We have been raised in world where perception is key. It is the basis by which we judge everything we see, taste, or feel as being real or imagined. Everything we see and hear influences our way of thinking and method of life. Of all the existing influences in our lives, I believe that mass media has the most influencing effect on us as human beings. Mainly because we have a tendency to emulate and take along with us, the things which we view in movies and television, into our daily lives. We turn fiction into a fact and reality whenever we can.
We have to admit that we are a culture of people who take everything that we see at face value. As such, we tend to believe almost everything presented to us by mvoies, television, and advertising is a “reality” that we must accept simply because there are certain times when we can identify with certain scenarios presented by these fictional situations. Indeed, there are some types of people who are unable to discern fact from fiction in terms of what the media presents to us on a daily basis. Be it in the movies, television, or advertising, the lines between fiction and fact have continued to blur since the conception of film making. The way the information is presented to us finds our brains storing these little fictional factoids on a sub conscious level in our brains. These bits and pieces of information find itself surfacing in our attitudes and decision making processes over a period of time and events happening in our lives.
It is this type of subliminal influence over the viewing and listening public that allows these forms of media to shape the way we as a culturally diverse public view our daily lives and all interconnecting acitivities to it. People somehow manage to create a perception of what a reality should be basued upon what the media and its accompanying technologies declare to be realistic viewpoints of daily life and the world.
Therefore we can say that the media affects people in more ways than one. Not only through the way that we percieve reality, but also through the attitudes that we display in public since we think that the attitudes displayed by characters on television, the movies, and on the radio is the proper attitude to be displaying in public.
The reason that the media tends to twist and distort the reality they present is because of the way they receive financing in order to remain on the air or complete the movie shoot. Since the insinuation is that the media presents the real world, we in the real world strive to make a world of fiction a reality. Due to the want to make fiction a reality, there has since been a strong tendency to blur the lines between fact and fiction.
Since the realism of film, television, and advertising knows no boundaries, it has become imperative that the viewer have the ability to discern fact from fiction, reality from pretend. These are the lines that will constantly be crossed on both sides of the aisle, and will require a special sort of discerning ability in order to keep people connected to their real lives instead of their idealized beings and way of life.