When I was growing up, I was a huge fan of the “The Naked Gun” movie series with Leslie Nielsen and Lisa Marie Presley.
The slapstick comedy fit nicely with my sense of humour at that time. It was also something special that I shared with my father.
He was a fan of the movies too and we would go, just the two of us, to watch all three - The Naked Gun, The Naked Gun 2 ½ and The Naked Gun 3 ⅓.
So, I was extremely excited when I found out that they were making a fourth sequel starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson.
I couldn’t care less about the media hype about how the two stars fell in love on the set and became an actual couple. In fact, it was pretty annoying to see how the production was selling the idea of these two being so in love. It was a little too much, but you know, Hollywood!
Then guess what? The news broke that they were never in love and it was all just a publicity stunt to promote the movie.
They sold us a fantasy, and we, the media and the public, ate it up like delicious roti tip tap.
We didn’t care if it was true or not, with no verification and no care really, we just took it as the truth. And here is why I would like to bring up the fact that media literacy among the public is very important.
Media literacy
In our beloved Malaysia, everyone's a journalist now, right? Your phone is your personal newsroom. WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok - that's where we get our daily dose of everything from politics to what the colour theme for our cousin’s wedding in the coming month.
The problem is, our digital skills are a bit like our driving skills - we know how to go fast, but we're a bit shaky on the brakes.
Studies show that while we love to share, we're not so keen on checking if the information is actually true. Many of us just click that “forward” icon without any hesitation.
It's a “share-first, think-later” habit, which is a recipe for a massive misinformation mess. We're excellent at passing the ball, but terrible at checking if the ball is actually a bomb.
The Neeson-Anderson issue is a perfect example of how our brains can get played. The pairing is so surprising that it bypasses our critical thinking and goes straight to our sharing reflexes.
The issue here isn’t just about harmless celebrity gossip. The same mental weakness that makes us fall for a celebrity faux-mance is what will get us into trouble with real, dangerous misinformation.
Covid-19 misinformation
Remember the Covid-19 pandemic and how fake news was such a big problem? The fake news pandemic was a bigger issue than the virus was at certain points in time.
We were bombarded with ridiculous “cures” such as drinking warm water or swallowing animal pesticide, which were all spread through social media, especially WhatsApp.
People were genuinely scared, and they shared whatever seemed to offer a sliver of hope, no matter how absurd.
The absurd became believable because it came from a “trusted” source, such as an aunt of a good friend or a friend of a good aunt. And therein lies the problem, which is our lack of media literacy.
We're great at using the tools, but we haven't learned to evaluate the content. That's why we need to treat the Neeson-Anderson story like a media literacy wake-up call.
When you see a story like that, we need to ask ourselves, why was this created? For publicity, obviously.
What are the clues that it's fake? By learning to spot these red flags in trivial news, we train our brains to be more sceptical when facing something more serious, like political propaganda or health hoaxes.
We need to stop relying on our feelings and start relying on a quick Google search and a bit of common sense.
Press must play its part
Now the onus shouldn’t just be on the public. The news media and journalists have a big part to play too.
In a world where anyone with a phone can be a journalist, the real ones need to be the grown-ups in the room. This means more than just reporting the facts.
It means actively debunking the lies and not falling for the clickbait traps and providing context instead of just quotes and soundbites.
At the end of the day, the Neeson-Anderson fauxmance, although extremely annoying, was pretty harmless.
But we should take it as a wake-up call. It proves that a good story, even a fake one, can spread and reveal our collective gullibility.
By learning to deconstruct this celebrity gossip, we can build the media literacy skills needed to fight the more sinister fake news.
The solution isn't just a government-run fact-checking website (although those are good), but it's a fundamental change in how we consume information.
We need to teach media literacy in schools, starting from the primary level. Teach our kids to question what they read, to cross-reference their sources, and to be sceptical of anything that seems too good (or too bad) to be true.
As for the latest “The Naked Gun” movie, I think it was just okay. It does keep the ridiculous slapstick style of the original ones, but it just wasn’t there all the way.
I was entertained and I did laugh. It also made me reminisce about the good times I had with my father doing things that both of us shared a love for.
So overall, it was okay. I just didn’t appreciate the fact that they needed to lie to appeal to an audience. - Mkini
ZAN AZLEE is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist and academic. Visit fatbidin.com to view his work.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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