Analyzing The Documentary 'War Of The Worlds'

498 Words2 Pages

The War of the Worlds, documentary explores the fictional radio event on October 30, 1938. The event was broadcast by Orson Welles, who created a fake alien invasion from Mars on a farm in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. What viewers of the documentary can learn about the power of propaganda and its intersection with popular media is that society, blindly believes, anything that the media put outs. Due to our culture beliefs that media is important and if the media is reporting something, than it must be true. In the documentary, it states that during the depression, many Americans were not making payments for their cars, washing machines and phones. However “they kept on buying radios by the millions” (War of the Worlds). I would assumed that …show more content…

In 1924, the U.S. Army Signal Corps, shut down radio stations, so they could listen to a signal for mars. Days before Welles broadcast, the Christian Science Monitor, featured a Scandinavian astronomer statement about the living things on Mars. Mars was fresh on people minds, making an invasion seem realistic and expected. Most people did not listed to beginning of the broadcast and missed the part, where he stated that it was a play. The radio at that time was the main source for news and entertainment to Americans. Americans were used to hearing bad news and tragedies through their radios that were far too sad to be real, but they were. Therefore, when Welles made the announcement of war, it was believable. Also, in the broadcast, there were eyewitness accounts of the Martians invasion, just as they were eyewitness accounts of other unbelievable, but true incidents. Such as, the descriptions of something falling from the sky and causing a field to burned. The same depiction of the German airship that fell from the sky and burned a field. Both of the “burning” aircrafts happened in New Jersey. However, the listeners, later learned that only the German airship crash was a real