In 2004, Actor Nicolas Cage tying the knot for the third time made the headlines of tabloid magazines. Even in my home country Korea, the actor’s wedding was one of the “it” Hollywood events of the year. And behind the story making front pages of every gossip magazines, there was Alice Kim, Cage’s allegedly 20 years younger bride who was reported to be of Korean heritage.
When the news was first reported, all there was known about this lucky, young bride was that she was a former sushi waitress in LA. There was much speculation about who she is and where she is from, but the general agreement seemed be that she was a poor immigrant who successfully turned her life around by marrying a rich man. The wedding in some sense seemed to be symbolizing the American dream coming true, and people took the story and turned it into a modern fairytales, calling it “The True Cinderella story” with romantic, sugarcoated words.
But the truth was that yes, Nicolas Cage being a world famous Hollywood star may make him something like a Prince Charming, but Alice Kim was no Cinderella who went from rags to riches through magical fairytale wedding. It was revealed that she was in fact born into a much respected family, her grandfather being a big figure in banking industry in Korea and her father a successful business man. Even after the truth has been reported, however, for some reason there were people who still believed that this marriage was the representation of a modern rise tale.
Stretching from Justin’s earlier post about Tiger Woods, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we live in the society where everybody is at least subconsciously frantic with turning not only celebrity stories but even ordinary success stories into fairy tales. The nature of the media is that it is deeply concerned with stories or topics that have entertaining, attention capturing components. I think this encourages people to fall into the habit of romanticizing every story into a fairytale, even if it means leaving out important facts or distorting the truth. But I have to wonder, if it’s the media that causes this or is this just people’s natural obsession with fairy tales that media exploits, leading to a vicious cycle?
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Media outlets - particularly those that concentrate on entertainment news - report on what will sell magazines and advertisements on webpages. News is manipulated to attract a particular audience, so what does it suggest when stories like these are romanticized, as you say? Again, we have a "chicken and the egg" dilemma of whether or not the media gives its audience what it wants, or if it creates what that audience wants. But who is this audience that is being fed the fairy tale?
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