Are You Subjective to Their Lies? - Tessa Rose

Fig. 1

In the media industry, there is an infinite battle for the attention of various audiences, but the shock lies in how far they will go to concur the view rating. Manipulating lies of the industry in your lounge room. 

Fantasy is often described as an escape from reality, but many are unaware that media claiming to be “reality” is not entirely based around the truth and therefore creates the question: Is reality just fantasy in disguise?

Documentaries are the soul of reality film, educating society on an endless variety of topics. But, if you are to realistically analyse the majority of documentaries, you discover that most of what we are viewing is essentially fantasy styled dramatizations.   

Does our viewing pleasure thrive on fantasy?

A documentary that lacks somewhat form of fantastical dramatisation or demonstration would not be able to attract and maintain and large audience.  The industry is forced to insert theatrical influences in to everything they release to create that emotional connection that captivates audiences.

Fig. 4

The cove, a theatrical documentary released in 2009, spread across the globe faster than the plague proposing an analysis of the dolphin slaughtering situation in Taiji, Japan.  The documentary successfully intrigues and captivates audiences with a lethal combination of an empathetic story of disaster and perfected cinema verite` and editing techniques. To the untrained eye, the cove is a precise commentator for social awareness of dolphin slaughtering, but if you are to take a closer look you may discover that we are merely being brainwashed by visually appealing special effects and irresistibly enticing music.

The cove is powerfully mind-blowing, with the frequent use of hand-held cameras and night vision, as an audience member, you feel like you are right by their side. This raises my next statement; when watching the cove we are captivated by style and hence forth fantasy. If The Cove was presented in a basic interview style, would we be equally captivated?

 As an audience we hold the power to choose what we wish to view. Most prefer to adapt to a film where they can find an emotional attachment rather than being dictated constant information and therefore the industry is somewhat forced to take advantage of this need. From this comes the creation of realistic demonstrations and dramatisations to attract and maintain audience attention.    

Fig. 3

With the release of The Cove, the controversy soon followed. There has been much speculation on whether some of the content is fiction rather than fact. These rumours of deceit include the apparent firing of Hideki Moronuki, the assistant chief of the whaling division in Japan’s fisheries agency, when reality is he is still currently employed at the agency.

Other rumours include: Misleading edit techniques used to disregard the reputation of the professor of the Health and Sciences University of Hokkaido and creating a false image of “Sea World” in which misleads audience members to believe that Sea World captures wild dolphins and contains them in captivity when fact is all dolphins in Sea World are bred in the aquarium. 

It is rumours such as these that lead society to wonder how much of the information that is claimed to be reality, is simply lies and deceit.

Documentaries are often viewed as educational tools, but what about this daily social commentator we call the news. How much of the news can sincerely be claimed as realistic news?

Fig. 6

Fig. 5

News can commonly be categorised in to two sectors; editorial and non-editorial. The difference is defined in the content. Editorial news is content presented with an influence of the publisher and editors points of view. Therefore non-editorial is simply pure unedited content presented directly to the audience. Common editorial stations in Australia include channel 7, channel 10 and channel 9 with non-editorial being the ABC, SBS and local non-profit stations.

Stop and think, if both claim to be “news” then why is it necessary to have two categories?  The answer, editorial news is full of mis-leading editing techniques, classy studios, special effects and perfect presenters to captivate audiences and leave us wanting more. It is certainly fair to say that in a race between editorial and non-editorial, editorial snatches gold every time.

 As a greedy society with high expectations, we don’t like simply being told what is right and wrong therefore editorial news stations take advantage of this philosophy in ensuring that what they present has a combination of “news” and fantasy that will keep us interested.

With the increase in technology over the years a form of animation called CGI (Computer Graphic Imaging) has become extremely popular. By knowing how to take advantage of CGI animation, you hold the power to create chillingly realistic animations where the difference between animation and reality is barely evident. The beauty of CGI, is that realistically anyone with enough motivation and persistence can do it.  

“The Faking Hoaxer” is an amateur CGI artist who has become a viral YouTube sensation. The Faking Hoaxer creates amazingly realistic animations that often involve fictional disasters and in turn demonstrate how simple it can be for news producers to take advantage of CGI and claim false content as news. “The Sydney Incident”, a YouTube video produced by the faking hoaxer in June 2010, sets a proposition of disaster showing realistic CGI animations of Sydney’s main icons destroyed.

Optimising the use of voice over, music and the local channel 7 news logo, “The Sydney Incident” is incredibly realistic to viewers. If a video of this proportion can be produced by and amateur in a garage, how can we be sure that the reports on the news aren’t CGI animations?

We are living in a society where we can never be completely sure that what we are viewing is the truth. We are living in a society of fantasy.

All hope is not lost; there are ways to avoid fictional content in the media such as:

Evaluating your sources:

Predominantly gather your information about current events from non-editorial media such as ABC and SBS.

Train the untrained eye:

Try not to be captivated by music and editing techniques that may switch your focus away from the relevant information.

Respect your trust:

Be careful what you trust, not all information in documentaries is the truth.

Reference your research:

When researching something you are interested in, gather information from multiple resources and weed out the facts from the fiction.


Tessa O'Neill
2011