A Beautiful Face behind a Hideous Mask:
A Look into how the Mass Media creates an army of mindless zombies
By: Kenneth Lim 260301211
In our highly advanced technological society today, there are countless possibilities in which we can be influenced by our mass media. They create expectations and we are “conditioned” by them to think and react in certain ways just like puppies doing some tricks such as “fetch” or “roll over” for its master. So, who are our masters you may ask? Well, they are the people who are in control of what goes into the media content; what we watch on television, what we see in posters and what we generally observe and hear everywhere that we tend to go and every corner that we choose to turn. Yes, I am talking about the mass media and how it plays too major of a role (which is dangerous) in modeling us into the “ideal” man, woman, teenager or child. However, without being beneficial to our society, mass media has instead succeeded in creating mindless zombies out of us. We have become over sensitive (due to frequent exposure) to things which apparently matter the most in the “ideal world” (created by the mass media) such as fame, physical beauty and wealth. In turn, we have also become desensitized in our senses, our priorities and our own lives. Fortunately, there is a treatment and immolation to this plague, which is by realizing ourselves and our true purpose in life.
Our first step towards self-liberation is to understand how this “Zombification” process takes place. In chronological order, it can be briefly summarized as followed:
1) We are exposed to media content (at any age and any type of programs)
2) We subconsciously learn what they want to teach us (especially from commercials and advertisements; what is the “idea?”)
3) We become seasoned to it after continued exposure (at conscious level; finding this “idea” everywhere we go)
4) We are reinforced when this “idea” becomes a common topic to talk about among our colleagues (as social beings, we have a natural need to feel belonging)
5) We eventually give up and join the zombie race (everyone suddenly shares the same mentality and thus becomes mindless)
But how exactly is making everyone think the same way a bad thing? There are many negatives variables to this equation and some of the more obvious ones would be the following:
1) A loss of self esteem for those who are not “fit” enough for the “ideal world” and thus feels outlier from the others (ie: indifference in looks or way of thinking may cause the person to enter depression or have suicidal thoughts).
2) A loss of potential creative minds (if people are not given the opportunity and motivation to be indifferently who they really are, many innovative ideas thought by creative people would be overlooked as useless knowledge and thus be unable to become shared benefit knowledge).
3) Stereotypes will become a reality (ie: already in the world, there is racism due to lack of understanding. Mass media, when controlled by the wrong people, could possibly worsen the situation by amplifying the negative thoughts generated through the “mobs”)
I remember while reading some of Shakespeare’s collection of work during my leisure time, I came across him saying something vaguely similar to this: “Each day of mine is like an act and this life is my stage.” Essentially, I believe this quote is trying to tell us that all of us are indeed actors in our own plays. We can choose to let the world (audience) see us for who we are by revealing our face (individual values/ideas) or we can conceive it behind a mask (playing a “fixed” role decided by someone else) thus protecting our own identity.
Our faces differentiate us into who we are as individuals in society. And I refer to it as faces because man can have many faces. A face is a symbolic representation of a personality. Thus, we can have multiple personalities. Yet, this should not be confused with having a “dual personality” which occurs when a person is unaware that he has another side of himself sleeping quietly who will only awaken when it is his turn to go to sleep (ie: the famous story of “Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde”). It is also important to take note that people can share similar personalities but no two people can be absolutely identical in the way that they naturally behave. Attitudes should not be confused with personalities because attitudes are more general while personalities are more unique.
Masks on the other hand were first created when people had a desire to “role play,” to pretend to be someone or something else other than that which they really are. The modern movie stars’ job is to entertain the audience and although they do not always physically wear masks, by pretending to be a character of a story, they are already engaging with the hiding of their faces. With that being said, media does not make us “movie stars” but they do give us different masks to wear. The only problem is that they choose the masks for us and once we get into the habit and comfort of wearing those masks, we forget how our own faces look like (temporary, if not, permanent loss of self identity).
Now that we know what mass media does along with the negative personal and social impacts from it, we should be careful not to lose ourselves in this age whereby the “plague” of mass media is everywhere. The truth is that all of us do have creative minds but mass media standardizes the way we perceive things. It is like we are being mass produced similar to toy puppets in a factory. So do not be controlled, do not lose the sense of who you are and do not wear those masks offered to you no matter how tempting they may seem to be. That is because too many people have already been victimized by mass media. Am I the only person who finds that most people in society are hiding a beautiful face behind a hideous mask? The suffering must stop now!
~Alas, there shall come a day when taking off the mask which we have grown so accustomed to wearing will result in ripping off and disfiguring our face along with it~ Ken 7:6
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