Mad City Essay, Research Paper
The movie Mad City demonstrates to us how the media can control our lives. The media is willing to go to any length for the money a story can bring. Max portrays the role of humanity in this film. Max represents the humanity of the media. He seems to be the only trace of humanity in all of the media.
Max starts out the story being a money-driver, but he develops into a person. He began telling his intern that she should have taken her camera with her to the wounded man. Why? It is that because his station would have gotten the first close-up shots of him. That delivers more money. At the end of the movie, we have seen the humane intern, who left the camera to go save a man’s life, become an inhuman, non-caring person. The first this she has to say about Sam is that he is confetti. She just speaks of how much money the death of Sam with bring them. Saying that a person is confetti; that is low. Also at the end, we see that Max has become humane.
At the end of the movie, Sam Bailey commits suicide. This shocks the entire world. Why does it shock the entire world? Sadly, people commit suicide daily. It shocks the world because the media wants it to make money. The media focused on it, so the rest of the world did too. Max was the only person to feel compassion for Sam. He had developed a relationship with Sam. He had guided him through this time of crisis. Max felt guilty for the death of Sam.
The media, of which he is a part, killed Sam. They turned the public against Sam by interviewing every person associated or not associated with Sam in any way. Some of these people had negative things to say. Max knew what was happening, and the motive of money left him after a while. The media made Sam look bad, which made Sam fear the future, which made him commit suicide.
It is obvious that Sam was slightly mentally disturbed before the incident at the museum. When he was fired, he became more mentally disturbed, and as the pressure built up and as his public approval ratings went down, he lost it and committed suicide. I believe that Max made it fairly obvious to the media and the public that Max was going insane. The problem is that the media did not respond to it. They followed the story on the path that would bring its monetary value up. This path led them away from a safe incident and toward an incident that ended with the loss of two lives. Had the media not given the negative image of Sam, he would have been less pressured. His mental imbalance led on by the attacks of the media led him to commit suicide.