Dog Day Afternoon is a brilliant film, and highlights a number of points that we considered during our discussion and via this blog. However, I wish to draw importance to its portrayal of a "Media Circus".

The media are so prevelant in our daily lives, that while they don't exactly tell us how to think, they do tell us what to think about. The recent growth of the concept of the 24-hour news cycle demands continuous "fresh" news, and this has turned the informative aspects of the media (such as the news) into entertainment. This, coupled with the current economic situation and profit-driven news corporations, has led to the tabloid culture that was first made famous by muckrakers such as William Randolph Hearst. Stories like "Balloon Boy" plague our news cycle, so much so that we (the younger generation) are forced to turn to "fake news" outlets (such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) or poorly researched internet blogs. This is exactly why many people my age are not only completely unaware of the world around them (the world that matters, not the world that revolves around Lady Gaga), they are actually made to seem less intelligent than the previous generation (by the media that talks down to them). They have come to think that news is synonymous with entertainment. They insist that the world pander to them. That is why when an actual event is so fantastic that it can be used as entertainment (such as a hostage situation in Brooklyn), the media go crazy.

In a situation like this, it is important to remember the original values of journalism: reporters needed to serve as the guardians of democracy and as the watchdogs of the government. They need to disregard the entertainment or profit-driven motive and aim instead to inform and educate. These values were expressed brilliantly by the film Network, one of my favorite movies of all time, and another of Sidney Lumet's masterpieces. The important, though admittedly idealistic (and maybe naive), point I am trying to make here is expressed almost perfectly by "the mad prophet of the airwaves", Howard Beale:

This movie is a great watch, but also refers to many of the ideas that we as critical viewers of media need addressed. The media circus is a concept that should have lost its excitement-factor a long time ago. Can it be safe to assume, then, that the more important a role media plays in our life, the less we control how it affects us?