So with Art of Persuasions documentary, Dom and myself basically split the work to a video each. We had to make one clip purely out of found footage and one out of stuff we filmed ourselves but with no interviews in either as a cool limitation to work with. I decided to make the found footage one cuz I dunno how to work a camera fo shit. But like I mentioned in my previous post we had the problem of trying to tackle a very large issue in a small frame of time (3minutes) which resulted in the overall idea changing two more times from the initial one.
My first attempt was simply too factual and wordy, which is precisely what I was trying to ebb away from, as I may or may not have mentioned in the past; explaining things to people isn’t how to convince them of anything. You need to somehow reach their inner feelings and desires. With this initial idea we wanted to put propaganda in a place where it [although sinister] served a higher and greater purpose to maintain a stable society – as the alternative was complete and utter chaos. I acquired a vast cornucopia of knowledgeable clips and snippets to demonstrate the actuality that humanity was incapable of itself and required the leash, however the deeper I dug the more I found this to be the case only because humanity has been under the leash for so long in the first place. This research helped solidify some of my own world views which was great, but like any good apocalypse – in the original Greek sense of the word – brought more questions than before. If anything, my objective was now further from sight.
Knowing I had a long way to go, I made a contingency video which heavily featured themes from The Matrix, particularly the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the red and blue pill as an analogy to choosing between accepting the propaganda and to believe the lie or to realize that you’re just a cog in a system who has no say whatsoever in the direction of your life. But it was just too much of the Matrix in the end and I hated it for being so gross and cheap.
In the end I decided to make something I thought about when I was younger – a documentary, where the narrator talks about human beings the same way he would talk about animals in wildlife.
“This is a wild human mother in her natural habitat” – and you just stalk mothers in malls or wherever it is mothers spend their time. (pardon my ignorance, I thought Dubai was in India, I’m not perfect)
Gahah it’d be brilliant.
Recently I even saw something extremely close to it. An Aussie show called Bogan Hunters, where the hosts are blatantly capitalising on getting people to self proclaim their Boganism with or without them realising they’ve basically turned into circus animals for the entertainment of people higher social class. Heck the Bogans probably even watch it themselves believing they’ve attained a greater place in life by acting a fool on TV. Sigh.
anyway
I didn’t really explain why I thought this was appropriate to the theme of propaganda. You see in my research I’ve found that people are so well under control that we’re basically being shuffled around and made to do things to the same extent that livestock are, all without realising whats going on. It’s the greatest damned illusion ever blanketed over humanity, and if it’s not, it’s definitely up there. You know how you hear about those farms where nobody really gives a shit about the animals and treats them like they weren’t living beings (I don’t wanna post vids but you can find em if you look really fast)? Yeah thats what the people in control of your lives are probably like <<assumption>but a pretty strong one>. You’re just the oil for the cog in their machine of money.
You’re born and raised through a factory process, where you’re sorted by age, and shuffled down two potential paths of life |ARTS| and |SCIENCES| or Sir Ken Robinson puts it –
Since the arts don’t generally produce much wealth you’re immediately considered second rate, but regardless of which line of work you end up in, it’ll always be for someone elses benefit. You’ll be squeezed for every last bit of potential you have like chicks in a macerator. I say ‘you’re’ because if anybody reading this is most likely not in that wondrous “1%”. This affects and has to do with basically everybody. We’re so content with this complacency which might be fine if the situation merited it, but as a species that has such an immense capacity to learn, we seem to be going more and more backwards with each day that passes. I mean.. seriously.. Bogan Hunters.. how is that a thing.. religious beheadings and killing of civilians.. how is that still a thing? Civil war and discontent.. how is any of this still a fucking thing?
It just doesn’t make sense, I don’t think it’s possible for people to be this horrible if there wasn’t something or some force that desired or even required this kind of pain and unrest. It’s almost like the only reason people are horrible to each other, is so that they remember to cherish the times and appreciate when they are good to each other. Like some kinda dualic Yin and Yang system we truly can’t seem to step out of. Does that mean we’re condemned to repeat mistakes? What’s the point of learning anything if you don’t adapt from the mistakes?
ANYWAY, I feel like I get so lost in these rants the point I try to make loses itself. THE POINT here is that I wanted to make a clip that would make people think for a moment that they are a part of a farm, not as farmer, but as farmed. What resulted, or rather was intended, is a clip, almost like an infomercial for the 1% to look into the lives of the 99% of their livestock. Three minutes, still isn’t enough, and I might like to expand further on this in bigger projects for greater reach, but I hope that at least I got some people in my own class to think about this. Even if only one person. Because the truth is, this is something nobody will want to accept or face. It’s like taking off the blindfold to see a meat cleaver, and I don’t have the solution, but I think it’s worth thinking and talking about, because “nothing strengthens authority so much as silence” – DaVinci.
EDIT: Here is the final vid I made. Hope you enjoy.