War of the Worlds gained a notorious reputation, because some listeners believed it was reporting some kind of actual event. Did you find it believable? Can you imagine how others might? Name one or two particular devices employed that might have created confusion between the real and the fictional. Is there a point in the narrative at which you can’t see how any one could think of it as actual news reporting?
7 thoughts on “War of the Worlds”
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Like Brianna and others, I think that the radio broadcast was an obvious dramatization. In its entirety, the broadcast is clearly a fictional radio play adapted from The War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells. However, if one were to listen to the broadcast in fragments, one might find it difficult to discern fact from fiction. Benjamin briefly mentioned how radio is unique in its presentation. To me, this uniqueness does not come from the writing or performances. I believe that the realism comes from the fragmentation that occurs when people consume content through radio broadcasts. I could easily imagine how some listeners might have tuned in at different times during the radio broadcast and had completely different reactions. In my opinion, the most unrealistic part of the entire broadcast is Professor Pierson’s monologue at the very end. The monologue gave me insights about Pierson’s fears in a way that was completely unrealistic. Despite being an auditory medium, I think the realism would have been enhanced if Pierson shared less and the ending was more ambiguous.
After listening to War of the Worlds, I can see how the radio broadcast was deemed believable by a portion of the audience. I think that I personally would have found it believable, especially in a time period such as the late 1930s where radio broadcasts were the main source of news. Speakers ranging from scientists to eye-witnesses to even commanders have given all sorts of different perspectives of the same event, which only made it more believable to me. Also, while these guests were speaking, they made long dramatic pauses, especially when the commander was in the plane nearing the martian and said, “eight hundred…six hundred…” The extensively long pauses between each couple hundred yards made me think that there really must’ve been someone in the plane attacking the martians. However, there were a few instances that made the broadcast seem unrealistic to me, one of which was when Carl Phillips was interviewing Mr. Wilmulth, the first eye-witness to the scene as the martians landed in his farm. After finishing up a very short interview, Mr. Wilmulth says, “Want me to tell you some more?” and Phillips says, “No that’s quite all right”. I thought this was unbelievable as any real reporter would pull all of the information they can out of their witnesses, especially if the event took place in their own backyard.
I was totally mesmerized by this broadcast- I thought that the interspersed pauses, awkward piano interludes and the occasional muffled voices only heightened the believability. When I began this recording, knowing that the content was fictional, I was mostly focused on the emotional portrayal by the announcers/speakers. Voice acting is pretty limited- no actual visual aids, limited sound effects and the inherent difficulty of changing between characters without confusing the audience- and using a radio setting for this story is just perfect. The broadcast setting allows expected introductions, interviews, Q/As, and pauses that would be needed while transferring to other lines. It is practically impossible for a reader to open a pulp fiction magazine expecting to find non-fiction, reliable stories, but that is exactly what a radio listener would be doing. Putting a fantastical story into a majority non-fiction media that (I’m assuming was hardly done at that time) made the small obviously scripted parts or less-than-perfect sound effects seem insignificant. One of the very few things (in my opinion) that hinted to its fictionality was, like Nicholas, Brianna and Tyler all said, the military broadcasting. Aside from the live-in-plane commentary and gun angle adjustment, I thought it was incredibly done- I definitly would have been fooled.
The previous commenters have touched on aspects of how the broadcast was meant to seem realistic but haven’t yet mentioned that simply the story being told through a fictional radio broadcast made it seem real. A radio drama is a unique medium in that it provides the opportunity to pretend to be real, something a book or a movie could not do. The writers went to lengths to make it seem real as well, such as cutting out to the piano player. As Tyler mentions, the chaos and the character’s reactions all seem very realistic. It isn’t until after the intitial attack at Grover’s Mill, when Pierson connects by direct wire, that it starts not feeling like a real radio broadcast, and it isn’t until you begin hearing the military broadcast that it becomes extremely clear it isn’t a normal news broadcast, as it is unrealistic for the military channel to be broadcast publicly. Still, it isn’t until the end of the story, when Pierson is wandering, that the story drops the pretense of being a news broadcast, and up until that point, and listener who missed the introduction could potentially believe that it is a real event occurring.
Based on the attention of detail and the realistic timeline of events included within the recording and production of H.G. Wells’s fantasy “The War of the Worlds,” I could very well see an initial panic from listeners. One convincing aspect of this recording is the confusion coming from the scientific community. Professor Pierson, a researcher from Princeton University, is first introduced during an interview in which he states the explosions on Mars are simply due to atmospheric conditions, belittling the possibility of alien activity. Pierson’s once confident explanations within the interview greatly contrast with his unsure and frightened account of how the alien’s technology just incinerated those around him. Professor Pierson’s transition from a respected scientist to a helpless bystander provides a sense of panic and therefore believability to the recording. Another realistic characteristic of the recording is the chaos and emotion captured on-air. The information from each broadcasting source is choppy and inaudible at times as crowds of people flee, scream, and eventually get swallowed by the black poisonous fog. While the story was thoroughly crafted, some details gave almost too much insight to the disaster, creating a polished or unrealistic feel in my opinion. For example, it seems unlikely to me that the accounts of a Gunner or a Commander operating a bomber plane would be broadcasted all the way up to the points of their deaths.
The radio play is undoubtedly well-written, voiced, and produced, all elements that give credit to those who believed in a true invasion. However, as I listened to the broadcast, it seemed clear to me that it was a dramatization as I tried to imagine the pacing of action. For example, in less than five minutes, seven-thousand militia men are amassed, outfitted, and organized, then attack, are killed, and have survivors counted to a man. Accelerated timelines such as these occur throughout the broadcast, which is why I find that someone tuning in at any time would not necessarily be convinced. Something else that may be affecting my experience is my lack of familiarity with radio and radio broadcasts; it seems odd to me that piano interludes continued even as the tragedy unfolds, or that a military operation would be publicly broadcasted. With that being said, the variation in characters, from the somewhat comedic interlude of the Wilmuth interview to the heroic suicide mission of military pilots, and their pointed use of technical (like Pierson’s explanations of heat rays) and untechnical (Phillips’ description of the monsters) is further realism that I would understand being fooled by, though I don’t believe I would have been as the play is presented.
I could definitely see the broadcast being believable, and if I didn’t know the widespread actual reaction to it already and didn’t live in an era of mass media, I think that I might’ve believed it. For me, the things that made it the most realistic were the pauses and the various different characters who spoke. The pauses gave it the sense that the speaker and the station were trying to figure things out and weren’t just reading off a script. All of the different personas made it seems more realistic because everything is a lot more believable if it’s not just one person saying it, and they lent an air of actual authority to the story. The explosions and gunfire didn’t seem very convincing to me, and it seems weird to me that the military might broadcast over air to the general public.