WYSIWYG or garbage in/garbage out

(excerpt from my book Media Is The Masses)
Story of My Life...
Our social media tend to define our culture.
But, ideally, our media should also defy our culture.
Media are very effective tools for instilling impressions and ideologies.
Demonstrative and illustrative, film has the capacity and power to re-enforce the status quo, or to re-inform and reform.
Subliminally and overtly, film relays and relates messages... about how we see ourselves and our reality. Humans are innate social mimics; we typically adopt modes of behavior and thinking that are most dominant in our lives, often subconsciously.
So, if we are routinely surrounded by and exposed to the mundane or uncivilized, then we are more likely to become the mundane or uncivilized.
A racist person raised among the KKK is not surprising.
Only by envisioning what we consider the ideal, may we seek to personify and manifest that ideal. We are influenced as much by the past as we are the future.
Anyone who says that TV, movies, music and video games have no substantial impact on society clearly doesn't understand psychology. EVERYTHING in our environment and experience affects us, cumulatively influencing our attitudes.
We live what we learn, and films can teach us much about how to look at the world.
As such, it is important for film makers to acknowledge and assume greater responsibility with whatever messages they are sending. It is important that film makers not ignore, underestimate or abuse the power of storytelling and its relevance to society.


It is important for film makers to respect and appreciate the ability and potential of film in creating culture.
It is important that film makers believe that story not only matters, but is the element of film that matters most (being the foundation from which everything in a film is built), and therefore must be authentic and believable.
Essentially, it is important for films to utilize the wisdom and integrity in the film making philosophy of Jessica Stover, telling stories that are not only believable, but socially meaningful, resonant, and significant. In imagining the ideal, we must believe it possible and realistic, or else we will not seek to achieve it.
Films are not just reflections of us-- we are also symbiotic reflections of our films... both mirrors and portraits.

Consequently, we need films that offer and serve as positive role models... depicting and portraying the kind of people we want to see and be, the kind of life we wish to live.
We need films-- need to engage film as a medium-- to set good examples for us... to not merely show us who we are, but who we are not, as well as whom we may become.
We need films providing and contributing to mythologies and methodologies which are encouraging and inspiring us to aspire to excellence in pursuit of the ideal.
That is, if we want to become better people, making the world a better place.
Gandhi was quite correct advising:
"We must become the change we want to see in the world."