Meltdowns and Waves

Over the past several days, we have watched several films about the incidents we are researching, namely Three Mile Island, Hurricane Sandy, and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011. The first of these was a feature film that was released just before the Three Mile Island accident occurred and, eerily, told the story of a nuclear power plant that, due to human error and negligence, nearly melted down and caused a catastrophe. After the accident at TMI, the film was pulled from many theaters due to its striking similarity to real life events. The film seemed not to have an anti-nuclear standpoint but an anti-corporate one. It didn’t go out of its way to depict the science of nuclear technology in a bad light, but every one of the higher-ups in the corporation that ran the power plant was depicted as either corrupt and greedy or just incompetent. I have a feeling that if the film had been made after the TMI incident it would have gone out of its way to portray nuclear technology as a great evil just as it does with big business.

The next films we watched were documentaries about Hurricane Sandy and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. When I first saw them, I found them to be simple fact-presenting documentaries without much in the way of excitement, but entertaining nonetheless. Our class discussions with Professor Bates, however, opened my eyes to how manipulative these types of films can be to the average viewer. Just by analyzing the title sequences alone we could see how music and images were used to create a sense of authority with which the films presented themselves. It was also interesting to see how these same kinds of images and music were used to evoke certain responses from the viewer, such as when ominous music played as Sandy was approaching the New Jersey coast. It just goes to show that even documentaries that seem to be unbiased and present only factual information can actually be used to sway public opinions and perceptions one way or another.