Well see, what we've been trying to say is... just as you had to edit "shadows" to "other alien race", there are other parts you'll have to edit before the end as well. And while each individual change may not seem like much, eventually you're looking at a completely different sentence than what you started with. That's the trick JMS was talking about.
Farscape or Babylon 5?
- Thread starter kirk55555
- Start date
Too late.
All I'm going to say is that the specific kind of propaganda techniques discussed in The Illusion of Truth are used on American news everyday and doubly so for reality TV.
As a reality TV editor, I can certainly say this is true. But we run circles around the obvious examples in The Illusion of Truth!
Kirk, I doubt you'll like the episode, but it's not 45 minutes of propaganda, and I'd watch it to get an insight as to what's going on in the Earth administration, as (deliberately) frustrating as that may be. But first, the return of Bester in... Epiphanies! 
You mean something like
"Londo dies as a puppet of Vir's Grandmother's knitting club who just manages to do one last good thing before he dies at the hands of his secret love child with a narn"
Or, if you'll permit me a few really stupid scenarios, maybe JMS was an old sci fi fan with connections in the BBC
"Londo (actually the 34th doctor [you'd want a bit of leeway with which version of the doctor he is]) dies as a puppet of the Dalek who just manages to do one last good thing before he dies at the hands of his lover (before regenerating, this time as a more ordinary british man)"
Or, if JMS is a horror fan
"Londo dies as a puppet of the Cuthulu who just manages to do one last good thing before his soul is put into the body of a living doll by the hands of his enemy (who is now in league with Chucky for some reason).
or
"Londo Tiberius molari dies as a puppet of the Borg who just manages to do one last good thing before he dies at the hands of his enemy, who was recently assimilated"
Personally, all of those will probably be as good as what actually happens, even though they're all just examples of me being sarcastic. To be clear, I'm still really liking B5 and its whole story in general (minus the idiotic earth propaganda stuff) and Londo's current stuff has been good. I'm just still angry at the stupid future stuff and remembering that it was written by the same guy who wrote Spider-Man: One More Day, Superman: Grounded and the worst pre reboot Wonder Woman story I've ever tried to read. I guess being exposed to his comic book work long before B5 has always made me a bit leery about his writing. To be fair, he's written some great comics (I liked a lot of his Spider-Man run, even though he wrote the worst SM story ever he did good before that and a lot of OMD is probably more Quesada's fault anyway) and most of B5 has been excellent. Its just that sometimes I remember that he has the potential to be a horrible writer too, and the B5 future stuff just reminds me of that.
As a reality TV editor, I can certainly say this is true. But we run circles around the obvious examples in The Illusion of Truth!
Oh, I don't doubt it.
Honestly, I don't mind kirk's Londo bitching because it's just his opinion; he thinks showing Londo's fate in the dead middle of the series was a mistake, most of us don't, hey, whatever. The only time I get kind of bothered by his posts is his assumption that humans in the future living under a totalitarian regime must be like how he views Americans now and not other humans currently living under totalitarian regimes nor the thousands of people and cultures in history who lived in various states of oppression.
There's a great quote from down the line and in a completely different context discussing a different group, but which I think is really fitting: "How many people actually belonged to the Nazi party? The Communist party? The Jihad party? A very small number. But there were always plenty of other people who were happy to do the work for them, and others afraid enough to let it happen."
The news report part in Illusion of Truth only takes up the last act and a half of the episode. it's worth watching
As for Londo, he's still got plenty of good to do, and you are still wrong about why he meets his fate. There's still a season and a half to go of story here.
As for Londo, he's still got plenty of good to do, and you are still wrong about why he meets his fate. There's still a season and a half to go of story here.
Regarding the stupidity of the Propaganda. FOX News and CNBC have both been caught making big stuff up, and at least half of their viewers genuinely eat up every single word they say, and look at the way the Democrats are so sure of what they know, and their views, versus how sure the Republicans are of what they know and their views. It may not be wise to believe every word a Politician says or that the News outlet you watch tells you, but, there's 10s of Millions who do.
Much of (Maybe most of) Reality TV is heavily edited and amongst the most popular TV today and look how many believe every bit of what's on it.
The Public at large is far more gullible then you give them credit for and our Public today doesn't even have many of the circumstances in B5 that assist in their belief or a Night Watch to ensure they stay in line and toe the line. There may be folks in B5 who don't believe, but, non-belief is dangerous and who do you trust with your non-belief? Speaking out is silenced
Much of (Maybe most of) Reality TV is heavily edited and amongst the most popular TV today and look how many believe every bit of what's on it.
The Public at large is far more gullible then you give them credit for and our Public today doesn't even have many of the circumstances in B5 that assist in their belief or a Night Watch to ensure they stay in line and toe the line. There may be folks in B5 who don't believe, but, non-belief is dangerous and who do you trust with your non-belief? Speaking out is silenced
Don't go too heavy on the FF button. There are some fun quotables in this episode.
As for propaganda, keep in mind that ISN is pretty much the only source for offworld news available on Earth and the only source of Earth news available off-planet. How easy must it be to manipulate what's seen in that situation.
Jan
I get why they are spewing propaganda, I just don't like listening to it. It just makes me angry. A lot of the propaganda we've seen from Earth so far has basically needed everyone to have a labotomy in order to be the least bit effective. Atleast if it was subtle I might not get so annoyed. but, its prety much "Is there a flood in your area? The aliens did it!", "Are you suffering from heartburn? Its those rebels on mars who caused it", "Did your mother pass away at the too young age of 105? Blame the minbari". Thats only a slight exaggeration of what has actually been said. Its just way too over the top. I'll probably just watch it normally, and just use the fast forward button when the propaganda starts to make me want to break something.
Anyway, I still have an episode to go before getting to that one. It seems like it will be the beginning of the new Earth drama. Hopefully it will handle it a bit better than the earlier episodes before B5 went independant. Still, Koenig is in it, so I'm sure it will be decent, atleast.
Anyway, I still have an episode to go before getting to that one. It seems like it will be the beginning of the new Earth drama. Hopefully it will handle it a bit better than the earlier episodes before B5 went independant. Still, Koenig is in it, so I'm sure it will be decent, atleast.
I haven't fast forwarded in B5 episodes (well, ok, I fast forwarded through the really lame singing sections a few episodes ago during Franklin's walkabout but I think thats totally justified). That said, I'm not going to say I won't do it in the upcoming propaganda episode. I wanted to break the DVD because of the episode with the news where the reporters weren't spewing idiotic propaganda. I've gotten really annoyed at some of the earlier Earthgov stuff involving propaganda, so a whole episode about it is basically the worst thing B5 could do at this point. Its basically taking an episode I hated, and mixing it in with what I'm sure is going to be a big propaganda thing against B5 and supporting Earth's unchallenged dictator. I'll try to watch anything that will be important to the plot, but I will not watch stuff I don't enjoy, and that I can confim I won't enjoy. If I've wanted to just turn the DVD off everytime the earth propaganda has had a role in an episode, I can say with certainty that I'll hate a good chunk of this episode, because I hate the premise. Anything with or about the propaganda will probably be skipped.
People really seem to hate the concept of not watching every single millisecond of an episode. Why do I get the feeling that if I was watching Voyager I'd have everyone telling me that I need to watch Thershold, or if I was watching TNG that I could not afford to skip Sub Rosa? Thats not quite a fair comparison since Star Trek episodes usually aren't as interconnected as B5 (I've also seen both of those episodes, although Sub Rosa was years ago and so horrifying that I've mostly blocked it from my memory) but I bet it would happen. This isn't a Farscape situation. B5 in general is great. I'll try watching The Illusion of Truth, I just think there will be a lot of skipping. One episode out of over 60 is pretty good, and even better than in various Star Trek series/shows, where every season has episodes I'd skip (I only have two seasons on DVD, VOY Season 3 and DS9 season 4, but both have a few episodes I've never watched or barely watched, like Accession in DS9 or Remember with VOY, and there are several ST episodes I've seen before that I don't have that I wish I had skipped, or that I wouldn't watch because of their reputation).
People really seem to hate the concept of not watching every single millisecond of an episode. Why do I get the feeling that if I was watching Voyager I'd have everyone telling me that I need to watch Thershold, or if I was watching TNG that I could not afford to skip Sub Rosa? Thats not quite a fair comparison since Star Trek episodes usually aren't as interconnected as B5 (I've also seen both of those episodes, although Sub Rosa was years ago and so horrifying that I've mostly blocked it from my memory) but I bet it would happen. This isn't a Farscape situation. B5 in general is great. I'll try watching The Illusion of Truth, I just think there will be a lot of skipping. One episode out of over 60 is pretty good, and even better than in various Star Trek series/shows, where every season has episodes I'd skip (I only have two seasons on DVD, VOY Season 3 and DS9 season 4, but both have a few episodes I've never watched or barely watched, like Accession in DS9 or Remember with VOY, and there are several ST episodes I've seen before that I don't have that I wish I had skipped, or that I wouldn't watch because of their reputation).
I find it hard to really disagree with Clark's policies, at least up until now. Everything we know suggests that Earth would have been a priority target for the Shadows, and his actions effectively kept Earth and her colonies out of that conflict, which probably saved a lot of guman lives once both sides pulled out their planet killers.
I wouldn't call it unchallenged. I mean, we're in the middle of a civil war. B5 isn't the only place that's broken away, some defecting ships are from Earth, and I'm sure we'd hear more about unrest back home if Clark didn't control the communications and media. It is a military dictatorship.
That said, Illusion of Truth is not my favorite episode. It is painfully obvious. I'd watch it for the arc stuff, but I won't be shedding any tears if you skip parts.
I don't know how you can consider skipping parts of something as serialized as B5. I'd be to afraid of missing something important. As a general rule I try not to skip parts of a serialized story, since I want to experiance the whole story as it was intended to be experienced. There are episodes of Lost and Battlestar Galactica that I don't like, but I still watch them when I go back through the shows. Even if I don't like them, they are still a part of the story, and give pieces of the puzzle that the people behind the show were putting together.
Oh for fucks sake, where were you during the Iraq war years? The government waged a successful propaganda campaign and convinced a good portion of the American public that Saddam Hussein was either behind 9/11 or had a hand in it. Guess what? He wasn't and he didn't. Nor did he have the weapons of mass destruction that our government claimed he did and that a majority of people in this country believed he did. And we attacked a nation, killed, wounded and displaced tens of thousands, if not millions of people because of that successful propaganda campaign.
When people questioned these things, they had their loyalty and patriotism questioned. I know because I was against the war and had my loyalty and patriotism questioned at best and was called traitor at worst. Do you remember what happened when the Dixie Chicks had the audacity to say they were embarrassed that the president was from the same state? They were vilified, had their music pulled from the radio, had CD's destroyed at nationalistic "Pro America" rallies. So enough with the "we're so enlightened now that *we'd* never fall for such obvious propaganda" because this country fell for exactly that just a few years ago.
Or how about how a good chunk of this country thinks that our current president is a socialist, a Kenyan, hates America, anti-business, and on and on and on. Or that anyone that needs a hand from the government is a lazy moocher. That's a successful ON GOING propaganda campaign right there and, as with the other examples I've cited, it's not handled with any more creativity, subtlety or nuance than the propaganda you see on Babylon 5 and IT'S WORKING.
Despite what Star Trek told you, people will still have jobs, families and other activities that will consume the bulk of their time. People will still be lazy or lethargic to politics and bigger issues. There will also be people who think that they live somewhere too enlightened for it too work, and because of that attitude and a complete failure to actually look out and guard for it, it will work.
To further Lensman's point, that is all without things Babylon 5 has to contribute to making the environment even easier.
- The Night Watch to report dissent to and punish it
- A single Source and message for the news
- A Government that has been "stacked" with the right people/ideology through years of planning and manipulating
- Fear of being disappeared
- Fear of Aliens after almost being wiped out a mere 10 years previous
Personally, I think B5 works best as an allegory in these cases. It is exaggerated, but based in truth.
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