Wag The Dog - Satiric Techniques (1 Viewer)

[bEAbEA]

Is anyone doing WAG THE DOG as one of their supplemetry texts for this module.
If you are and you can think of any satiric techniques used in the film, can you please help me? I've having a lot of trouble with it.
I understand how the truth is maipulated, but I am having trouble with the technqiues used to show that.

If you could help me, that would be so great!

 

[bEAbEA]

There is a fair amount of exaggeration in the film - ie creating the perfect war hero - 'good old shoe' The fact that they go to the extent of making an authentic song, scratchy etc.
Exaggeration - the whole concept of forging a war, too massive to be realistic
Also there is a lot of irony -
ironic how none of the advisors vote for the president even though they are all working so hard to keep him going.
Ironic how 'good old shoe' is a phycopath

Hope that gets you going.

 

[tennille]

I tried doing Wag the Dog for Powerplay, but it was quite difficult to relate it to Powerplay.

 

[jebbie]

I tried doing Wag the Dog for Powerplay, but it was quite difficult to relate it to Powerplay.

I used Wag the Dog last year for Deception This just reminded me of it. I love that movie, but moving on, it would be exceedingly hard to relate to Power Play: Its mainly between Mr 'Fixit' Brean and the other contender (not too sure of this name - Neil maybe?) Its only Political so unless youre doing Antony and Cleopatra which emphasises Political Power I wouldnt be certain if it connected with yours. Besides if you were doing Antony and Cleopatra like me it wouldnt be the wisest choice: purely because the difference between a play and a movie is little and you want to use a larger variety of types of texts just because the markers will be like they thought about their decisions more carefully.

However that was a complete tangent (Im really sorry - I do that all the time).. Satirical techniques used:
~ That the public fed by propaganda will vote fora dishonest man to lead them (especially because the plot line links so closely with Clintons Reign).
~ The light-heartedness towards creating a fake war - They dont consider the people who they go to war with (is it Romania? I wanted to put that but I forgot who they go to war with).
Other Techniques would be:
~Characterisation:Linking to the first satricial technique - The closeness to reality makes the audience question whether a Mr Fixit Role could actually be a job description

Look I could go on from my own infomation but I just saw a fabulous site -
http://users.aol.com/aleong1631/wag.html
Hope its a help If you want to talk more about it just PM me.

 

[jennylim]

jebbie! im doing it this year for powerplay

well techniques used to distort the truth:
- camera shots of the dark
- first few shots don't have faces but shadows...in fact lots of shadow motifs throughout the film
- conrad bream's face is viewed from below - he's deified (kinda)
- underwater shots showing distortion
- the entire exaggeration and manipulation of the media is really funny. like picking a cat "the president wants a white one" hahahahahaa classic line!!

that's all i can think of so far...

 

[jebbie]

jebbie! im doing it this year for powerplay

well techniques used to distort the truth:
- camera shots of the dark
- first few shots don't have faces but shadows...in fact lots of shadow motifs throughout the film
- conrad bream's face is viewed from below - he's deified (kinda)
- underwater shots showing distortion
- the entire exaggeration and manipulation of the media is really funny. like picking a cat "the president wants a white one" hahahahahaa classic line!!

that's all i can think of so far...

Really? No joke? How funny.
Yeah its a good movie. i have the DVD
Gosh I feel nerdy saying that, cos I know I went all over looking for it just for school. Heh, Im a nerd