[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAm7gRXFiRo[/youtube]
I have a voice…
If you have not yet seen The Kings Speech, I urge you to go and see it.
It is a lovely film.
It’s the story of how George VI, burdened with a terrible stammer, came to overcome it with the help of Lionel Logue, an unconventional Australian speech therapist and found his voice to lead Britain through the Second World War.
It is also up for seven Golden Globe nominations this week.
What makes this particularly interesting, at least to us, besides the great film making is that it was a new technology – wireless – that put George VI in such a terrible position. Prior to the invention of wireless (radio), no one had heard a King speak. and the ability of a King to deliver a rousing speech – or indeed any speech at all, was completely marginal.
After the invention of radio, nothing would ever be the same again.
Indeed, there is a short segment in which George and his family watch a Pathe film clip of Hitler delivering a rousing speech in Germany.
“What is he saying” asks the future Queen Elizabeth IIÂ of her father.
“I don’t know”, responds George VI, “but he is saying it quite well”.
Indeed, with the advent or radio the ability to speak well and convincingly in public became the seminal determinant of the power of any political figure – and those who could do it very well, from Hitler to Roosevelt to Churchill, found their voices.
Today, we are faced with another new technology – the Internet, and I would argue, video online.
Those political figures who cannot use this new medium to its fullest – who can’t ‘perform’ well in short, snappy, engaing video clips, will have no future.
But for those who can, a whole new world awaits.
Also of particular interest – here is a BBC link to the actual King’s Speech delivered by George VI on the outbreak of WW2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12020794
