Jurassic Park was published in 1990 (science fiction novel by Micheal Crichton) and was adapted into a blockbuster film in 1993 by director Steven Spielberg. The book has one sequel, The Lost World, in 1995, which was also adapted by Spielberg into a film in 1997.The narrative begins by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. After paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student Ellie Sattler enter the sequence of queried experts they are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond for a weekend visit to a "zoological preserve" he has established on an island 120 miles west off the coast of Costa Rica.
Recent events have spooked Hammond's considerable investors and, to placate them, he means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic, but Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainably simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system.
I was in primary school then and I had completely no idea what dinosaurs were until I watched this film. I enjoyed the entire film and I was convinced that dinosaurs were huge and horrible creatures that existed and still exist. Despite being fascinated by the movie, I had recurring nightmares that dinosaurs would come through my window and bite off one of my limbs. (That’s what happened in the movie.) Well, looking back on it, it does seem quite silly now.
I think the powerful effect theory applies to this movie. The mass media is extremely influential and I as the audience am passive. Has anyone in this world ever seen a dinosaur before? Maybe the fossil. But what about the colour, texture of skin and behaviour? Naturally, with the aid of high technologies, consumers are highly influenced and convinced that dinosaurs look and behave as potrayed in the film. Are you convinced?
4 comments:
I do agree to a certain extent that the media can be rather influential and the audiences can be passive.
As you have mentioned,nobody has really seen a real dinosaur. The image that we have for dinosaurs are actually portrayed by the media on how they could possibly look like based on the fossils.
media is definitely influential! that's why there are sterotypes, and propaganda! like what you said, no one has seen a real life dinosaur, so why do people have the mindset that dinosaurs are all like those in jurassic park? just because the imagery portrayed by the media are all the same, people just accept the norm without even bothering to think further.
it never occurred to me that how dinosaurs looked like was just imagined by the media till i read your post
the media indeed influences how viewers think, especially as we see increasing violence in our teens due to their exposure to movies with violent, gruesome content
With the sophistication of our current technology, it is possible to piece together the fossils to establish the 'outlook' of the extinct species.
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