Deception

    One of my favorite shows right now is called Deception. It is about a magician who works with the FBI and helps them solve crimes that only a master illusionist can solve. The show teaches you that magic is just a massive distraction from what is actually going on. It pulls your attention to something else while the actually magic is happening somewhere else, it deceives you. One of the episodes, the main character, Cameron Black shows you that magic is all about angles. If you show a person the right angle they will see something they can’t explain, magic, but if  you get the angle wrong then they will see the reality. This can be applied to media. 

     When people post pictures or use certain words the reality of the situation can be lost. Pictures are brushed up, photoshopped, and overall just distracts from what really is going on. These are the “right” angles that news reporters give, giving the illusion of the truth. Rarely do news reporters shows the “wrong” angle, letting the viewer decide what the truth is. Many of these brushed up photos distract from the reality of the situation. For example, beauty photos. Many close up photos of people are distorted, they go through a long process of editing to produce the best looking photo but not what the reality is. We look at this photo and think this is actually how the person looks like, but in reality it is just a very serious editing process. Ads do this too. Ads show the good side of their product that they are trying to say. They speed things up, touch up colors, put in lighting, they control everything about the ad and control the viewers feelings. They show the glamorous side of the product then in very small print they say “not real”. However, the large center picture distracts from the small print, distorting the reality. In commercials the camera zooms into the product or the thing that their product will give you, not showing the what really will happen. Overall, media is all about finding the right angle to create an illusion of perfection or the ideas that the producer wants to show. Without giving away the reality of the situation.