How do we know that is true??
Did Apollo 11 really land on the moon?
Although... if it's just a load of bogus, then...
So it's probably safe to assume that it DID happen.
For the most part, we pay attention to what our governments and the media tell us. We need to, or there's be chaos (madness).
But what happens when the media tells you something, that can't possible be true... but SEEMS to be?
What if a zombie apocalypse was reported on the news in your city? What would you do?
What if aliens started invading??
For this term's project, you and one or two friends will have to write your own dialogue and perform it for the class. Imagine you heard this broadcast on the radio. There is no internet or TV, so you can't just google the information to see if it's true or not.
First, you need to listen to the radio broadcast of War of the Words, which was released in the 1930's.
The original radio broadcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWD9Q6klzco
It may help you to read along while they speak. Here is a link to the script:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/mars/wow.htm
THE MUSICAL
(If you would prefer, you can listen to the story in this format, but this version is much longer and did not release the same hysteria as the original play.)
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2FzqxV-oE
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RoPtTEswWM
Below is an article published in the New York Times:
The New York Times
Radio Listeners in Panic,
Taking War Drama as Fact
Many Flee Homes to Escape `Gas Raid From Mars'--Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy
A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o'clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells's fantasy, "The War of the Worlds," led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.
The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, "The Shadow," used to give "the creeps" to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria.
In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid. Some began moving household furniture.
Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.
The program was produced by Mr. Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air over station WABC and the Columbia Broadcasting System's coast-to-coast network, from 8 to 9 o'clock.
The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio program with a "break-in" for the material of the play. The radio listeners, apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in `The War of the Worlds' by H. G. Wells."
They also failed to associate the program with the newspaper listening of the program, announced as "Today: 8:00-9:00--Play: H. G. Wells's `War of the Worlds'--WABC." They ignored three additional announcements made during the broadcast emphasizing its fictional nature.
Mr. Welles opened the program with a description of the series of which it is a part. The simulated program began. A weather report was given, prosaically. an announcer remoarked that the program would be continued from a hotel, with dance music. for a few moments a dance program was given in the usual manner. Then there was a "break-in" with a "flash" about a professor at an observatory noting a series of gas explosions on the planet Mars.
News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed, reporting, with the technique in which the radio had reported actual events, the landing of a "meteor" near Princeton N. J., "killing" 1,500 persons, the discovery that the "meteor" was a "metal cylinder" containing strange creatures from Mars armed with "death rays" to open hostilities against the inhabitants of the earth.
Despite the fantastic nature of the reported "occurrences," the program, coming after the recent war scare in Europe and a period in which the radio frequently had interrupted regularly scheduled programs to report developments in the Czechosolvak situation, caused fright and panic throughout the area of the broadcast.
You can read the rest of this report at:
http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/Radio/Newspapers/Oct31/NYT.html
No comments:
Post a Comment