I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)

So I wrote the first draft of my English paper, and I decided that I was going to focus on juxtapositioning government propaganda commercials on drug use to movies that show drugs for what they actually are, like Requiem for a Dream. Here's my draft, I thought it was blog-worthy:

Throughout the 20^th Century, American culture developed through use of drugs, from the era of 60’s Woodstock Nation use of marijuana and hallucinogens to the Disco Era of cocaine use to the 80’s dependence on crack to the 90’s era of combating the drug use to the 2000’s rise in prescription drug use. Since then, there have been various sources of media that present drug use and drug addicts, or use propaganda to turn people away from drug use. Many people feel that popular icons, such as Cheech and Chong or music artists portray drug use in a positive light without mention of the negative effects, while there are many movies that show drug use in their true light. Mass media may have helped misrepresent drugs, but mass media has also been responsible for turning people away from drugs and their negative outcomes.

Propaganda has been around for centuries, and was prominent in combating drug use. Propaganda existed mostly in commercial form, targeting at youth audiences in order to get them away from the influence of drugs. Most of these commercials turn out to be failures. According to Drug Policy Central: “Yet another story involved a man who smoked marijuana, tried to shoot his wife, killed his grandmother instead, and then killed himself. These stories, and many others, make up the early, "classic" period of propaganda, while the "modern" period, characterized as it is by the multimillion dollar advertising budgets of today, consists of many more insidious myths (e.g., the gateway myth, the potency myth, the supporting terrorism myth, the dope-fixing sporting events myth, the drugs cause crime myth, and the unsafe schools myth, to name a few). “ They present drugs in a superficial way or give the audience a greater curiosity to try the drug and see what kind of effect the drug actually has. These government-produced commercials have been prominent for decades, and each attempt is not as effective as the last. They rely on scaring the audiences, saying that “Drugs make you kill people” or “Drugs support terrorism” while those facts are not true. According to Students for Sensible Drug Policy: “While it is important to educate young people about the effects of drugs and drug abuse, these ads are an abysmal failure. Young people want to know the truth about the effects of drugs and their real risks. But when we see ads that obviously exaggerate and stretch reality for political purposes, we are offended and turned off to anything credible the government may have to say.”

However, there are many movies that show the use of drugs and the consequences without the fluff. The best example would be the depiction of the novel Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby, Jr. The movie was released in 2000 and depicts four individuals who succumb to the power of drugs while trying to achieve their individual dreams. This movie does the opposite of glorifying drugs—it shows how messed up one’s life could be when one uses: one lost an arm from needle use, one was imprisoned, one went through electroshock therapy and has brain damage, and one had to do unimaginable acts to get her fix. Most reviewers agree that this movie depicts drug use in a bizarre fashion, but as opposed to the superficial propaganda, this movie’s portrayal of the consequences still seems real, and it most likely happens to addicts everywhere. According to a review by Jason Berardinelli: “Requiem for a Dream certainly isn't the first recent motion picture to offer an unpleasant picture of what happens when an individual becomes hooked on drugs, but its quadruple character study is unsparing. This is in large part because of the brilliant final fifteen minutes, which is a tour de force of direction and editing. Employing hundreds of cuts, Aronofsky careens back and forth between his four main players, showing their increasingly dire circumstances and allowing those to escalate to a brutal climax. This is easily the most startling and memorable extended sequence in any film this year, and, for raw power, it exceeds any scene I can recall from other films about addiction. Don't be fooled by the passively poetic title; there's nothing serene or restful about this motion picture. Requiem for a Dream gets under your skin and stays there.”

Movies and various other sources of media have an effect on people and the way they think and react to situations. The government tried to use that to portray drug use as extremely dangerous while just making it seem superficial. Movies have had a stronger appeal to the Anti-Drug War because they use the art of visual storytelling to show that drug use only leads to negative consequences.