Is Hollywood Helping to Create An Atmosphere Of Fear?

a few years ago i watched my first foreign film, or shall i say i watched my first film that had subtitles. i had resisted doing so for a long time, my thinking being i would somehow miss out on the substance of the film due to my need to read the lines rather than simply hearing them. well of course i was mistaken. i've been greatly enjoying foreign films ever since. in fact, the majority of films that seem to touch me the most are foreign made. there's an authenticity in these films that i find missing in the hollywood film genre.

there is something about my own behavior that i began to notice the past year when watching these foreign films. i realized i often tense up in fear, anticipating that something awful was going to happen. i anticipated that the main character was going to experience an unexpected tragedy or that another character would betray or injure the main character. most of the time though i discovered that my fear was unfounded. the film went along on its merry way without any shocking surprises of exagerrated violence or betrayal or suspicion.

that got me to thinking. had i become so used to the hollywood films, which are so full of acts of distrust, betrayal and exagerrated violence? had i come to expect this of all films? my conclusion? i had. i have.

this had me feeling so sad for a time (and it still does at times), and yet it makes sense to me in that it helps explain this air of distrust that permeates our culture. this brings to mind something i once saw--a documentary i believe. people in canada, on average, do not lock their doors as we do here in the states. they also don't look at strangers as someone to automatically distrust. their crime rates are lower as well. could there be a correlation? perhaps. it's something to think about.

we have a HUGE air of "DO NOT TRUST" in our culture. strange it is to me that we have the words "in god we trust" on our coins and paper money. maybe we need to print "in one another we distrust" below. silly, yes, but it is how we think and feel in our american culture.

while i am not advocating blind trust, i think it's time for us to rethink how distrustful we've become of one another. the media pumps us full of violent images and horrifying situations where people have given another person their trust and been harmed as a result, at times with deadly consequences. however, in the overall scheme of things, these instances are rare, even though a day spent in front of the television would leave you thinking otherwise. i don't know about you, but i am tired of living in fear. it's become a national obsession. it is one of many of our what i call "social ills" that needs to be addressed. let's start talking about it.