Present Day - Media

Media

When used in fictional or non-fictional media such as books, film, or television, the term "present day" is typically used to identify the time-period in which the depicted events are taking place, in one of the following ways:

  1. The events depicted take place at the literal time that the media is being viewed or read; in this case, the period referred to is subjective and depends upon when the media is experienced;
  2. The events depicted take place at the exact date in history when the media was published;
  3. The events depicted take place during the era during which the media was published, where the era may be identified in a way relevant to the rest of the elements in the media.

Setting a fictional work in the "present day" can have many intended effects on viewers or readers. In many cases it is a plot device used to engage the audience more quickly as the events are happening in a context that they can understand. In some cases, the intention is that portrayed events are to be understood as genuinely happening "right now"; the audience is meant to deliberately play into this suspension of disbelief. Many popular soap operas are set in the present day, such as the English television series EastEnders. Other more fanciful productions are also set in the present day to maintain intrigue in an audience, such as Stargate or X-Men.

The use of the term "Present Day" can also detract from media as, in the case of movies and books, it directly reveals the age of the media. For example, the movie, The Terminator, has a title card near the beginning labelling it as taking place in the present day, even though the events are shown to occur in 1984 which was true to the initial release of the movie. This can have the effect of making the movie or book a lot less believable because it is labelled as the present day but the technologies and modern culture in the media effectiveley display the past and not the present, nullifying the effectivness of the term, Present Day.

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Famous quotes containing the word media:

    “The media no longer ask those who know something ... to share that knowledge with the public. Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimate it.”
    —Serge Daney (1944–1992)

    “One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
    —Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)

    “The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.”
    —Gore Vidal (b. 1925)