Chapter 1303 1303 Social Tide

As the most influential national newspaper on the West Coast, the Los Angeles Times has enough influence to shake half of the North American continent.

This article "Reading the 'Seven Deadly Sins' from Hugo Lancaster" written by Nicholas easily swayed the trend of public opinion in this American society. Aside from the self-reflection of the media and the verbal criticism of the "National Enquirer" in the past month, Nicholas's perspective on the "Seven Deadly Sins" is obviously different.

When most of the media came into contact with the film "Seven Deadly Sins", they were just like Samosa in the movie. The first thought was to think of religion. What they saw more was the religious issues hidden behind the film. It is faith, sin, and the most atonement. The hidden core of this movie should be that the murderer judged the society as God and punished the seven deadly sins.

Not so with Nicholas.

Nicholas almost avoided talking about the religious significance of the "Seven Deadly Sins". He believed that the film and the Seven Deadly Sins were just a medium through which the director and screenwriter reflected social problems: the indifference of society created the breeding of the Seven Deadly Sins, while the In the face of social darkness, social decay, and social problems, people choose to be wise and protect themselves, arm themselves with indifference, and refuse to contribute to social change.

Just like the three characters in the movie, Samose chose to escape, Mills chose to resist, but the strength was too weak or was swallowed up, and the murderer used extreme means to deter the entire society. But the problem is, it seems, seems, seems, probably, maybe, maybe... Only the murderer succeeded.

Thus, the "Seven Deadly Sins" leaves an eternal question: We all know that this society is sick and distorted, but what should we do? The movie gives a question mark in the story, and the voice-over "This world is beautiful and worth fighting for. I only believe in the second half of the sentence" is truly thought-provoking.

Nicholas' ingenious perspective digs out the realistic meaning of the film, and also pushes the "Seven Deadly Sins" to a whole new level, making this work break away from simple murder suspense works and simple religious belief works, becoming a side A mirror that reflects the cruel problems of social reality.

What is even more coincidental is that the aftermath of the stormy Hugo incident in August has not disappeared, making everyone feel the chill to the bone: even the uncrowned king they trusted most has lost their blood, faith, and perseverance. , they do not compromise their means for commercial interests, and they entertain themselves to the death. This is the fundamental reason why all the people, the whole society, are attacking the news media.

If the single "Apologize" is a mockery from glory to death, then "Seven Deadly Sins" is the whipping and torture from the heart of every media practitioner. Samose in the movie actually represents a media practitioner. He is a law enforcement officer, but he is escaping the idea of ​​justice in his heart. He has tried and tried hard, and now he has given up. He knows the darkness of this society. and decay, but he has no way of making a difference. This is the current state of media practitioners.

It has to be said that Nicholas's perspective is sharp, which has pushed the debate over the past month or so to a peak, and truly raised the Hugo incident from the pure Hollywood entertainment industry to the level of social issues.

Just as the murderer in the "Seven Deadly Sins" movie tried to use the seven deadly crimes to create a masterpiece to wake up the world, Nicholas's film review quickly became a social alarm bell, setting off an uproar across the North American continent. . This is a situation New Line Cinema simply didn't expect when it released "The Seven Deadly Sins."

September has been a disaster for any movie. New Line Cinema originally wanted to take advantage of Hugo's appeal and the focus of the showdown between Hugo and Brad to make "Seven Deadly Sins" the only feature in September, and then attract all audiences to the cinema.

But now the whole situation has changed dramatically.

A film review in the Los Angeles Times brought "Seven Deadly Sins" to the top of the topic, completely detonating the deep discussion that has been ongoing for the past month and a half.

This issue of "Los Angeles Times" set a new sales record since the 1990s, selling 4.3 million copies in just 24 hours, and subsequent sales have not stopped, with two more rounds of reprints After that, Nicholas's film review sold a total of 6.15 million copies in the United States!

This is not only the sales record of the Los Angeles Times itself, but also the sales record of all newspapers and magazines in the United States in the 1990s! Since the birth of television, the sales of newspapers began to decline slowly in the 1980s. After entering the 1990s, there were only a handful of newspapers that could achieve five million sales, even the "Wall Street Journal" and "The New York Times". , the "Los Angeles Times" and other top newspapers, the average sales volume is only around 4.5 million, and this data is declining at an exponential rate after entering the 21st century. In 2014, The sales of many newspapers are not even half of what they were in the 1990s.

Therefore, the "Los Angeles Times" sold such an amazing amount of sales in one fell swoop, making people clearly feel the shock of the entire North American continent.

Compared with the "Schindler's List" that caused an uproar at the beginning, the "Seven Deadly Sins" naturally cannot get the support of the Jews, and the propaganda offensive and social impact are also completely different. But the public opinion frenzy that "Seven Deadly Sins" set off this time even surpassed the heat wave created by "Schindler's List"!

This is actually a long process. As Nicholas said in the article, from the beginning of the 1980s to the Rodney-King incident and the Michael-Jackson incident, the representative events again and again have caused a sensation in the United States and even affected the world. , which directly spawned the August 5th rebellion, which challenged the entire society to the authority of the Uncrowned King.

If the previous turmoil was just blurring the boundaries of media public opinion supervision, freedom of speech, the professional ethics of pursuing the truth, and the social values ​​of the supremacy of interests, and entertainment until death began to erode the news media; then Nicholas used the carrier of the "Seven Deadly Sins" to bring the entire The incident has been pushed from the news media to the height of the whole society: this is not only a problem of the uncrowned kings, but the indifference and cruelty that go deep into the bone is a social problem!

This time, almost no one can make an exception. From reporters to lawyers to doctors, from entertainment to sports to politics, from the media to universities to the workplace, all discussions started with a prairie fire and exploded in various parts of the North American continent. Volcanoes, triggering a terrifying blowout.

Under the promotion of several major newspapers such as the "New York Times", "Wall Street Journal", "Washington Post", more than half of the people in the United States participated in this heated discussion. The three major TV stations plus Fox TV station, The main cooperative media of the state governments, the mainstream radio stations in major cities, and six of the top ten newspapers in the United States are all involved in this upsurge.

Even Bill Clinton devoted five minutes and three questions to the topic at the official press conference; White House press secretary Mike McCurry was forced to hold a special press conference Press conference, responding positively to the recent condemnation of the news media.

At this time, there is still more than a year before next year's presidential election, and the problems of media corruption, entertainment to death, and interest first within the news industry have become important issues in this election.

When things have developed to this point, they have been completely derailed. It is no longer a simple Hugo issue, nor is it a simple "seven deadly sins" issue. This is a profound problem affecting education, economy, communication, entertainment, politics and other fields. social problem. This may be a situation that no one expected. Nicholas did not expect it, Hugo did not expect it, and Anthony, Colin and others who initiated all this did not expect it.

History is like this, inadvertently imprinting a deep track, and the seemingly accidental events are often inevitable.

Perhaps, when Hugo wanted to return Michael Jackson's innocence and chose to stand up bravely, it has become the catalyst for today's change; perhaps, as early as the Rodney-King incident, Hugo expressed his own The indignation has already laid the groundwork for today's shock; of course, it is more likely that when Anthony created the Golden Globe incident, the ignorant and young Hugo first experienced the power of the media, and the seed was on that day. has already been planted.

Under this wave, the "Seven Deadly Sins" stood on the cusp of the storm in an instant. The social problems reflected in this film are not fairy tales or novels, but the real life that happens around everyone. Every detail of every event is empathetic to the audience. Samose is the representative of the audience, not only a bystander of the story, but also a participant in the story. Samose's confusion, confusion and helplessness are also reflected in the hearts of every audience.

This film review by Nicholas almost created the most vigorous publicity in film history for "Seven Deadly Sins", and also officially recorded "Seven Deadly Sins" in the annals of history, becoming one of the most important works in film history. ", "Jaws", "Citizen Kane", these works that changed the history of cinema and changed the course of society are on the same rank.

This is what no one expected.

However, objectively speaking, Nicholas's point of view is based on the core idea of ​​the film "Seven Deadly Sins". For the film itself, he did not comment much, and he did not even explicitly mention his own feelings about the film - although he 's article clearly admires the movie.

So, apart from the social repercussions caused by the film, from a professional film perspective, is "Seven Deadly Sins" a good work? This seems to be a topic that needs to be discussed further.