The radio series of War of the Worlds was presented as a news broadcast, the first voice the audience hears proclaiming, ‘We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what is happening…’ the voice is slow, calming and typical of the newsreaders of the day, as is the music which proceeds the ‘’eyewitness account’’ adding to the realistic feel of the drama. This along with the fact that the War of the Worlds was broadcast without warning and with a lack of commercialism but purely as an emergency broadcast helped to convince the public that the invasion itself, and the horrific events portrayed within the drama, were indeed real leading to mass hysteria.
On listening to the supposed eye witness account on this short clip the audience is thrown into a world of pure confusion and panic as the eyewitness (Carl Phillips) describes the scene around him, his words punctuated by the overwhelming background sounds which add a sense of reality to the drama.
Almost immediately, we are given to understand Phillips’ fear as despite the fact that his voice is at first calm and professional he repeats himself, suggesting that he does not know how to describe what he is seeing, a suggestion enhanced by the distant police sirens which are in themselves a symbol of panic and mayhem. ‘I’ll give you every detail as long as I can talk, and as long as I can see.’ These words are said almost as an afterthought and yet they are powerful in their context, the audience knows that this man is in grave danger, even risking his life to warn them of the events happening in New Jersey
Hearing this scene it is hard to imagine the reactions, thoughts or feelings of those listeners who genuinely believed in the realty of this horrific death and other events in the drama but the panic many experienced is a little easier to understand.
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