Hours after the Chile earthquake, there’s a drama unravelling in media that borrows its narrative from pop culture: The foreboding reporting. I’m not sure I feel comfortable with a tone borrowed from “The Day After Tomorrow” right after a major disaster.
As I’m writing this, media theorise on what may happen in a while rather than reporting what has happened. Is there a monsert wave in the depths of the ocean that will rise up and drown coastal towns in three hours? Five hours? Ten hours?
The mandatory scene in every virus movie is the briefing before the President, where some expert from Center for Disease Control shows projections on how many infections there will be in one day, three days, two weeks.
The same thing happens now, with charts showing the number of hours before the presumed wave reaches Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan.
It’s a dramatic narrative that leaves a bitter taste.
Just like the Twitter reporting from Iran this past summer, of course we do not follow it for our interest or concern for what’s actually happening. It’s the excitement of trying to piece together a puzzle from a distance that entices us.
The difference from Iran, where the suggestive drama lay only in the eye of the beholder, is that media actively pursues this line of reporting.
Naturally it has an impact. Daredevils, Formula 1 and luge attracts the public eye because we look up to anyone who tries to be as close to danger as possible. Of course, only as long as we do not have any responsibility and have no choice but to remain passive bystanders.
In its portrayal of the really real world, pop culture has created a number of narratives that signals to the viewer or reader when excitement lays ahead. Recently, the really real world has started using pop culture’s narrative to portray itself.
I’m not sure that feels ok.
