70th Anniversary of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" Broadcast

This Hallowe'en (technically October 30, 1938) will be the 70th anniversary of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air. The dramatization/ hoax generated incredible panic and remains a fascinating study in the power of mass meda to shape public perception. Broadcast without commercial interruption, this adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic science fiction novel convinced many that New Jersey was being attacked by Martian weapons of mass destruction, a mere 65 years before what The Village Voice called "the biggest media hoax since Y2K" led the United States into war with Iraq on false pretences.

An incredible retrospective of the original broadcast and subsequent tribute broadcasts that created similar panic and even deaths can be found at WYNC's Radiolab site. I can't recommend this hour-long show highly enough and used portions of it to craft my own plunderphonic review of this great hoax. Another revealing broadcast offers a meeting between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells in San Antonio, Texas a couple of years after the incident. Orson is touchingly deferential to H.G., and lauds him for his prophetic writings.



It's interesting, too, that Welles noted in F for Fake (itself a tasty meme filled with tricks of various kinds) that the UFO phenomenon followed his broadcast. With tongue-in-cheek, in the nine minute trailer for F for Fake he even suggests that his broadcast was done at the behest of powerful minds from outer space!

If not the original example of culture jamming, the War of the Worlds broadcast remains perhaps the most breath-taking and troubling. Manipulation through media is as old as the history of public relations. Orson Welles' trick or treat remains a powerful warning about the power of media to bend belief so that it accommodates even the most absurd fiction. It's a lesson to which governments and corporations paid close attention and it has served them very well. Sadly, the popular imagination remains very susceptible to Martians of the mind.

Keep watching the skies. And mind the airwaves, while you're at it.