Cool media typically uses low-definition images and video, which forces the audience to be deeply involved and fill the gaps in the content. In the 1960s, television was considered a ‘cool medium’ because it broadcasted small, blurry shapes and required the viewers to actively participate. Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969) closely demonstrates this media practice as its interwoven fictional plotline and factual historic events requires the audience to piece together, what seems to be jumbled, events in order to receive the bigger picture. The film focuses on a news reporter who finds himself in the middle of the 1968 Democratic National Convention trying to remain detached from the social issues that surround him. When John Cassellis (Robert …show more content…
Again, cool media encourages the audience to participate by using small, unclear images and does not ‘spoon-feed’ the viewers content. Medium Cool as a whole is an example of cool media as it is a montage of grainy footage of riots and interviews strung together. As the movie comes a closing, all this sudden we are staring at the screen looking at a car flipped over; we are not sure what has just happened or what we just consumed in the past two hours of film. It is not only until the audience reflects on all the clips edited together that they realize what the bigger message is. Wexler called attention to the political and social issues as hand while interweaving in a fictional entertaining …show more content…
The Vietnam and Civil War were causing mass riots which created a large outlet for media reporters. In the opening scenes, the viewer is taken into a rioting crowd when suddenly tear gas is sprayed into the crowd. We hear a voice yell, “Look out Haskell, it’s real!” This becomes a famous quote as it is a person telling the director, Haskell Wexler, to beware of the tear gas and reminding him that it is not a film set. This moment incorporates a very real, and intense, element into the fictional storyline of Medium