The Societal "Cache"

How do you know if what I’m about to say is accurate? How do you know if anything I’ve said in any of my other posts is accurate? How do you know that anything you experience on a daily basis is true reality? You don’t.

It’s scary to think about but humor me for a second. We as humans – as beings of perception – are totally vulnerable when it comes to the information we receive. Every magazine, every television show, every advertisement that we consume has been hand picked for us. Of course we can attempt to remain skeptical about all the media we are subjected to, but it’s impossible for us to catch every innuendo or hidden message put before us.

Michael Haneke’s film Cache is a perfect example of this. Not because of the premise, the plot, or the people. But because of the language. Cache is a French film and, therefore, the characters speak French. As an English speaker, I definitely had the subtitles on. However, weaved throughout my twenty-one years of English, I’ve spent five years learning French. Thanks to this, I have a moderate understanding of the language. Now, I’m definitely not fluent. But I know when words I hear aren’t written on the screen.

This really hit me. Before I had this moment, I was enjoying the (strange) film when suddenly my ears were given information that my eyes weren’t. After that, I couldn’t just sit and watch anymore; I was too focused on finding more inconsistencies. My limited knowledge of the French language left me at the mercy of the filmmakers – or whoever adds the subtitles.

I was vulnerable. Just like we are every single day when we have slogans, catchphrases, statistics all thrown at us at the free will of their creators:

people just like ourselves. Who is really in charge here? If other humans with the same cognition and freedom as ourselves are the ones feeding us this information, who really has the power? And do we need to be in control of the information to have it?