The State of Fear

Crichton (2004) throughout the novel has tried to explain how environmental groups and the mass media have created this state of fear. It works on the principle of “realities of truth”, where journalists use power knowledge constructions and where journalistic knowledge which is linked to power has the authority to speak a given truth, at least in terms of effect (Foucault, 1980), this is created through the discourse of global warming. The text shows that the mass media and the government have used this state of fear to control the public, if one fear is lost in this case the collapse of the Soviet Union then a new is needed to continue control over the general public, in this case the fear of global warming. The creation of a looming disaster has led to a force of new controls such as green taxes and new governmental policies, the media will use scare stories as a way to captivate their audience.

“If you study the media...you discover something extremely interesting....There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague or disaster... but then it all changed, These terms started to become more and more common. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. Its doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed too. There was a heightened emphasis of fear, worry, danger, uncertainty.... 1989 seemed like a normal year: a Soviet sub sank in Norway; Tiananmen Square in China....a San Francisco earthquake flattened highways.... rise in the term crisis can be located with some precision in the autumn of 1989. And it seemed suspicious that it should coincide so closely with the fall of the Berlin Wall....The Berlin wall marks the collapse of the Soviet empire. And the end of the cold war that lasted for a half a century.....for fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in a state of perpetual fear...The Communist Menace...politicians need fear to control the population...The media need scare stories to capture the audience”. (p 537 – 542)

Gareda Island, Solomon Island Chain

Contemporary village on the island of Gareda is a representation of villages in the Solomon Islands; here Crichton has created conflicting ideas of village life. One of the characters sees the beauty of village life, and the expression of culture and community spirit as well being located in the heart of nature. The other character sees poverty, disease, famine. Terrell, (1977) in his paper discusses the distribution of villages of some of the islands in the Solomon’s; the population distribution is affected by the geographical formation of the islands where most are volcanic, mountainous and covered forest which Crichton, (2004) has represented in this section of the novel.

Terrell (1977) explains how close the people are to the land through local plots for agriculture and use of local materials to construct the small hamlets and villages in the Solomon’s. The villages are considered as a cultural unit due to the large variation in culture and linguistics between villages, and this is what Crichton has represented in the view of one of the characters. The use of media material has helped to create a different representation of the contemporary village in the Solomon Islands; there are reports of disease such as Malaria, disease and famine. National governments have also warned tourists about visiting the Solomon Islands due to the risks of civil unrest, risk of certain diseases as well as natural disasters and severe weather (Australian Government, 2007). Through these different resources a geographical representation of contemporary village life can be re-defined which is what is seen by the other character. This creates conflicting geographical views of the village and this is based on a person’s individualistic interpretation of village life, and this creates the basis of humanistic interpretations of what village life is like in the Solomon’s.

“Isn’t it gorgeous, he said, Look at the water. Crystalline and pure. Look at the depth of that blue, Look at those beautiful villages in the heart of nature...Don’t you think, Bradley said, that its the white man, who wants to conquer nature, to beat it into submission....I find that people who live closer to the earth, in their villages, surrounded by nature, that those people have a natural ecological sense and a feeling for the fitness of it all....the villages were clustered of corrugated tin shacks,, the roads red mud ruts. The people look poorly dressed and moved slowly. There was a depressing, disconsolate feeling about them” (p 595 - 596)

"the jungle slid beneath them, mile after mile of dense forest. In places, wisps of mist clung to the trees, particularly at the higher altitudes. Sarah was surprised at how mountainous the island was, how rugged the terrain" (p607)

Conclusions

My main conclusion is how The State of Fear creates a new understanding on the context of global warming and how the media create fear to capture an audience, the story helps to create a new understanding and knowledge of the represented primary world. The text helps the reader grasp the idea that global warming is only a theory and not a speculative truth, and that we truly do not completely understand whether global warming is occurring in the way that it has been speculated. The novel represents Los Angeles as being a segregated city with gated communities, security surveillance, periphery cities which creates a de-centralised city making the car the dominant mode of transport.

The story also uses different cultures and the interaction of people in different spaces and places through static representations and kinetic description with the use of senses and movement through temporal space. The geographies of different spaces and places have been truly represented within the novel from the real world, and the author suggests that we know very little about the world that we live in and the natural environment which are a part of. The novel also expresses the power of media and the government as a form of social control, by promoting fear and how NGOs such as environmental groups use fear as a means to promote policies and to stimulate funding.

References

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http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Solomon_Islands
Site accessed: 18/01/2007

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