Matt's Blog

The Prophecy

March 12th, 2006

Good Night, And Good Luck is a great film, which everyone should watch! It has clearly been brought out to make a point, but its a point that needs to be made: Has television become a medium for the pacification of the masses?

Given that the film is mostly biographical, with a lot of quotations and even real footage of Senator McCarthy, there is a surprising prescience to the words of Murrow. For example:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

Oh, and how pretty the lights are…

I like to think that its different in the UK than in the US, because one of the BBC’s “values” is education. But I’m probably wrong, because what we actually watch is just a stream of imported programmes from America without any educational content at all…

Another great morrow quote is:

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Presumably, this was included in the film as a direct jab at the “war on terror” and its continuing effects on our basic civil liberties. (Which is happening in America too.)

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