for the movie last night. As we were watching the movie it struck me that there has been a trend in entertainment as of late to focus on Bio-warfare, Super strains of contagious disease, and many other pathogen based fear driven entertainment. While, this is not new by any means, it struck me as picking up steam.
Quarantine began with a reporter who was following a group of fire-fighters around for the night, when they were called to a building under strange circumstances. When they arrived at the building there was a crazy old lady covered in blood and foaming from the mouth. Without disclosing too much about the movie, the basic premise is that there was a crazy disease, created by humans, that would infect all and threaten the world. It was a movie based on fear, and as my wife and I spent 10 dollars per ticket, we are some of the people buying.
Okay, admittedly my wife and I watch too much television. I lived for three years without television and they were some of the best years of my life. But, then Barack Obama became a nominee and there I was purchasing cable yet again. I followed the election every day, and thanks to the miracle of DVR, we were able to tape many of shows that we never would have watched normally. I refer to DVR as a miracle because it helped create peace in my marriage as I no longer had to say "honey, can you wait until after Barack speaks"; instead, now I could pause Barack and listen to my wife like I rightly should.
While the majority of the time I would tape Rachel Maddow, Countdown, Meet the Press, and other political shows, we would also indulge in many purely entertainment shows as well including: Lost, 24, Prison break, Jericho, The Office, 30 Rock and others. Lately, we have been expanding our viewership to some new shows and programs that we would not have watched previously: The Eleventh Hour, Criminal Minds, Fringe, Law and Order, CSI, Numbers, Bones, and others. I was not originally into these dramas, but my wife was, and I soon became an addict.
There has been an interesting trend in the television shows from a few years ago to the shows coming out now. A few years ago there was a consistent trend to deal with Middle Eastern Terrorism, Nuclear Bombs, and Torture. In television: Jericho, Law and Order, 24, Sleeper Cell, Numbers, CSI, and many others. Then in movies: Lions for Lambs, Syriana, Rendition, and The Kingdom, just to name a few. Of course this is not a new trend, as can be seen in this amazing compilation:
Of course, one of the best descriptions of what is going on here is from Edward Said's video On Orientalism, which if you have not seen, then watch all four parts, here is part one:
One of my favorite satires on the Middle Eastern Fear in television, from American Dad:
The programs that are coming out now seem to have a similar focus, but different. The focus is still fear and danger; however, instead of Nuclear weapons and Middle Eastern terrorism, they are focusing on bio-threats. For instance, the early seasons of 24 were based on Middle East nuclear threats, then in their later episodes the focus was on bio-terrorism. In the television show Fringe and The Eleventh hour, the majority of their limited run so far has been to focus on these malicious invisible threats that could be invading us without being aware. Even CSI and Law and Order has followed suit.
Movies are coming along with this new invisible fear-mongering as well. As I described above - Quarantine followed a similar story line of I am Legend, 28 Days later, the new version of The Adromeda Strain, The Happening, and many others that have enemies that are invisible to the naked eye that could be killing us without even being aware. What is more fearsome than an enemy that you cannot see?
As I began to think of this trend, I began to think: will this trend in entertainment be soon followed in the news industry? While there is a chicken and egg scenario with News coverage and entertainment in the time after 9-11 as to which began the unrelenting fear mongering of Islamic terrorism and Nuclear weapons to keep our public afraid and make billions of dollars off of it, there is no doubt that it existed in both mediums. And as we can see by Fox News ratings and the ratings of 24 and other movies - Fear sells - and makes people very rich.
So, now that the entertainment industry is switching to invisible bio-enemies, will the news follow suit? Of course, there has been some stories on it already and the anthrax scares were a similar theme, it has not been a primary focus of news coverage.
My best guess - Fox's news ratings are starting to sink, their stock value has dropped 33 percent and Rupert Murdoch has had to lay of a large number of people. He is starting to realize that Islamo-Fascism isn't as big of a seller as it used to be, he needs to find something else, something much more scary. So, while I tempted to think he will pull out the old fear card of "the Gays" and the threat that they are somehow contagious, it might not be enough this time:
At the same time, as Obama takes his role as the 44th president of the United States, they cannot spend all of their time trying to scare people about him because he will be in front of the American people and they will be able to see that he is not the "palling around with terrorists" type:
So the odds are, I will predict that over the next coming months, Fox News will begin letting bio-terrorism stories leak through little by little until they regain their viewership through their most valuable commodity: Fear.
Of course, i should not just focus on Fox. The other stations are guilty as well, just not as blatant. Ever since Reagan deregulated television in the 1980's fear has been a valuable commodity on the news: from the scary black faces that they begin every news day with that committed some crime or another (notice they hardly ever have the white guys pictures), to the greatest fear of White society - the missing little White girl (again, when is the last time you saw a news story on the missing little black girl), to focusing on rape, murder, suicide, to socialism and communism in recent months, etc., etc.
But, Fox is by far the most obvious purveyor of fear. They lead the market in this category, which explains their high ratings. So, once again, my question is, with Fox quickly going downhill, will they take the cue from the entertainment industry and focus on the biggest fear of all fears: invisible terrorism?
Update: Please Digg if you are so inclined!