In the fierce competition for the broadcast of North American TV series in the first half of the year, all major TV platforms performed quite well. Among them, limited dramas/mini dramas have even reached unprecedented popularity. HBO's "Chernobyl", Netflix's "Colored Glasses", Amazon's "Good Omen", Hulu's "Evil Deeds", Showtime's "Escape from Danny Mora", etc., a series of both quality and commercial 'S work occupies the screen.
At the beginning of the second half of the year, Showtime launched a short drama "The Loudest Voice" (The Loudest Voice) whose specifications and themes were enough to attract attention. The filming level of the play and the performance of the actors are quite stable. It may be the best short play in the second half of the year, and may even be the most quality screen work performed by the actors this year.
The series "The Loudest Voice" is adapted from the biography "The Loudest Voice in The Room" written by American writer Gabriel Sherman. The subtitle of the book is "The Famous and Talking Roger ·How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country (How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country), as the name suggests, the core character of the play is Roger Ai (Roger Ailes).
Roger Ayres, born in 1940, is the founder and former CEO of the famous American right-wing television news network "Fox News." He built Fox News into The rapid development of Fox Television, the most influential news network in the United States, can be called a miracle in the industry.
In 2016, Ayres was forced to resign due to exposure of a sex scandal and multiple sexual harassment lawsuits. At the same time, he was slammed by public opinion and forced to resign. The following year, he was found to have died bleakly at home, and his life came to an end. The controversy surrounding this "big man" in the television news industry has not stopped until now.
The play "The Loudest Voice" is divided into seven episodes, and each episode is named after a specific year (1995, 2001, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2016). Through retrospective analysis of the seven years, Roger Ai The specific deeds of Lehrs, the series showed the audience the secret life of this high-powered industry dictator and the true ecology of the TV news circle.
In 1995, Ayres, who served as CNBC's chief executive officer, was fired by his superiors due to a major complaint. NBC agreed to pay him a high severance fee. But Ayres doesn't care about the severance fee. His only requirement is that NBC can lift the ban on him from competition.
Under the circumstances that NBC will soon cooperate with Microsoft to launch the Microsoft National Cable News Network, NBC executives are worried that the experienced Ayres will hop to the opponent CNN, and have concerns about his request. After Ayers promised not to quit CNN, NBC agreed to lift the ban on Ayers.
Having been in the TV industry for more than 30 years, Ayres has long been recognized as a capable person in the industry. Before he quit CNBC, he had left a way out for himself. Having obtained professional freedom, he and the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch) plan to jointly build a cable news network "Fox News" that can compete with Microsoft's cable news network, and plans to open the country in one year. roll out.
In order to be the first among the cable news networks, Fox News must ensure that it starts broadcasting at a time close to that of Microsoft's cable news network. In the intensive work of building the station, Ayres absorbed his excellent subordinates and famous journalists in the industry during the NBC period through his own network and clever words, and at the same time successfully trained and prepared a group of capable operations in a short period of time. The newcomer on the TV broadcast. These are sufficient evidence of Ayres' strong management and planning capabilities.
As a new channel with no audience base, Ayres has made a clear plan for Fox News' audience goals. Ayers, a long-sighted right-wing activist, believes that Fox does not need to cover all audiences, but to protect its audience with the right medicine: conservatives. Conservatives account for nearly half of the U.S. population. As long as they win the support of this segment of the audience, Fox News will be able to maintain the top ratings in the country.
Ayres believes that in an age when most people are already negative or even distrustful of the media, in order to completely win the support of conservatives, it is necessary to broadcast the "news" that conservatives want to see. As a news media that should have maintained a mid-level attitude, Fox chose its political stance and abandoned the principle of rationality and objectivity in news reporting in order to maintain commercial interest.
2001 was a year of defeat for the United States. This year, there was a major terrorist attack that caused a global sensation: the September 11 incident. Statistics show that the number of casualties in the September 11 incident reached nearly 3,000, and property losses exceeded US$200 billion. This incident has brought the international situation into a more severe state, and is also a sign of the globalization of terrorism.
At this time, Fox News is already one of the best cable news networks in the country. On the day of the September 11 incident, Fox, who was supposed to report the news truthfully, incited public opinion under the full control of Ayres himself. For the sake of ratings, the TV station did not hesitate to release unconfirmed news, broadcasting the horror scenes of the staff of the World Trade Center jumping off the building.
Subsequently, Fox News, as expected, became the TV news network with the highest ratings in the United States. But the good times didn't last long, and Ayers and Fox News suffered heavy losses in the near future: Obama successfully ran for the president of the United States, and the left-wing forces represented by the Democratic Party came to power.
Although Obama’s becoming the 44th President of the United States is a foregone conclusion, Fox News has spared no effort to discredit and suppress, even using Obama’s middle name "Hussein" to make a fuss, maliciously spreading rumors that Obama is Muslim and hates white people... Obama and The White House also responded to the actions of Fox Television.
Despite his advanced age, Ayres' dictatorship on Fox News has tightened. He used his power and convenience to repeatedly threaten the female workers of the TV station, forcing them to have sex with him, and even become his own sex slaves. He always treated the TV station workers around him very violently.
Gretchen Carlson, who became popular as "Miss America", is the morning news anchorwoman of Fox News. In order to expand her business, she plans to participate in the recording of other TV programs. But Ayres dampened Gretchen in secret, and even transferred it to the midday festival with low ratings.
In the face of Ayers' long-term repression and harassment, Gretchen decided to fight back, secretly collect various evidences, and finally filed a lawsuit in the court in July 2016. After that, Ayres was quickly exposed to multiple sexual scandals and sexual assault allegations, and was eventually forced to resign. Gretchen, who was born in "Miss America", not only did not succumb to power, but set an example to refute the public's stereotypes of beautiful women.
To some extent, it was precisely because of the sensational effect of the Ayers incident in 2016 that gave women working in the film and television industry great confidence and courage. So in the second year of the Ayers East Window incident, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which caused a global sensation, was exposed to the world, and the flame of women’s workplace equality movement (me too) was able to burn from Hollywood to workplaces around the world. Come.
The series "The Loudest Sound" maintains very high production requirements, and the screenwriter of the premiere episode invited Tom McCarthy, the director and screenwriter of "Focus" who won the Oscar for Best Film and Best Original Screenplay, to sit here. The photography and editing are also excellent, and the show has invited a group of outstanding film actors in the cast configuration.
The Oscar actor Russell Crowe starred in the role of Roger Ayres, and in order to achieve an image match, Russell Crowe showed super high quality as a professional Hollywood actor, gaining weight so much that he can’t recognize it if he doesn’t look carefully. His own position and temperament are completely different from those positive roles he played in the past.
Faced with a large number of facial close-ups in the play, actors who do not perform well may not be able to hold on for even a minute, but Russell is able to perform well, delicately and in place in this state of high-density facial emotion capture. It is obvious that his performance has improved the whole show, and it can even be said to be the best on screen this year, not losing the performance of Meryl Streep in "Little Lies".
Naomi Watts, "Teddy Bear" Seth McFarlane, Annabella Wallis and other familiar faces who have appeared on the big screen all year round also have remarkable performances in the show.
Although "The Loudest Voice" focuses on the deeds of Roger Ayres from 1995 to 2017, it is more than a simple exposing and crusade of Roger Ayres' crimes. Many reflections on reality have also been carried out, the most prominent of which is the questioning of the news media.
Fox News was a well-known "anti-Obama" television media during the Obama administration. It is committed to mocking and attacking Obama himself in all aspects from work to life, and its posture is almost paranoid. But do other news media really hold a fair, objective, and non-political attitude? The answer is obviously no.
Guided and out-of-context broadcast news for the sake of ratings, and even maliciously fabricated false news, is a common occurrence in TV media and online media in various countries. The authenticity of news and information for audiences often needs to be questioned, and the value and ethics of news media are constantly being questioned and challenged.
In the first half of the year, "Chernobyl" restored to the audience the whole story of the Soviet nuclear accident, and at the same time warned people to have the courage to pursue the truth behind the incident and understand the importance of the truth to history; and "The Loudest Voice" When exposing the evil deeds of Roger Ayres, the dictator of the press, to the audience, he is also wary of the audience not to blindly believe in the news and the unproven so-called "truth." Only with the consciousness of independent thinking and judgment can we not be led by the nose by false illusions.
Author | Carlos's Three Trees; Public Number | Seeing Death in Movies
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