The Power of Speech in Pontypool - Blog Post 2, Question 3
Image: Pontypool (2008), official film poster
Language is used on a daily basis, although most people do not realize its significance. However, what happens if one's knowledge about the language and words can put them in danger?
Pontypool (2008) presents a situation in which an unknown virus is spreading through language, making it a deadly weapon. What was quite interesting about this movie is that the danger was not the fact of hearing the word but understanding it.
The point above reminds me of Marshall McLuhan's ideas presented in 'The Spoken Word: Flower of Evil', where speech is considered to be an extension of human consciousness (McLuhan, 1964, p. 86).
In my opinion, Pontypool expands McLuhan's idea of the way speech can be understood as it shows the way in which an uncontrollable thing appears even in the most usual circumstances.
For example, one associates understanding of something with knowledge and comprehension, but in Pontypool, this understanding becomes the source of danger.
Thus, Pontypool can also show the importance of the medium of communication since it is the same in terms of its danger.
This presents an interesting question: Are we really in control of our language, or is it actually language that is in control of us?
References:
McLuhan, M. (1964). The spoken word: Flower of evil. In Understanding media: The extensions of man (Chapter 8).
Pontypool (2008). [Film poster] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226681/
Hi Jia, I like how you highlighted the idea that in Pontypool the virus spreads through understanding a word and not just hearing it. Comprehension is normally something we treat as beneficial, but here it is what puts the characters at risk.
ReplyDeleteYour connection to McLuhan also fits well because if speech is an extension of human consciousness, then a virus that travels through speech is really travelling through people. This explains why it can spread through something as ordinary as a radio broadcast or an ordinary conversation. The film keeps returning to the radio studio, which as you point out, makes the medium and the threat feel inseparable.
To answer your question, I’d say we’re in control of language only until it spreads. We have a choice of our own words, but once they are spoken, we can’t control how they’re heard, repeated, or understood. Pontypool presents this in an extreme way, since the characters aren’t choosing the words that infect them, and the radio carries them out to people who never necessarily agreed to hear them. So because meaning is never really ours once it’s spoken, I’d say language controls us more than we control it.
Hey Jia! I never really thought about language in this way before, but your point about speech being an extension of our consciousness is valid. It made me think about how we learn the meaning of words from such a young age, to the point where we don’t even question why certain words mean what they do. In Pontypool, it’s almost like that process gets turned against people because the meaning they attach to a word is what puts them in danger. I also found it interesting that the characters had to figure out how to communicate differently to survive, which shows just how much we depend on language. It’s kind of crazy to think that something we use every single day without thinking could completely change how we experience the world.
ReplyDelete