Even though it scared half to death thousands of radio listeners at the time of broadcast, would you believe that the now iconic Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast is not considered a “cruel hoax”?
By: Ringo Bones
Back in 193, thousands of American radio listeners from
coast to coast went into a panic when actor Orson Welles’ radio dramatization
of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells managed to convince listeners that
Martians who looked like octopuses had landed near Princeton, New Jersey in
rocket ships. In spite of the radio broadcast’s nationwide success, however,
Orson Welles’ men from Mars were not technically a hoax precisely because Orson
Welles had no intention of hoaxing anyone. The main intention of Orson Welles
was to present a radio play based on what was at the time of the iconic
broadcast – a 40-year-old novel.
The fact that people accepted the drama as factual radio
news broadcast was purely accidental.
Psychologists who have studied the affair
suggest that the reasons for the widespread public acceptance of so
preposterous a tale were due to the widespread public anxiety over the troubled
international situation at the time – i.e. Adolf Hitler’s military adventurism
in the Sudetenland, not to mention the already widespread acceptance of the
radio as a trustworthy medium of information. And another factor for the
public’s widespread readiness to believe that Martians actually landed in
Princeton, New Jersey as a prelude to a planet-wide invasion was largely due to
the recent demonstration of incredible scientific advances of feats once
thought too impossible to be achieved witnessed by the public in recent world’s
fair expositions. So if one asks when is a hoax not a hoax, the Orson Welles’ War
of the Wolds radio broadcast of 1938 is an excellent example.
