People want to be free and independent. The feeling of being controlled or held back is frustrating, annoying and degrading. Nevertheless, despite our claims that we're a free people, we've become slaves; not to other men, but to modern technology. The movie "The Ring" drives home the reality of technological entrapment in the form of a little girl; Sadako, an omnipotent mysterious child who is capable of destroying human life. Through Sadako, Ring shows that man is so thoroughly intertwined with media, that media transforms human perception and behavior. Even though man tries to run away from the influences, he has to conform to the media's demands. .
Sadako is omnipresent. Even though her corporeal body is bounded, she overcomes the physical limit without difficulty. Unlike regular people, she moves via media technologies represented as a television and a videotape in the movie which are different types of media with distinctive characteristics. While televisions send out up-to-date information to nondiscriminatory audiences, videotapes keep the memory of the past and allow viewers to replay it. Sadako is a creature built on universality, simultaneity and continuity. Since she resides in and out of the media at the same time, she violates spatial and temporal norms easily.
In this light Sadako's dual existence in both real and techno worlds is the main source of horror in the movie. .
The probability that a mere image, which may potentially change the world, can be actualized and penetrate into the real world results in fear. Images are usually regarded as imitations of the real world which must remain "unreal" or proxy-real, but the broken boundaries between illusion and actuality allow the fake to dominate the real. Sadako is an image with devastating power; the videotape, her second identity, also retains the same capability, but since it seems to remain aloof from the reality, its real power is often looked down.
