I Saw It In a Movie, So It Must Be Real

The War on Photography

Photographers being treated as security threats, because that’s how Hollywood portrays things

A movie-plot threat is a specific threat, vivid in our minds like the plot of a movie. You remember them from the months after the 9/11 attacks: anthrax spread from crop dusters, a contaminated milk supply, terrorist scuba divers armed with almanacs. Our imaginations run wild with detailed and specific threats, from the news, and from actual movies and television shows. These movie plots resonate in our minds and in the minds of others we talk to. And many of us get scared.

And we overreact, because we respond irrationally when faced with unusual risks. We can’t properly assess them.