Barry Levinson's Film 'Wag The Dog'

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The composer’s textual implication to instigate meaning from the various representations of people and politics is to essentially educe a desired response. Barry Levinson’s film ‘Wag The Dog’ (WTD) explores the extent of public information and its legitimacy, which is fabricated by media-political complex and Michael Moore’s documentary ‘Bowling For Columbine’ (BFC) reflects on the values and attitudes about human frailty and depravity, whilst questioning American politics. Thus, composers create texts that obtain the potential to shape meaning and produce provocative insights, to ultimately draw a desired response through the representation of people and politics. Within the mediums of production, semiotics and semantics plays a crucial role…show more content…
Levinson’s application of cinema verite offers a sense of realism to the ‘hyperreal situation’ of the ‘manufactured war,’ where the overall production is deconstructed for audiences so the critically selective regimes form the representations of people and politics. According to Linguist Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent,’ the media is a mouthpiece, supported with Brean’s political manoeuver with ‘Hollywood’. Brean’s Machiavellian characterisation accentuates that he is politics personified; the lack of integrity and persuasive power. As such, proven with the rapid exchange of dialogue of persuading the actress into signing secrecy consent, elucidates media’s tactical persuasion, shaping the society’s perspective. Through satire, Levinson expounds the political regime as a source of entertainment, subjecting the audience to the society’s passivity of public…show more content…
The collective consumption of metaphoric ‘pageant’ is exemplified through the long shot of the ‘power couple’; Brean and Motss behind the glass of what they created, “a complete fraud” that “looks real”. Levinson’s low-angle medium shot focuses on Brean’s face overshadowing the inverted American flag that is formerly symbolic of the cultural acceptance of liberty and freedom, however by covering Brean, America entitles for corruption. Also, pertaining to Chomsky’s epitome of the ‘alternative conceptions of democracy’, the shot illuminates the subversion of reality. Subsequently, the superimposed diegetic news report presents the idiomatic irony of the Albanian war emerging to be true. Therefore, Levinson’s evocative representation of people and politics expresses its hidden association that appeals for a disputatious response of the

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