Another New Political Movie

After the Iron Lady, President Obama's campaign movie, "Game Change" is another political movie recently released in which Sarah Palin is the character acted by Julianne Moore. Among the comments on the movie, Nicolle Wallace, senior advisor of McCain's campaign said that "this is a movie about the vast grey area where 99 percent of our politics actually takes place". I like the comment because the tone of Ms. Wallance's comment reveals that this movie provides a new angle or a special perspective that is a highlight of the movie, and she also hints that the highlight of the movie is about things that the ordinary people seldom know.

I have always be suspicious about the connection between media and politics. As the media grows, the message sent to the ordinary is not proportional to the growth of media industry. Instead, it enables the powerful to manipulate messages because they have the means to influence the media. As a result, information people receive is processed and does not increase with the development of media industry. It is difficult for people to know things under the table, so media does not effectively carry out its duty of free flow of message but is more like a source of entertainment or even source of power for the powerful. The growing dependence on products related to media, including movies and personal attacking advertisement, increases candidates' chance of being opportunists.