Blog 9: Essay 2

The mass media always has a way of proving its dominance over human minds. No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, we can never escape the media. What we see on TV, advertisements, logos, media are almost inescapable. The media's job is to pretty much take over your mind and turn you into a consumer with no real mind state. The media also does something else: they create falls gods. They can take any average Joe and turn him or her into a god. The film Hero demonstrates how the media works and really goes into how the media changes lives. The film not only has classic morals to its story, it has modern ones as well, ones that include how the media works and why or why not you should trust everything you hear on television.
Hero is about a guy named Bernie LaPlante who's an average guy, a petty criminal, with loser-like attributes. He ends up getting thrown into a big disaster involving a plane crash and saves the victims. Instead of going straight for the media's attention like many would, he was more concerned about the loss of his shoe. After fleeing the scene, he meets up with Vietnam vet, John Bubber. After discussing things for a bit, Bernie gives John his remaining shoe. The media jumps right on the disaster and finds out about this anonymous person that went into the burning plane to save the lives of the victims. The news media goes on a full on search for this mysterious 'hero'.

Out comes John Bubber with the shoe given to him by Bernie. So now, John is suddenly the hero. This is where the media comes in. John is cleaned up: he gets a nice shave, a haircut and a couple of thousand dollar suits and he's the hero of the incident. Just like that. The media blows him up, puts him on the cover of newspapers, magazines, interviews and all of the stuff you would expect from them.
With the recent discovery of Bubbers past in the Army during the Vietnam War, he is now held on an even high pedestal. This is how the media works: If you can be turned into a semi-good looking person with a past that makes you look good (ex soldier, fireman, policeman, etc), then you too can become a hero. You just need to do something heroic in the peoples' eyes. The media basically gives John even more attention and when the government gets wind of Bubber, they find out he did something even more heroic in Vietnam, giving him the Medal of Honor. That's another thing the media does to people, if you blow up and become an icon, they can go into your past and bring up things that you may or may no want them to bring up. In Bubbers case, it made him even more of a god-like character in a sense and was sensationalized in a new way.

This film also shows us how Americans work in terms of media. When someone in another country does something courageous, they are indeed brought up in conversations and yes, they are spoken about, but in general, they aren't idolized like we do here in the states. When someone is made into a hero like figure in the United States, we really put them high up there. We buy the shirts, the buttons, the DVD’s, everything. Just because it’s shoved so far down our throats that we can't even try to escape it. The mindless zombie sheep that do what the media says just fuel the fire by supporting and helping the cause that's putting them as people down.

America loves a good, old fashioned hero. It's what America's all about right? We do everything the best, we are the strongest, and we can never fail because we have people that do courageous things. That's the mind state of most American's, and that's the mind state the media wants you in to sucker you into buying and incorporating your life into. It's all a joke when you look at it. The real heroes are the ones that do things to risk their lives every day. Yes, it's a courageous act to save people in a burning plane; yeah you are a hero to a certain extent, but not a true hero.