“Rosewater” Jon Stewart’s Argo

Another film with Iran in the crosshairs: An effing bad idea

by Patrice Greanville

The New York Times headline made me wince:

Jon Stewart to Direct Serious Film, Will Take Hiatus From ‘Daily Show’ 

The news—when read in more detail— was not reassuring. It would seem like one of the most colossal egos in the entertainment world is about to pull an ARGO on us.  No I’m not referring to Affleck, whose Oscar for that perniciously-timed film is the official certification for Hollywood’s willing concubinage with imperial America. I’m talking about Jon Stewart, by far one of the most insufferable and self-impressed personalities in the modern pantheon of cheap idolatry for which American culture will surely be remembered—should the world survive its runaway ignorance and misdirected violence.

The reason for my disgust is that Stewart is about to take a 12-week hiatus from his duties at the uber-adulated The Daily Show to direct a movie whose plot—oh my— he penned.  The movie —”Rosewater”, is reported to be an adaptation of the 2011 book “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival,” by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy. Hmm. Hold that a cotton-pickin’  minute.  Captivity? A guy named Bahari? Knowing as I guess you do, that the US and its usual accomplices are desperately looking for a way to provoke a fight with Iran, what country do you think will be cast as the humorless heavy in this picture? Yes, that country. The same country already exploited by liberaloid Affleck to excellent “artistic” returns.

“One of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves,” Mr. Stewart said [fatuously], “and I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.”  Mr. Bahari’s ordeal is familiar to “The Daily Show” fans — in fact, the comedy program played a role in it. ⁽¹⁾

The blooming of this execrable notion took place in a rather serendipitous manner. According to the Times,

A Canadian-Iranian journalist and documentarian, Mr. Bahari was jailed in Tehran in 2009 for four months, accused of plotting a revolution against the government. Shortly before his arrest, Mr. Bahari had participated in a “Daily Show” sketch, conducted by one of the show’s correspondents, Jason Jones, who was pretending to be a spy. Mr. Bahari’s captors used the footage against him. “You can imagine how upset we were,” Mr. Stewart said, “and I struck up a friendship with him afterward.”

Since ARGO was premised on something like a ruse to fool the Iranians, Stewart’s  premise, also packing identity errors, sounds to me derivative, at best. Not so bloody funny. Let alone that original. How many times are we gonna take credit for rooking the Iranians?

One more requiem for liberalism

With this recklessly ill-timed film, Jon Stewart is now clearly joining not only the lot of imperial apologists (which as Abby Martin suggests—see below—was well prefigured by his fawning over Obama and other Democratic politicos), but also proving for the umpteenth time that liberals are either egotistical assholes with the political acumen of a hedgehog or… thinly-veiled groupies for the imperial status quo. So first Affleck, now Stewart, where will it end, this noxious parade of (shall we say charitably) unwittingly self-indulgent “cinematic art”?

Since Stewart  is a comedian, very much the frat-sort, smart-ass, middlebrow American comedian, the kind that the politically illiterate and almost permanently infantilized Generation X finds so damn amusing, albeit one now afflicted with acute auteur pretensions, we can’t tell at this point where this expensive bauble will end, hopefully in the trash, but we can bet that the Iranians will be once again characterized as fanatical ciphers  or dunces—not exactly the image needed at this point to inject some warmth and respect in the American mind toward that tortured nation.

Well. What else could we expect? This is the rotten Zeitgeist we inhabit, friends. For ill or for ill.

In the final analysis, however, as even a bright 6-year old could tell, war is too dreadful a matter to be left to mere politicians…or  megalomanic buffoons.  Man, where is George Carlin when we need him!

Patrice Greanville is the editor in chief of The Greanville Post. 

•••••

ADDENDUM

Abby Martin of RT calls out court jester Stewart and his accommodation of Obama.  Hard questions are never asked on Stewart’s Daily Show, particularly when Democrat politicians need votes.  I’ve said previously how Stewart parades a constant stream of establishment war criminals and monsters on his program so they can peddle their books.

SOURCE: 

Jon Stewart to Direct Serious Film, Will Take Hiatus From ‘Daily Show’

⁽¹⁾ http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/jon-stewart-to-direct-serious-film-will-take-hiatus-from-daily-show/

•••••

PS: While you’re on the NYTImes page, be sure to read some of the comments. They’re a hoot, horrifying. I think you’ll probably be alarmed at how  pathetic, needy and undignified Stewart’s following seems to be. Proof conclusive that far too many people these days are simply functional social morons and that the world is doomed.  I read like 20 comments and then stopped with a mild feeling of nausea.  Condensed, in-your-face stupidity does that to me. At any rate I verified that none of the commenters mentioned the possibility that this new film is just another ludicrous concept likely to increase the tensions and gross misperceptions about Iran and that it should not be celebrated.  And that someone would see the obvious and call Stewart on it, that to pick—of all possible subjects, many much more urgent—this particular plot to sink a pile of greenbacks in it, is simply obscene. Well, about that I suppose I was being way too optimistic.

Jon Stewart Set to go the Propaganda Route

Will have more on this in the coming days. Another anti-Iran exercise, as Israel and the US push for war against Iran, as they have done for over a decade. Imperial court jester Stewart apparently finds something funny about further demonizing the Iranians, and has bought the rights to this:

“Stewart has adapted [Maziar] Bahari’s 2011 book “Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival,” a fascinating and suspenseful true story about the journalist’s 2009 arrest during the Iranian election protests, which led to him spending 118 days in jail.

I caught several problems with Bahari’s Daily Show interview, which I’ll comment on shortly.

Stewart evidently couldn’t find any stories in the United States itself worthy of his directorial debut.
 

The Argo Recap

With quite a bit of luck compiling all the Zero Dark Thirty files into one place, I thought I’d do the same here for Argo, the 2013 alleged “Best Picture” according the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (Is there any kind of actual academy, or is it more of an elite club, btw?)

The problems with Argo are of two main strands:

1.  A pro-CIA propaganda bent that ignores way too much to be redeemed.
2. Demonization of the Iranian people, reducing them to a frothing irrational mob, rather than the desperate people with real grievances they were.

 

Argo: Time to Grow Up and Get Angry? by Kieran Kelly

Argo’s Truth Problems by Nima Shirazi

Imperial Propaganda: Oscar Edition by Joe Giambrone

Target Iran: Argo’s CIA Heroes vs. A Separation by Jennifer Epps

Can Argo’s Best Picture Win Stop War with Iran? by Ruth Hull

“Argo, Fuck Yourself” by Kim Niccolini

Argo in Context by Patrice Greanville

Argo (2012) by Eric Walberg

Timely CIA/Iran Propaganda Film: “Argo” by Danny Schechter

The Lies Screenwriters Tell Themselves by Joe Giambrone

 
 

Argo’s Truth Problems

Oscar Prints the Legend:
Argo’s Academy Award and the Failure of Truth

by Nima Shirazi

Originally at Wide Asleep in America

One year ago, after his breathtakingly beautiful Iranian drama, “A Separation,” won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivered the best acceptance speech of the night.

“[A]t the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians,” he said, Iran was finally being honored for “her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.” Farhadi dedicated the Oscar “to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.”

Such grace and eloquence will surely not be on display this Sunday, when Ben Affleck, flanked by his co-producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, takes home the evening’s top prize, the Best Picture Oscar, for his critically-acclaimed and heavily decorated paean to the CIA and American innocence, “Argo.”

Over the past 12 months, rarely a week – let alone month – went by without new predictions of an ever-imminent Iranian nuclear weapon and ever-looming threats of an American or Israeli military attack. Come October 2012, into the fray marched “Argo,” a decontextualized, ahistorical “true story” of Orientalist proportion, subjecting audiences to two hours of American victimization and bearded barbarians, culminating in popped champagne corks and rippling stars-and-stripes celebrating our heroism and triumph and their frustration and defeat.  Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir aptly described the film as “a propaganda fable,” explaining as others have that essentially none of its edge-of-your-seat thrills or most memorable moments ever happened.  O’Hehir sums up:

The Americans never resisted the idea of playing a film crew, which is the source of much agitation in the movie. (In fact, the “house guests” chose that cover story themselves, from a group of three options the CIA had prepared.) They were not almost lynched by a mob of crazy Iranians in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, because they never went there. There was no last-minute cancellation, and then un-cancellation, of the group’s tickets by the Carter administration. (The wife of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had personally gone to the airport and purchased tickets ahead of time, for three different outbound flights.) The group underwent no interrogation at the airport about their imaginary movie, nor were they detained at the gate while a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard telephoned their phony office back in Burbank. There was no last-second chase on the runway of Mehrabad Airport, with wild-eyed, bearded militants with Kalashnikovs trying to shoot out the tires of a Swissair jet.

One of the actual diplomats, Mark Lijek, noted that the CIA’s fake movie “cover story was never tested and in some ways proved irrelevant to the escape.” The departure of the six Americans from Tehran was actually mundane and uneventful.  “If asked, we were going to say we were leaving Iran to return when it was safer,” Lijek recalled, “But no one ever asked!…The truth is the immigration officers barely looked at us and we were processed out in the regular way. We got on the flight to Zurich and then we were taken to the US ambassador’s residence in Berne. It was that straightforward.”

Furthermore, Jimmy Carter has even acknowledged that “90% of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian [while] the movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA…Ben Affleck’s character in the film was only in Tehran a day and a half and the real hero in my opinion was Ken Taylor, who was the Canadian ambassador who orchestrated the entire process.”

Taylor himself recently remarked that “Argo” provides a myopic representation of both Iranians and their revolution, ignoring their “more hospitable side and an intent that they were looking for some degree of justice and hope and that it all wasn’t just a violent demonstration for nothing.”

“The amusing side, Taylor said, “is the script writer in Hollywood had no idea what he’s talking about.”

O’Hehir perfectly articulates the film’s true crime, its deliberate exploitation of “its basis in history and its mode of detailed realism to create something that is entirely mythological.” Not only is it “a trite cavalcade of action-movie clichés and expository dialogue,” but “[i]t’s also a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology.”

Such an assessment is confirmed by Ben Affleck’s own comments about the film.  In describing “Argo” to Bill O’Reilly, Affleck boasted, “You know, it was such a great story. For one thing, it’s a thriller. It’s actually comedy with the Hollywood satire. It’s a complicated CIA movie, it’s a political movie. And it’s all true.”  He told Rolling Stone that, when conceiving his directorial approach, he knew he “absolutely had to preserve the central integrity and truth of the story.”

“It’s OK to embellish, it’s OK to compress, as long as you don’t fundamentally change the nature of the story and of what happened,” Affleck has remarked, even going so far as to tell reporters at Argo’s BFI London Film Festival premier, “This movie is about this story that took place, and it’s true, and I go to pains to contextualize it and to try to be even-handed in a way that just means we’re taking a cold, hard look at the facts.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Affleck went so far as to say, “I tried to make a movie that is absolutely just factual. And that’s another reason why I tried to be as true to the story as possible — because I didn’t want it to be used by either side. I didn’t want it to be politicized internationally or domestically in a partisan way. I just wanted to tell a story that was about the facts as I understood them.”

For Affleck, these facts apparently don’t include understanding why the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun and occupied on November 4, 1979.  “There was no rhyme or reason to this action,” Affleck has insisted, claiming that the takeover “wasn’t about us,” that is, the American government (despite the fact that his own film is introduced by a fleeting – though frequently inaccurate¹ – review of American complicity in the Shah’s dictatorship).

Wrong, Ben.  One reason was the fear of another CIA-engineered coup d’etat like the one perpetrated in 1953 from the very same Embassy. Another reason was the admission of the deposed Shah into the United States for medical treatment and asylum rather than extradition to Iran to face charge and trial for his quarter century of crimes against the Iranian people, bankrolled and supported by the U.S. government.  One doesn’t have to agree with the reasons, of course, but they certainly existed.

CIA Document 1035-960

“Conspiracy Theory”: Foundations of a Weaponized Term
Subtle and Deceptive Tactics to Discredit Truth in Media and Research
Prof. James F. Tracy

The editorial “gatekeepers” of America operate as if directed by our own Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA put forth their propaganda strategy in the wake of public outrage over the murder of president John F. Kennedy and the subsequent cover-up and fabrications of the (bi-partisan) Warren Commission.

The similarly bi-partisan 9/11 Commission was also a controlled, censored, rigged exercise in obfuscation whose own co-chairman Lee Hamilton admitted on Canadian television, that the commission was “set up to fail.” And fail they did, but that does not prompt a real independent investigation of the 9/11 attacks, the role of “foreign governments” (Senator Bob Graham), or the role of the CIA itself, who helped to hide the “San Diego cell” hijackers from domestic law enforcement for 16 months prior to the attacks.

Here is how the CIA directs editors to respond to the “conspiracy theories” it found problematic, vis a vis JFK:

CIA Document #1035-960
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

“Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission’s report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved.”

“This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization.”

“Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society.”

“Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization [CIA], for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us.”

“To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.”

“b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. “

So, there you have it, the CIA domestic propaganda playbook.

Operation Mockingbird is relevant here.

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
Carl Bernstein, Rolling Stone, Oct. 20 1977

One last point on the JFK matter–

That memo contains a whopper of a lie. See if you catch it:

“e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator. He was a “loner,” mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.”

An unknown quantity?

The man who defected to the Soviet Union, married a Russian girl, and was allowed to emigrate back to the United States without issue?

Unknown to intelligence?

Can they seriously type that with a straight face?

“I’m just a patsy.” -Lee Harvey Oswald in custody

  
Jim Garrison’s investigation and subsequent trial, which is the basis of the Oliver Stone film JFK, showed that Oswald was working for FBI and investigating the CIA’s Cuban terrorists in Louisiana. This is more plausible than the claim of document 1035-960, that Oswald was an “unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.” That claim doesn’t pass the laugh test.

 

Central Park Five (2012)

A Reign of Terror on People of Color

by KIM NICOLINI

I saw my first film of the new year last night – The Central Park Five, a documentary about the five black and Latino boys who were falsely accused, bullied into confessing, and then served time for the rape and beating of the Central Park Jogger back in 1989. After serving 6-13 years in prison, the boys were exonerated of the crimes when the true rapist confessed and his DNA matched that found on the crime scene.

Certainly this film is a devastating story of racial injustice and the failure of the American criminal system. The film was made by famed PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns based on a book by his daughter Sarah Burns, and it largely focuses on the stories of the surviving boys (who are now men), their families, and archival footage.

The police, lawyers, and District Attorney involved in the case refused to participate. They are included in the documentary via archival footage, including the videotaped confessions which were extorted from the boys, four of whom were fourteen years old at the time of the crime and one who was sixteen.

During their 30 hours plus of interrogation, they had no legal representation, no child advocates, no social services presence, and no contact with their parents and family. They eventually confessed, being fed the details by the cops, simply to “make it stop.” Their confessions were inconsistent, full of errors and mistakes. None of the boys’ DNA was found at the crime scene; likewise, none of the DNA of the victim was found on the boys, though the crime was brutal and bloody. The boys were convicted on the sole evidence of the false confessions that were forced out of them by the brutal interrogation of the Central Park Precinct detectives.

Certainly this is a tragic tale of race in this country. It is particularly resonant after recently seeing Django Unchained. (I’ll be publishing my essay on that film next week). What is most interesting to me is how this incident was used by the media and governing forces as a catalyst event to propagate and reignite racial fear in this country. The terminology used to reference the boys by the so-called liberal media was as dehumanizing as that of the Jim Crow south. The boys were referred to as a “wild pack” who were “wilding” and terrorizing white people. They were spoken and written about as if they were wild animals, something less than human.

I remember the incident well. I was a woman jogger at the time, and I recall how this single incident framed a new Environment of Fear which was based on the threat of the black man against the white woman. It is the same fear that was propagated during Reconstruction (post Civil War America), when it was within the economic interest of white power to keep black men demonized.

It must be noted, that the Central Park Five event occurred in the wake of the ongoing fallout from the economic recession following Reaganomics. During hard economic times, the country likes to find a scapegoat for the economic chaos and despair that permeates the environment. In the case of the Central Park Five, the media, police and government forces created Wilding and the fear of Blacks in Packs. Also, it must be noted that censorship of black music was instituted at this time.

Certainly demonizing “the racial other” is nothing new in this country, but I see the Central Park Five incident as a kind of historical pivotal moment in the Post Civil Rights Era when American governing forces began re-escalating its reign of terror on people of color, immigrants and the disenfranchised (see the institution of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security for evidence). We have to remember that this country and its economic base were largely founded on racial demonization and dehumanization. Slavery was the economic backbone of early America. When the slaves were freed, many of them ended up packed away in housing projects such as those that tower the streets of Harlem. When housing projects didn’t work to contain America’s Big Ugly History, prisons were expanded and race was largely criminalized. This trend has not stopped to this day and certainly played a role in the Central Park Five.

To me, the most tragic part of the film is that when the boys are finally exonerated of their crimes, they greet this news with a kind of quiet and devastating resignation and acceptance. Certainly they are happy to no longer have to be “registered sex offenders” for the crimes they never committed, but there is also a sense that they feel that “this is just how things are in this country.” And the sad truth is that this is how things are in this country.

One boy who is now a man says with tears in his eyes (I paraphrase), “I will never get those years of my life back. No prom. No high school. They have been taken from me, and I will always have this hole or gap in my life where those years were stolen.” Yet, he also seems to accept it as a fact of life in America, a country that was founded on “stolen lives,” the legacy of which still largely lives and breathes up in Harlem where these boys lived.

It is a sobering and sad film. It is also critical to revisit this case to remember what it stood for as emblematic of the paradigm shift that occurred during the Reagan years and continued as we moved into the era of ultra conservatism that continues to dominate our political landscape today. We have not come a long way, baby. Not by a long shot.

Kim Nicolini is an artist, poet and cultural critic living in Tucson, Arizona. Her writing has appeared in Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Souciant, La Furia Umana, and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She recently published her first book, Mapping the Inside Out, in conjunction with a solo gallery show by the same name. She can be reached at knicolini gmail com.

 

Propaganda in the Cinema (101)

You’re Being Attacked

 

 

by Joe Giambrone

Propaganda takes innumerable forms and is all around us.  Early cinema thrived on the overt type of propaganda, as in The Birth of a Nation a.k.a. The Clansman.  This 1915 outrageously racist story was the highest grossing film of its day, the first blockbuster (History.com).  The Soviets and the Nazis used film propaganda skillfully and pushed the envelope in their efforts to homogenize their populations and to create unanimous consent for official policy goals.  Film propaganda techniques have succeeded in driving nations toward war, and they remain widely in use today.

Nazi Reich Marshall Hermann Goering’s famous quote is perhaps the most authentic definition of war propaganda in existence:

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.  This is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in every country.” (Gilbert  278)

The hyper-nationalism of so-called patriotism is central to war propaganda.  The propagandist wraps himself and his characters in the flag.  His flag and his national symbols will feature prominently as unifying beacons and to shut down honest debate and criticism.

The U.S. pentagon sees the value of propaganda in mainstream films and offers tens of millions of dollars worth of assistance and hardware to productions that portray the U.S. military in a favorable light.  David Sirota writes in the Washington Post that Top Gun, “proved to be a major force in resuscitating the military’s image” as well as boosting recruitment, and that “polls soon showed rising confidence in the military”  (Sirota).  The U.S. military demands script changes in exchange for its participation, and it gets them.

Film naturally lends itself to good guys and bad guys.  Good guys are attacked by bad guys, but in the end the good one rises up and defeats the evildoer.  Film welcomes a problem, reaction, solution formula.  It welcomes violence and violent solutions to conflicts.  Conflicts on film are far more often decided by superior force and tactics than through mutual understanding, agreement or peaceful resolution.   This repetitive conditioning of populations to the supposed urgent need for military supremacy distorts the audience’s perception of reality.

Film’s visceral and emotional qualities communicate scenarios effectively and manipulate the audience to desire certain outcomes for the characters in which they invest and identify.  This may all seem obvious, but covert manipulation is a double-edged sword, dangerous.

The father of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, wrote in the late 1920s:

“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.  The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation.” (Bernays 1928)

Bernays noted the “unconscious” character of much film propaganda.  It was not necessary to directly state messages, but to let the scenarios and the story world carry the messages in the background.  Once immersed in the foreground story — whatever it was — the “unconscious” background elements were passed to the audience without critical interference and often without the viewer’s knowledge.

This subliminal quality is praised by Bernays as a positive thing, in his view. This is hardly surprising as Bernays’ concept of propaganda is broad in scope encompassing every medium and method of communication that exists.  Bernays’ seminal book Propaganda begins:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.  We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.” (Bernays 1928)

Bernays considered nearly everything that could be seen, touched or heard to be a propaganda opportunity, that is people pushing their opinions of what society should be onto other people, all of them competing for attention.  This meant goods, services and ideas, all of the basic building blocks of modern life.

Taking this expansive view of propaganda and applying it to films leads to analyses of characters and class, the interpersonal relationships, casting, prejudices and biases expressed, wardrobe, locations, the role of authority figures, the role of money, gender relations, power relations, subservience, levels of education, patterns of speech, the desires and aspirations of the protagonists and the antagonists, even the style of music, etc.  It also requires an investigation into the puppet masters themselves: the studios and the producers who wield the power of the purse.

Because of the high cost of producing mass marketed cinema, film is inherently hierarchical, and in a capitalist regime its on-screen content is steered by the money men.  In Bernays’ view, these men will use their positions whether knowingly or unknowingly to propagandize in their own perceived interests.  Why wouldn’t they?

In fascist regimes, the state run film industry propagandizes in the interest of the nationalist agenda.  In communist regimes the state run film bureau propagandizes the official party myth of worker equality and the glory of the proletariat.

Early overt propaganda films, those which consciously and obviously pushed political ideologies, are instructive for studying the on-screen techniques used to convince audiences and to gain their approval.

The Birth of a Nation played to the worst fears of racist whites.  On the screen history is rewritten completely such that the blacks of the reconstruction era reign over the defeated southern whites.  As one title card proclaims, “The helpless white minority” (Griffith 1915).

These situations are taken to absurd heights in order to make white audiences uncomfortable and to demonize the black race.  Numerous African American actors are featured in bit parts.  However, a number of the more sinister and despicable characters are actually white actors wearing not very convincing blackface.

The most hot-button moment of the film is when the black legislature proclaims interracial marriage legal.  The black assembly erupts into wild celebration as the few minority whites quietly escape.  After this point the protection of the white women becomes the main goal of the heroically-portrayed white southerners.

Despite the preponderance of overt racism in The Birth of a Nation unconscious techniques are also employed.  By the selection of very young and petite white female actresses their vulnerability is enhanced.  By placing the girls on screen for long periods of time, and usually isolated without any male guardians present, the idea of the need to protect them from outside forces is reinforced.

The Ku Klux Klan was reborn in 1915 after William J. Simmons viewed the film, and he set out to organize a resurgence of Klan activity.  “When ‘Birth of a Nation’ opened in Atlanta, [Simmons] ran an advertisement for the Klan next to the movie’s ad in the Atlanta newspaper” (ADL).   This new Klan directed its hatred not just at blacks but also at immigrants in general as well as Jews and Catholics.  “At the peak of its strength in 1924, membership in the KKK is estimated to have been as high as three million” (History.com).

One of the most successful propaganda films of all time was Triumph of the Will, which depicts Adolf Hitler’s 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremberg Germany.  This film sought to place the viewer in the rally with numerous camera setups that gave a visceral experience of attending such a highly coordinated and staged event.

Hitler was himself an accomplished propagandist and showman who studied earlier works in order to sway his audiences in person, over the radio waves and in these Nazi films.  From the uniforms to the swastika symbols to the sea of flags to the camera angles to the regimented placement of all in attendance to the music and lighting Hitler indeed followed the expansive interpretation of propaganda voiced by Bernays.  Everything in Triumph of the Will is designed to communicate strength, leadership and the fawning love and admiration of the German people for their supreme leader. Wide overhead shots capture the full expanse of the large crowds giving weight and credibility to the speaker, Hitler.

The reason given for the enormous gathering captured in the film is the 20th anniversary of the start of the first World War.  A title card opens the piece:

“20 years after the outbreak of the World War… 16 years after the German suffering began… 19 months after the beginning of Germany’s rebirth Adolf Hitler flew to Nuremberg again…” (Riefenstahl 1934)

Triumph then opens with the aircraft delivering Hitler to immense crowds of admirers.  Before we see Hitler, we see his plane circling above Nuremberg, and the camera glimpses more and more of the gathered flock below in the town.  Perhaps the most powerful images are of the adoring children, no doubt Hitler Youth, who hail the arriving savior.

Many shots that day place the camera at waist height looking up to the perfectly symmetrical lines of storm troopers, as swastika flags are carried by rows and rows of identical groupings.  Strong compositions place the leadership in the center where all focus is directed and all salutes are aimed in at the undisputed Fuhrer.

The Soviet propaganda film The Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1926)tells a revolutionary narrative loosely based on an actual incident from 1905.  Here the officers of the corrupt old regime are cast as the villains and demonized.  The downtrodden sailors of the Czar’s navy are pushed to their breaking point by the abusive officers.  This is the class struggle personified.

When the ship’s crew is offered only rotted maggot-infested meat to eat this becomes the final straw.  Mutiny follows, and then solidarity with the nearest Russian town Odessa.

The Czarist soldiers ruthlessly massacre the civilians of Odessa, an event that actually did not occur as portrayed in the film, although other atrocities were reported at the time (Ebert).   The rebellious ship sailors fire on the enemy stronghold, destroying the opera house in a hail of artillery rounds.

Soon more Czarist ships are sent to battle the mutinous Potemkin.  A tense standoff on the high seas climaxes with numerous montage cuts that show the ships in action and approaching one another, guns ready.  Eisenstein was a pioneer of montage and of placing contrasting images next to one another for effect.

Solidarity wins out, and these new ships join in the rebellion taking the cue from the revolutionary actions of the Potemkin’s sailors.  Revolution wins in the end.

Jumping ahead to modern times, Dr. Jack Shaheen studied negative portrayals of the Arab race in Hollywood’s films.  He analyzed over 1,000 such films from the early days right up into the present.  In Reel Bad Arabs Shaheen opens the discussion:

“For more than a century Hollywood too has used repetition as a teaching tool, tutoring movie audiences by repeating over and over, in film after film, insidious images of the Arab people.  I ask the reader to study in these pages the persistence of the defamation, from earlier times to the present day, and to consider how these slanderous stereotypes have affected honest discourse and public policy.” (Shaheen p. 7)

Public perception of Arabs is relevant to multiple current wars, and to likely future conflicts.  “Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood.  They’re portrayed basically as sub humans, Untermenschen, a term used by Nazis to vilify Gypsies and Jews” (Shaheen film).

Shaheen contends that the willingness of the US population to wage war on Iraq and elsewhere in the region naturally follows from a century of conditioning to regard Arabs as less than human.  Such conditioning leads to apathy in regards to real atrocities perpetrated against Arabs, including civilians.  The torture crimes at Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base fit with a desensitized people who regard the objects of their violence as undeserving of sympathy or humanity.

Shaheen followed up with a documentary film of the same name. Numerous ugly portrayals of Arab characters are presented in ways that if applied to other races or religions would be met with protests and public wrath.  For Arabs and Muslims generally this negative stereotyping not only passes without protest in the American culture but is often celebrated as realistic.

“The movies that we see basically follow Washington’s policies… Islamophobia now is a part of our psyche.  Words such as Arab and Muslim are perceived as threatening words.  And if the words are threatening, what about the images we see in the cinema and on our television screens?” (Shaheen film)

Propaganda is pervasive, insidious, often subliminal and is in evidence even in today’s so-called mainstream films.  The use of out groups and demonization continues despite cultural trends toward more inclusiveness and acceptance of others.  Film is a powerful force for rewriting history and for glorifying one’s own side at the expense of the truth.

One-sided depictions are overwhelmingly the staple of film narratives both in fiction and in supposed non-fiction.  In fiction, the protagonist’s view is the dominant view expressed, and events are concocted to reinforce this view.  Those whom the protagonist sees as bad or evil the audience is led to see in the same light by the unfolding of the plot.

As for non-fiction film:

“Selection and half truth are the corner-stones of propagandist documentary, and it is a psychological fact that half truths serve as well as whole truths in supporting cinematic illusions of what is real.” (Furhammar- Isaksson 152)

It is all too easy to accept a film as reality in whole or in part because of the convincing manner in which the events are staged.  This tendency in gullible audiences has been exploited for propaganda reasons and will continue to be exploited.  For that reason, film will remain a battleground, of ideas and clashing views, which needs to be monitored and commented upon.

“It is fundamental to propaganda that the message must be expressed in a way that does not invite discussion. The effect depends upon being received without question, on drowning out all criticism or analysis. Its appeal is purely emotional and excludes all alternatives.” (Furhammar- Isaksson 201)

One of the keys to sneaking in propaganda in a way that doesn’t invite question or discussion is to embed it in genre films.  The audience fixated on the genre conventions and plot ignores the political messages that accompany the story.  This is the most common type of “unconscious” or subliminal propaganda.

Judith Hess argues that the classic genres of horror, western, sci-fi and gangster seek to reinforce the status quo and to dissuade any disaffected masses from challenging the existing order.  While token gestures are offered in the telling, the end result tends to suppress criticism of the system and to reinforce the status quo.

“Genre films produce satisfaction rather than action, pity and fear rather than revolt. They serve the interests of the ruling class by assisting in the maintenance of the status quo and they throw a sop to oppressed groups who, because they are unorganized and therefore afraid to act, eagerly accept the genre film’s absurd solutions to economic and social conflicts.” (Hess)

By reducing complex structural social problems to simplistic dilemmas these films redirect the audience’s concerns into politically safe harbors.  The organization of society is never questioned, according to Hess, but instead society is simply a backdrop to the drama.  Often the conflicts are simply attributed to the character flaws of individuals, and not to the injustice of his or her situation.

The genre conventions play with the idea of addressing real world problems only to bait and switch.  In the classic Western, we are told to adhere to a “well defined and unchanging code.”  In classic horror, we must solve problems “based on tradition and faith.”  In science fiction invasion stories we must choose isolationism as no “knowledge gained from communication could possibly outweigh the dangers it represents.”  The gangster’s troubles arise from his seeking to challenge for power inside the system, to rise above his class.  He does not seek to change the system, but to overreach.  The gangster narrative serves as a “warning to stay within one’s station if one is to survive—all [these genres] militate against progressive social change” (Hess).

Propaganda of one sort or another is found in most films.  Editorial selection insures that a particular view gets a better close-up than its opponents.  It is important to realize that films are designed and contorted to manipulate audience perceptions.

Awareness and discussion of propaganda should be front and center from early childhood on through to the retirement home.  Whether in film, on the radio, in print, on television or now on computer screens or phones the fact is that we are bombarded by complex messages that often carry subliminal characteristics. Television commercials are but one type of obvious propaganda, clearly blatant, but are these discussed and dissected in the classroom?  Does our education system account for slanted messaging and biased sources generally?  Are our citizens taught to even recognize when someone is constructing a tall tale in order to sell them a specious worldview?

Propaganda, like fascism, is generally relegated to the historical dustbin.  People assume that they are immune and that propaganda doesn’t affect their lives.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Some further research:

The Century of the Self

Psywar

Joe Giambrone is a filmmaker and author of Hell of a Deal: a Supernatural Satire. He edits the Political Film Blog. He be reached at: polfilmblog at gmail.
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Sources

 

ADL, Ku Klux Klan – Extremism in America, web, Anti Defamation League, web, November 19, 2011, http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/history.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk

Bernays, Edward, Propaganda, 1928, History is a Weapon, web, November 17, 2011, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html#SECTION1.

Ebert, Roger, Battleship Potemkin, originally published in Chicago Sun Times, web, November 19, 2011, http://www.ebertfest.com/one/battleship_rev.htm

Eisenstein, Sergei, The Battleship Potemkin, Russia: MosFilm, 1926, film.

Furhammar, Leif and Isaksson, Folke, Politics and Film, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971, print, p. 152.

Gilbert, Gustave, Nuremberg Diary, Interview with Hermann Goering, New York: Farrar Strauss and Co. 1947, pp. 278-279, print.

Griffith, D.W., The Birth of a Nation a.k.a. The Clansman, 1915, film.

Hess, Judith, Genre films and the status quo, Jump Cut, no. 1, 1974, pp.1, 16, 18, web, November 18, 2011, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC01folder/GenreFilms.html

History.com, Birth of a Nation Opens, A&E Television Networks, LLC., web, November 19, 2011, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-a-nation-opens

Riefenstahl, Leni, Triumph des Willens a.k.a. Viljans triumf  a.k.a. Triumph of the Will, Germany: Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, 1934, film.

Shaheen, Jack Ph.D., Reel Bad Arabs, Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2001, p. 7, print.

Shaheen, Jack Ph.D., Reel Bad Arabs, Media Education Foundation, film, 2006, web, November 19, 2011, Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-223210418534585840

Sirota, David, 25 years later, how ‘Top Gun’ made America love war, The Washington Post, Aug. 26, 2011, web, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/25-years-later-remembering-how-top-gun-changed-americas-feelings-about-war/2011/08/15/gIQAU6qJgJ_story.html