Media Myth: Presence of a Conspiracy

Let's face it. America loves a good conspiracy theory, which is probably why this media myth is so darn popular. The guidelines for the myth are quite simple(someone, or a group of someones has a secret that could drastically change the world, and one person, usually a man, must stop this from happening,) but the ways in which the myth can be played out are endless. I have chosen to illustrate the myth with the movie "Donnie Darko." This example may be a bit abstract, but I feel as though it's a great example of the "Presence of a Conspiracy" myth.

In the film, we meet a young man named Donnie Darko. Donnie has a history of being mentally disturbed, so when we first see him encounter a "6 foot tall bunny rabbit" named Frank in the middle of the night who tells him that the world will end in 28 days, we are led to believe that this is just another of Donnie's hallucinations. However, the next morning, as he walks back home, he discovers that his house has been destroyed by a jet that crashed in his bedroom. (Still with me? I know, it's strange.) Through the course of the movie, Donnie continues to see Frank, and his encounters keep getting stranger and stranger. Frank leads him to an old woman called Grandma Death who knows a great deal about time travel, tells him to burn down the house of a child molestor, and makes him flood his school in the middle of the night. Donnie gets more and more confused as to what exactly Frank wants him to do, until finally, after the death of his girlfriend at the hands of a few evil teenager, it hits him. The world is going to end. He knows how to stop it. He must go back in time to the night the jet crashed in his bedroom, and this time, he must be hit. If this happens, the world will not have to end--he will have taken its place.

Crazy, right? But the elements are there. Frank has a secret. The secret will end the world. Donnie must be willing to sacrifice his life in order to keep the secret from happening. There are, of course, complications that keep this from being a perfect example. Frank tries to help Donnie, instead of being the "bad guy." Also, at times it seems as though other people know about this secret and are trying to help Donnie figure out his fate. However, I still think this movie fits into the conspiracy myth.