How To: Avoid Brainwashing

         This silkscreen, a piece by Jay Ryan, comments on American Studies in regards to the disconnection between the citizens of our nation and the issues we are faced with, and to the stories the media tells us of the world’s events.
        The way that Ryan depicts the cats(?) looking at the painting of the volcano parallels with how many Americans watch as world events unfold before them on the news as if they aren’t connected to them, and will therefore not be affected. When we listened to the RadioLab about memory in class, we learned that whenever you remember an event that occurred to you, you are simply recreating your own memory of what your experience was. This recreation is slightly altered each time, possibly resulting in an entirely different memory after time. For example: I was sitting at my kitchen table eating pancakes while my parents were both huddled around the small TV next to the stove as the second airplane struck the World Trade Center. (This setup was the same on the day that George Harrison died, and I will always associate the two events with the same level of severity, despite my knowledge that this is not the case.) In a way, I was like one of the cats staring up at something I wasn’t quite sure what to make of. It wasn’t until much later that the historical weight of 9/11 took hold for me, and that is because for years after the event, I would always think of pancakes when it was mentioned and not give it much more thought.
         Similar to how the media is inadvertently making world news feel more disconnected to our daily lives as Americans, the media is also relaying the worlds events to us in its own way, perhaps telling a story instead of handing over facts. In the context of Ryan’s piece, the cats see a volcano because Ryan intended for the cats (his audience) to see a volcano. If a majority of the news available to us has been pre-filtered by the media, how can we differentiate between pure facts and the ones being spoon-fed to us? During the Perilous Times: Cold War presentation, we learned that propaganda on the radio and on television resulted in the Red Scare. Today, news companies that support the Republican Party make it seem as if the Democrats are thwarting to ruin our nation, and the same is true for the Democratic news companies. Is the media setting us against ourselves the same way it set Cold War era Americans against people who may have had connections with Communism? We learned during our group work about secret messages that almost everything has a hidden connotation, and as subjects of the media we should be aware of the effect these messages can have on us. In my first blogpost, I wrote, “If secret messages are present in what is supposed to be innocent children's books, it makes sense to assume that they are also common in the media, pop culture, and just about anything else you might come across.” How have these messages already affected the way that we make political decisions?
         Ryan’s piece, although was used simply as a concert poster, warns its audience about the feeling of disconnection we may have from events going on around the world, and about being subject to the media’s sometimes ulterior motives to presenting us with their version of the facts.