Media's Ill Effects

Media’s Ill effects

Do we really know how the general media affects us? Can we realize the effects that it has on us? Do we have the power to stop these changes? Media outlets along with many other television stations and persuasive papers can really have impacts on our lives that we do not realize until the changes are brought to light. These changes can also affect our perception and we often find ourselves interested in something that we never really had any taste for. Don DeLillo in Video tape not only discusses something that demands our attention because of its “newsworthiness” but also shows the insensibility that we gain from media exposure that can sometimes go without the slightest hint of self-recognition. Videotape is a narrative of a child capturing a video on a camera while in the backseat of her family’s car. This video is being taken by a young girl and it is of a completely random murder by the infamous Texas Highway Killer. It is simple, short, and has a specific purpose when it is shown on television. But there are also many lasting affects that this video can have.

A young girl is behind the camera in this videotape. An innocent child that doesn’t even know the importance of this video or the affect this single videotape will have on its audience. But before we think about the audience that will be affected we have to understand the importance of the person videotaping. We learn a lot from this child even though we do not even realize how this child relates to us. Upon first watching this video we can relate to the child but every time after that we easily form a connection to compare. We share an innocence of stumbling upon something unusual and in a sense something totally unreal to us. The child doesn’t really understand what happens in the video and we feel the same way because how short and fast the video is. This is the first way we are drawn to the argument being made. This child is innocent, like we are, and there is no reason...