The film Wag the Dog, directed by Barry Levinson, was produced in the late 90’s in order to demonstrate how easily the media and public can be manipulated. During re-election season the president was involved in a sex scandal with an underage, “firefly girl” in the Oval Office. The presidential advisor hires someone to come up with a distraction for the media. Conrad Brean, the one in charge, uses the motto “Change the story, change the lead.” What he means by this statement is to distract the media from the recent scandal by presenting something else for them to report on.
He creates a fake scenario with Albania. It actually seems to be done quite easily. Brean hires a producer, Stanley Motss, who is committed to carrying out the scenario. They create a number of fake scenarios such as, a video of an Albanian girl running away from terrorists, a fake song, and even a fake war hero to be rescued. His last name being Schumann, later takes on a trend across the nation.
Many people follow the trend because they see others following it and it gives everyone a sense of patriotism. They think an American is brought home safe and he is a war hero in their eyes. In reality, he doesn’t exist. I think the shoe becomes the symbol representing the entire conflict as a whole and people are more likely to remember things they associate with certain events.
The significance of the producer’s house being larger than the White House represents the amount of power the producer has in controlling the messages. The significance of the media in America is rather large; They have the ability to shape the public’s view. One of the lines in the movie was, “Of course there’s war; I’m seeing it on TV.” This reinstates how real the scenario can be portrayed in the eye of the public. Society, especially our generation, is quick to believe whatever is being shown. This brings an interesting, actually rather scary, thought. The amount of editing we can do to different multimedia videos and imaging is endless. How do we know what is real and what is fake? Considering how much power the government has, something like this could happen and go unnoticed. The title “Wag the Dog” is referenced in a caption during the movie. “Why does the dog wag its tail? Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If the tail were smarter it would wag the dog.”