Sunday, December 9, 2007

watering down

According to yahoo's buzz log, "The Web has made it a lot easier to convey outrage." Yes, but it makes it a lot easier to convey anything. Like subtle rhetorical juxtapositions in titles, which create false assumptions, not dissimilar to political rhetoric narrative devices. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much to plant a false idea in the mind of the public. That's the whole point--it's called propaganda. So, what is behind this subtle scapegoating of Nicole Kidman? The yahoo buzz log article is entitled "Kidman film's religion ruckus hits the web." It's an article about the rise in search engines of terms related to the film's religion-oriented controversy. It's not her film. She was paid to act in it, that's it. Maybe she has a passion about the atheist/pro-religion idea one way or the other, but even that would be peripheral, since she had no input into the writing of the book, the subsequent watering down of the anti-authority elements within. She is not listed as a producer or anything else other than actor as far as I can tell. Obviously, it is her film in the casual sense that we use to wrap everything around certain selected people such as herself in this celebrity-oriented culture. So, it isn't necessarily a true falsity in itself, but it's rather dumb and misleading, and I question the intention of rhetorically putting this heated issue on her shoulders. Titles are all reduced down to keywords and search engines and whatnot--of course her name is going to be in the titles, but there seems to be a problem in this interplay somewhere along the way.

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