War of the Worlds

          My initial reaction to "War of the Worlds" was that the speaker really knew what he was doing. I was only one minute into the broadcast, and I was already immersed in whatever the speaker said. He was so eloquent; pausing at the right times, pacing himself at the right speed, and talking with the perfect amount of intensity. Clearly, when radio was this popular, the speakers had to be very skilled speakers because their voice is all they have to draw the audience in. They can't use facial expressions, body movements, or images to get the point across, so the fact that I was already intrigued by the speaker's voice in this broadcast was very impressive.
          

           As we all know now, the fake alien invasions created fear with the American public because everyone thought it was real. I can see how people believed it after finishing the broadcast. The integration of random bursts of breaking news in the casual music made the news seem legitimate; it was really as though the music was being interrupted because of an alien invasion. This just shows how art has such a great influence of the public. Radio is a form of art that flourished in the 1900's, and it was so prominent in people's lives that it has the ability to terrorize an entire population. Orson Welles is brilliant for this; nobody got hurt and nothing tragic happened, but he was talented enough to use only the sense of sound to scare the public.