Cub-reporter
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In the modern society, we can get in touch with many forms of media like comic books, novels, movies, and games. Since there are so many ways to tell a story, one story can be used in several different types of media. In the United States, this started with ‘Superman’ which was a comic book, but later came out as a movie.
This surely gave the fans of Superman great pleasure. That is because Superman who was a fake character in comic books became a more realistic one in the movie. Superman’s face lines in the comic books were too sharp and his body was too unrealistic. But Superman who was in the movie had the same body and a face like ours.
The fake hero was born into a realistic friend who is living in our society. But the funny thing was that Americans started to turn their movies into TV cartoon series. This meant the heroes becoming less realistic or a fake once again. However, there is a reason. This is because you can enjoy the story of a movie character much more often with a cartoon series.
If a story keeps coming out as a movie, it would cost too much and there is a great possibility that the viewers would get bored of it. But a cartoon is quite short and provides different episodes everyday.
Nowadays, TV cartoons or movies are shown in games. When somebody plays a game which has the characters they like and a familiar story, they will think Ñ ‘Wow! This is cool!’ since the gamers can control the situation and actually become the star. Seeing all these examples, we can say people release their stress with games and movies. They begin to make a world of their own which has their heroes.
In the game these thoughts become even deeper. They might believe that they can change the world and if something goes wrong, so what? They can start it all over again. The assortment of different media types can also mix up people’s thoughts to what is real and what is not.
We can say the motive of the movie ‘Unbreakable’ is like that. In the movie ‘Unbreakable’ there is a train accident and this accident occurred because of a man who thought the Superman story was real.
The reason for this man’s belief in Superman can be attributed to only one media source - comic books. But if a story comes to us through several other media channels, there is greater chance that people may get confused whether the story is real or not. That’s because the reality of the story could become stronger as media sources increase.
Besides getting confused, there is also a problem about people running away from reality. They don’t stop by releasing stress, but just throw it all away and fall into a fake fantasy world. Releasing stress, getting confused about the real world and the fake world, and running away from reality all may be caused by this perceived reality that the combined forms of media present to the general public.
Still, we should believe in some of the positive effects of combined media. We can enjoy the world in any way we desire and we can find a society that isn’t next to us. In one way this might be a cowardly escape from reality, but in another way, this can be viewed as rest or relaxation time in life.
We can find a small “Utopia” and feel it. So I can say, this may become a small comfort in our lives. We can also enjoy this any way we want. Cartoons, games, movies, or whatever means you may choose. In what form of media and stories are you finding the heroes that provide the rest in your life?
The UOS Times
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