Tom Hooper’s award winning film, The King’s Speech, wooed audiences and
critics alike around the world last year on it’s way to winning 4 Academy
Awards (Best Actor, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Script). It
offers us many warnings about how we, as media consumers in an ever-changing
technological age should, or shouldn’t, interact with new forms of media. It
also offers an insight on how any given form of media has the potential to both
positively and negatively affect a society.
On
The surface, and at a purely explicit level, The King’s Speech may seem to be the story of a King (King George
VI), his tumultuous ascension to the throne, and the speech problem that
plagues him both before, and when he holds the aforementioned title. It’s a
narrative of hope, friendship, and perseverance. Yet, when you analyze the film on a deeper
level, it is easy to see that it is about much more than this. The film is, in
large part, is about the many effects, both positive and negative, that the
invention and rising popularity of the Radio had on society and politics in the
1920s and 1930s.
The
popularity and widespread adoption of the radio changed many things for the
royal family as well as all of society. For the first time it was not enough to
just look like a King, you also had to be able to speak like one. Speeches that
at one time were relatively private were now broadcast to all of a King’s subjects
that, in many instances, spanned across many cultures. While this new technological medium brought
many positive changes about, such as transferring news faster to the masses and
providing many new forms of entertainment to the general public, it also
presented many problems for people with speech impediments or poor rhetoric
skills.
I think that this example
presented in The King’s Speech of how
one form of new media can change society in both positive and negative ways is
very informative and still relevant today. In the overtly technological age in
which we live, it is important to be able to recognize both the pros and cons
of each new form of media that we encounter so we can predict what effects it
might have on our world as a whole. Oftentimes, people are so infatuated with
the presentation and features of new technological mediums that they don’t
consider the problems that they may present in the future. This suggests that
we, as perpetual consumers in a material based society, have an obligation to
approach any given media form with a certain degree of skepticism. As our
technological knowledge continues to expand at an unprecedented rate, this idea
will only become more important in the coming years.
This being said, The King’s Speech, also urges us to
embrace the positive changes that new forms of media can bring to society. In
the film, King George VI uses the radio to make his famous wartime speeches,
which helped to unite his subjects and countrymen in a perilous time of
uncertainty. From this, we can infer that while it is important to approach new
media skeptically, we should not do so cynically. There is a fine line between
the two and we must learn tread said line.
It is inevitable,
especially in this day and age, that a myriad of new media forms will be
introduced to us in the very near future. I think that The King’s Speech, urges us to enthusiastically embrace the
progressive changes that they can bring about, but to also be aware of the
negative effects they may have on our society as well.
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