In the realm of assassination drama, The Parallax View is something of an inversion of the equally speculative plot of The Manchurian Candidate. In the latter film, Korean War soldiers are brainwashed by an outside force (the Communists) to foment instability in the United States through targeted assassinations. In contrast, the Parallax Corporation, as revealed at the end of the film, recruits violent social misfits to become unwitting goons in Parallax-led assassinations. While the Manchurian Candidate's communist agency proves capable of completely raping one's own mind, the Parallax Corporation secretly manipulates everything in a person's life except their mind. The external social forces—from the avuncular local sheriff to the Federal Assassination Commission—that hinder or otherwise manipulate Frady's progression in the film (and society as a whole that ultimately settles for assigning responsibility for the death of the senator in Frady) all work. in much the same dramatic capacity as the Manchurian Candidate's simpler process of mental manipulation. In short, Parallax View suggests that a man can be unwittingly "dragged" and involved in acts of terrorism in a way that is inverse to the familiar dystopian trope of brainwashing or mental torture of a single human being, while being completely successful: namely, the manipulation of both a particular man's social circle and the broader perceptions of an entire society as a whole. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayJoe Frady is presented both as a very socially isolated person and, paradoxically, as someone very active in his society through his participation as an investigative journalist. Despite a stable job, Joe Frady lives as a homeless person, residing in a motel. The film offers no evidence of familial relationships in Frady's life, other than an ex-wife who dies early in the film and a brief appearance by a girl who appears to have a semi-regular sexual relationship with Frady. As for friendship, Frady appears to maintain a certain variety of professional "contacts", mostly relating to criminal leads (apparently invaluable to local police) and law enforcement (namely former FBI agent whose involvement in the agency has been completely erased). to the extent that he can no longer even claim to be a “former agent”). Essentially, the only real social anchor in Frady's life is his relatively good-natured editor, Bill, who becomes the only one who knows that Frady is still alive after Frady is reported dead following the explosion of the boat. Unlike the audience members seen in the film, Frady is a very iconoclastic person, both distant and cynical. In public, Frady, long-haired and casually dressed, is a taciturn loner: when the woman at the bar flirts with him, he usually does not respond to her advances. When the deputy begins to taunt Frady, Frady discreetly attempts to defuse the situation before resorting to violence: DEPUTY: Can I buy you a drink, miss? You know, there, for a moment, I thought you were a man. But that's not the case, is it?FRADY: [obediently] No, I'm--I'm a girl.DEPUTY: Heh, heh. Why don't you go out there and tell those people, really loud? FRADY: Don't touch me unless you love me. The reporter who interviews Senator Carroll at the beginning of the film beams at him, remarking, "You all look as wonderful as you do inall your photographs, how do you do that, always smiling?" On the other hand, Frady does not arouse such respect for establishment figures, as evidenced by his indignant criticism of the police officers who arrest him: "Look, why Don't you go out and have a game of keno, do something worthwhile for God's sake, you morals squad, you're not only stupid, you're dirty" En. As an investigative journalist Ready to take on any authority whose actions he considers unfair, Frady is more beholden to the truth than anything else. While Frady operates on his hunches, which may be wrong—thinking he found the governor's bookmaker, when in reality it was the governor's nephew's bookmaker—his methodology may explain the errors. In the film's second act, where Frady's ex-wife rightly insists that there is a plot to kill her and the other witnesses to Carroll's murder, Frady is skeptical as to the idea itself, having already examined the case for himself. :LEE: [produces newspaper copy of photographs of the assassination] Look.FRADY: Oh, come on, I looked at this until I was blue in the face three years ago.LEE: Ever since the assassination, six of these people died in some sort of accident.FRADY: Four.The film draws an implicit contrast between those who would accept the findings of the commission's report out of confidence for the government and Frady himself, whose the point of view on the assassination is framed more by his own journalistic instincts:FRADY: Did he ever indicate to you that he had seen anything other than what appeared in the commission's report?LEE: No.FRADY : Nothing. Did you see anything up there?LEE: No.FRADY: Well, me neither. And believe me, I looked. We all watched.LEE: You mean, if you haven't seen it, it's not there?FRADY: Look, I didn't say that. It's just that I know everything about these accidents. Frady is confident that the findings of the commission's report accurately reflect the reality of what happened on the Space Needle; Yet, as these last two lines indicate, Frady remains open to any possibility, probably even extraordinary, such as the reality of the work of Parallax Corporation. Frady is thus established as a man open to such possibilities of vast conspiracies and illicit dealings on the part of individuals in power. And yet, based on his meticulous personal investigations and his presence during the assassination itself, Frady cannot find any other reality than that of the "official story", as expressed in the conclusions of the commission, is true. The public does not know the details of the assassination. Carroll or subsequent investigations, except that the official version is completely incorrect and that a second assassin was indeed present. Although he searches for a time for the identity of the second assassin, Frady does not spend the rest of the film finding contradictions with certain points in the commission's report, as one might imagine a conspiracy theorist would. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the commission's conclusion exists as an "accurate" reflection of reality, a reflection generally accepted by those present at the assassination, by those who independently investigated the matter and by society as a whole. The actual details of the commission's findings are not revealed in the film, and although the commission insists that it will release details of its investigation, the manner in which the commission presents its findings appears to express hostility to the consideration of new questions: "When you "If you have had the opportunity to examine the evidence, you will have every opportunity to ask thequestions that remain unanswered, if there are any. THANKS. "The only significant detail in the commission's report is that it attributes responsibility to an assassin, Thomas Richard Linden. The assassination sequence itself, in turn, proves to the audience at the beginning of the film the existence of a second murderer, and Frady's continued investigation into the matter does little more than confirm these suspicions. In essence, the commission's findings, based on "four months of investigation" and "nine weeks of hearings." , can be interpreted as being entirely accurate, except for the fundamental inability to realize the existence of the second assassin: thus, this depiction of reality in which the Parallax Corporation did not participate in the assassination of Senator Carroll is, on its face, presented as the truth Beyond the suspicions of those who witnessed the event, the concrete reality of the matter exists only in the minds of those who actively witnessed it. participated in the event Thus, the Parallax Corporation succeeded in manipulating reality, or at least the characters' memory of it. Frady, so certain that the commission's conclusions are evangelical, doubts those who deny the official story: LEE: You mean you are no longer Do you believe there was another assassin involved in the shooting of Carroll?FRADY: That's right. But it was an explanation. Back then, people were crazy about any kind of explanation. Every time you turned around, some weirdo was taking out one of the best men in the country. Frady's loyalty is to the truth, not to the "crazy" behavior of those who disagree for the sake of disagreement. Ultimately, those who are “crazy for any kind of explanation” are just as wrong as the commission. It is only through Joe Frady's real-life investigative experiences – independent of events that only the audience is privy to – that the truth is revealed in the world of Parallax View. The audience is led to agree with protagonist Joe Frady's point of view, not because he is played by an attractive and intelligent young Warren Beatty, but because he is presented as an impartial pursuer of the truth and because the public actually sees that the official version is false (even if Frady ignores it, this establishes the dubious nature of the authorities' conclusions). This point is significant, as in the film's realm, Frady himself lost public credibility after his death, when the commission deemed him to be in a "confused and distorted state of mind" -- in other words, Frady might as well well be just another conspiracy theorist weirdo. In the film's climactic final sequence, Frady, having been introduced as the assassin, frantically rushes out of the rafters. The portal he runs after is a door bathed in all-consuming light, shown to the audience through a shaky, driven shot taken by a handheld camera from Frady's point of view. This is a clearly heroic fight: the public wants Joe Frady out of the building, because he is the only one who knows the objective truth about the two assassinations he witnessed and the trail of murders committed by Parallax Corporation . Yet the events of the preceding sequence cast serious doubt on Frady's potential ability to influence future events should he escape. Frady has already been spotted by the police, and the shadowy and almost omnipotent figures at Parallax Corporation are well aware of his influence. If Frady had escaped, he would actually be a wanted assassin; even if this were not the case, what ability could Frady have to convince people of the "reality" of the events he witnessed and became a part of? The whole affair raises the questionto find out who else suffered a similar calamity to the one that befell Frady, if anyone else had managed to pass through the Bright Gate, only to be ridiculed as a conspiracy nut by the rest of society. , could therefore have been an opportunity for Frady, a man completely alone in society, who would most likely have suffered indignity and public humiliation if he had re-emerged to challenge the Parallax Corporation and mainstream public opinion through the channels conventional. The Parallax vision presents a society in which even the most well-intentioned social and democratic institutions function completely poorly. The media, as an independent monitoring agency, commands little respect, vacillating between ingratiating itself with a political figure (as at the beginning of the film) and being harassed by the police (as happens to Frady). The local police are violent, incompetent, and corrupt, both in Frady's hometown and in the small fishing village where a violent, man-child deputy is eager to pick fights with strangers and a portly sheriff is eager to doing the job.submission of a wealthy corporation (the local police there are in fact so corrupt that they even drop charges against Frady, an alleged murderer, for fear it would draw attention to a local scandal). Frady's local police are embarrassed when they follow Frady to the house of an innocent elderly couple and start terrorizing them simply because they thought Frady, as a journalist, was more capable of finding drug dealers. drugs than them; having been deceived, their foolish response is to stop it. At the federal level, assassination commissions are, at best, incredibly misguided, and at worst, they deliberately obstruct Parallax Corporation officials. Even social elites are unable to prevent their own demise: two well-respected senators are killed, and the same fate befalls several wealthy and well-connected individuals, even those who are well aware of their brands and take precautions to evade assassins. Overall, The Parallax View's bleak view of the state of American democracy was a response both to the political instability of the 1960s and 1970s and to cinematic depictions of that society that provided commentary in harsh terms. similar. In a way, this film was a response to the Warren Commission, to the conspiracy theories surrounding the plethora of dramatic assassinations of popular and progressive figures in America: John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, etc. on a broader level, Pakula's work is an expression of the federal government's absolute infidelity. 1974, when this film was released, was a pivotal period for American democracy: on the heels of a long, pointless war sparked by a series of fabrications, the fall of a Republican president caught in a despicable series of explicit lies to the American public. . Although the broad powers that constituted the “imperial presidency” persisted, the myth of an infallible American president ultimately lay dead on the steps of the Watergate Hotel. The American public had no reason to really trust its government, especially not in matters of life and death: if it could lie about Vietnam, if it could lie about Watergate and the CIA, surely it could also lie about the Kennedys. In just a decade, the President of the United States has become both a victim and a villain, and the question now is what external or internal force could orchestrate such domestic violence. What organization could be capable of assassinating a President of the United States, and for what purpose? Just like thefilm never explains what the Parallax Corporation's ultimate mission was, which was to kill so many people and cover their tracks silently, the 1974 American corporation was left without any explanation for a series of violent assassinations, other than the fact that these were the machinations of mad men. with names like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and Arthur Bremer. On a more subtle level, The Parallax View offers an incredibly mature contemplation of the effects of mass media on society. The Parallax Corporation montage is largely separate from the larger plot of the film, which Frady watches alone upon entering the Parallax program. The montage is shown subjectively to the audience: from start to finish, the audience sees the montage as if those in the dark theater were having the same experience as Frady; for his part, Frady never describes his reaction to the video. In this sequence alone, there are echoes and reverberations of other important cinematic sequences of the era. The Parallax View montage's closest ancestors are scenes from two speculative visions of a dystopian future: Walter Seltzer's Soylent Green (1973) and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). In Soylent Green, the government runs euthanasia clinics where, in an overpopulated and undernourished world, everyone can choose their own final “ceremony,” a singular audiovisual experience. The creation of Soylent Green's Euthanasia Chamber is similar to that of Parallax Corporation's Control Zone. A patient lies on a bed from which he is immersed in front of large screens showing pleasant scenes of nature - absent in reality due to overcrowding - accompanied, in this case, by symphonic classical music. The purpose of this montage is to soothe and improve the moribund person lying on their back, immersed in the entire display. The video is, in this respect, a deception, a complete fantasy that features places and images that have long since fallen into nonexistence – only the video remains. The video uses images to convey a completely false reality, a very glamorous vision of the natural world that once existed. For even if the oceans, or the meadows, or the beaches had really been so wonderful, the juxtaposition of such pleasing bucolic images surpasses them in that it creates an entirely artificial beauty. How these two montages are presented to the audience is a key distinction between the two films. Soylent Green never fully immerses the audience in the audiovisual experience the way Parallax View does. The audience is constantly aware of a human presence, of someone else experiencing the montage: in short, the audience is not actively watching it, the audience is watching someone watching it -- on a whole other level, the audience also happens to be watching someone watching someone watching the montage! These layers of separation between audience and montage insist that the viewer consider at least two active perspectives other than their own, thereby obscuring the direct effect of the imagery on the viewer. Unlike Parallax View, the audience here does not palpably experience what is being projected and is therefore not capable of knowing what it is like to be so immersed. The same can be said of the “Ludovico Technique” sequence from A Clockwork. Orange. In this part of the film, the protagonist, Alex, has been arrested for a violent burglary and is undergoing an experimental rehabilitation procedure. Memorably, a straitjacketed Alex is tied to a chair in front of an empty theater, his eyes held open by metal clasps. Alex recounts his experience: first, he watches a video of a group of men wearing hats like those worn by musketeers flyingwithout reason a man in “a very good professional film, like the one that was made in Hollywood”. Later, he witnesses the gang rape of a woman and feels physically ill from drugs that cause nausea. In another sequence, Alex is forced to view footage of the Nazi regime (a combination of newsreel footage and clips from Triumph of the Will), some of which is shown subjectively to the audience, supported by a high-pitched rendition of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The aim of this Ludovico technique is to condition the subject against violence through a combination of violent images and disease-inducing drugs. Alex is ultimately broken by the ordeal, and the audience's temporary immersion in the Nazi footage ends with Alex's screams. While Frady must remain immobilized during the Parallax montage, unlike Alex, Frady is immobilized entirely by his own will. Frady willingly participates in the subversion that ensues, as does the audience themselves, who, like Frady, are entirely subject to a strangely manipulative medium beyond their control or understanding. As the scene begins, Frady appears in a dark room and is sitting on a small chair in the background of the shot. The house lights come on briefly, showing the audience the elaborate visual display. The montage is introduced like this: Welcome to the test room of the Human Engineering Division of Parallax Corporation. Now please move towards the chair. And you're going to sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Make sure to place each of your hands on the box on either side of the chair, making sure that each of your fingers is on one of the white rectangles. Simply sit down. Nothing is asked of you except to observe the visual aids presented. Make sure to keep your fingers on the box at all times. All right. We hope you find the test an enjoyable experience. The following is a four and a half minute series of photographs, loosely categorized by these terms: "LOVE", "MOTHER", "FATHER", "ME", "HOUSE", "COUNTRY", "GOD", "ENEMY" ", " HAPPINESS ". (An appendix describing these photographs appears at the end of this essay.) At first glance, the categories seem logical: the “LOVE” section is followed by photographs of couples. , the title “MOTHER” with women breastfeeding children, etc. The subject becomes embarrassing under the first title “ENEMY”, under which photos of Nazi rallies and communist figures appear. The next title is “HAPPINESS”, which is described. by piles of coins, a bottle of scotch, a slice of steak, a naked woman and a Rolls Royce. Already, these first sequences establish the propagandistic aspect of the video, or if the public can accept, say, a young couple seated. on a sofa as a proper signifier for “LOVE”, then following the internal logic of the montage, they can accept Fidel Castro as a metonym for “ENEMY”, or money as a signifier for “HAPPINESS”. The subversion is deeper when the titles “FATHER” and “MOTHER” reappear, now featuring photographs of deprivation and misery from the Great Depression era. “HAPPINESS” becomes a naked couple in a heart-shaped bathtub, a very large house and the White House. "ME", initially associated with children and a baseball player, becomes a close-up of the face of a dirty child, then of a young man behind bars - is this the vestige of an inner narrative, of a lower point in the “plot” cohesion of this montage? If this is the case, then this narrative is subverted by the disjointed images presented subsequently. After some patriotic images, "ME" returns in the form of images of wounded soldiers and men tortured or killed by enemy troops. " FATHER ".