by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Upon the suggestion of long time and valued blog contributor James in LA, this column on “Zero Dark Thirty” and the controversy surrounding that film is offered as a supplement to the earlier entry in the series on propaganda,”Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images“. It is in part movie review and in part a critical examination of the film’s content as related to the controversy around whether or not this film is pro-torture propaganda. Thank you for the excellent suggestion, James!
Is “Zero Dark Thirty” (ZDT) a good film? Is ZDT propaganda? If so, is it pro-torture propaganda (i.e. does it support or promote the idea of torture as a valid and/or necessary intelligence gathering methodology)? Let us examine these questions . . .
ZDT is well paced, the cinematography is strong and it is well written by Mark Boal – all tributes to the technical expertise behind this film being first rate and director Kathryn Bigelow ties it all together in a better than average Hollywood package. The 157 minute running time moves rapidly and keeps you engaged. As a film, ZDT works. Kind of. And I’ll get to that, but first, the acting.
The supporting cast is a veritable who’s who of some of today’s best character actors from James Gandolfini (“The Sopranos”, “Where the Wild Things Are”) to Harold Perrineau (“The Matrix Reloaded”, “Lost” and “Oz”) to Stephen Dillane (“Game of Thrones” and even more notably Thomas Jefferson in the “John Adams” HBO mini-series) to Mark Strong (perennial Guy Ritchie gangster favorite, “Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy”) to John Barrowman (known to any Whovian and “Torchwood” fans as Capt. Jack Harkness). Many of these strong actors though are a bit wasted on parts that often are only a couple of lines and/or scenes, but their presence does greatly contribute to the overall quality of the film. Three actors really drive the film and get the bulk of the screen time: Jessica Chastain (“The Help”, “The Debt”), Jason Clarke (“Lawless”, “Public Enemies”), and Jennifer Ehle (“Contagion”, “The Ides of March”, “The King’s Speech”). My compliments to the cast and crew on skilful execution of their jobs. Especially the lovely Jennifer Ehle who is as strong a stand out in this film’s deep ensemble cast as she was as the scene stealing epidemiologist she played in the equally strong cast of “Contagion”.
Character-wise the film’s primary focus is on Chastain’s “Maya”, Clarke’s “Dan” and Ehle’s “Jessica” and in some ways they are representations of two different schools of thought on how to best gather intelligence. Maya is the young blood. New to field intelligence work, she’s thrown into the deep end. Her first field assignment and her first scene is with Dan as he is in mid-torture, er, interrogation. Maya is the audience proxy into Dan’s “Torture Works!” world and into Jessica’s “Old School/We Have Rules” world. Her choice is clear and it is clear from the first scene. She’s with Dan.
The torture itself is brutal and inhumane and the character Dan comes across as a pure psychopath and a sadist. Dan alternates charm with threats, beatings, stress positions (including cramped confinement), humiliation, and waterboarding. The waterboarding depicted is done so in a spontaneous and off hand way that is seems almost a casual aside. We know from memos from Cheney’s lawyers that the practice was methodical and repetitive. This is not the only time the film deviates from what we know to be the reality of torture. The other is that torture led to a detainee revealing the nom de guerre of OBL’s courier when it has been revealed that this information was in fact part of a larger traditional human and signal intelligence operations. In the real world, almost all of the information acquired through “enhanced interrogation techniques” was recalled because it was inherently unreliable.
Dan is the least sympathetic character of the film, but I don’t think he’s meant to be unsympathetic. He’s just a guy with a tough job. Maya is at first a bit taken aback, seemingly uncomfortable by Dan’s torture techniques, although she rather quickly (almost unbelievably so) opts to participate instead of watching although her involvement in the torture proper is fairly passive compared to Dan. To show how tough she is, she assures Dan she’s “fine” when asked. In one fell swoop, the young blood becomes true believer. This is all within the first fifteen minutes mind you. The torture component is only in the first part of the film, but it does set the tone thematically and as Maya character development. Maya meets Jessica afterwards in a mid-level status update meeting among the various CIA assets running ground operations in Pakistan. Jessica advocates using greed as a motivating factor to encourage people to bring them actionable intelligence. Later, Maya offhandedly dismisses this tactic by noting “it worked well enough in the Cold War” and rationalizing her tacit approval of Dan’s techniques under the rubric that the enemy are fanatics. The relationship of Jessica and Maya is important later down the road as they become friends despite their differences. This is important to the analysis of whether this film constitutes pro-torture propaganda, but the basic progression of the film is fairly simple. Torture, misadventures in human intelligence gathering, solid lead, decision to act, apprehension, afterward/closing.
At the most basic level, ZDT is a well made film. On that level, I must say it was a good movie. Not everything that is propaganda is excluded from being art. In cinema, the prime example of that is “Casablanca”. It was certainly pro-Allied propaganda in the “good people choose to act against the Nazis” kind of way. That in no way interferes with enjoying it as a film and in part because the message is one that just about everyone not a Nazi can agree with. That is not the case with ZDT and it is part and parcel of why it almost works as a movie. ZDT is certainly a piece of propaganda in the most negative meaning of the word. It presents a clear and unambiguous portrait of torture as being critical to intelligence gathering and it does so from the first scene. This message is irrevocably fundamentally wrong from both a human rights and Constitutional standpoint as well as an outright lie about the role of torture in capturing bin Laden. It is revisionist history of the worst sort; the kind designed to whitewash the actions of bad actors.
Not only does the new blood Maya quickly buy in to the torture paradigm of information gathering, it is never once denounced by any character. This includes the “voice of traditional intelligence methods” character of Jessica. She voices her opinion in favor of traditional techniques, but she seems otherwise perfectly fine with Dan’s methods. That Dan’s methods are justified is further illustrated by traditional human and signal intelligence as being portrayed is not only ineffective but a direct causal factor in the death of the Jessica character which serves as the final impetus for the Maya character to kill bin Laden. And it’s consistently and from the get go kill bin Laden – no talk is had of capture. Maya wants him dead and will stop at nothing until he’s dead. Several other characters take action based upon or make comment of the value of the “detainee program”. Dan leaves the field and goes back to Washington in part because he’s “burned out” in the unintentionally least sympathetic scene in the whole film. Po’ ol’ Psycho Dan is just worn out from all that torturing. He’s “seen too many naked men.” Of course, that he smells the changes on the political wind and wants to get out before he gets caught does nothing to enhance sympathy for the psychopath’s plight. His interest is strictly in himself and his self-preservation. He even warns Maya that she “doesn’t want to be the last one left holding the dog collar” before going home, in reference to the earlier torture scene where Dan makes a prisoner wear a dog collar and walks him around the cell. The CIA Station Chief Joseph Bradley (played by Kyle Chandler) bemoans the loss of the detainee program as does Mark Strong’s character George, a nebulously defined CIA manager fairly high up the food chain and in charge of the task force that employs Maya. These commentaries stand out in stark contrast to what the later half of the movie shows, namely that human and signal intelligence are the means which ultimately lead to bin Laden’s capture despite the dogged insistence that the initial break came from torture. Even when prisoners choose to cooperate, they make it clear it is because they do not want to be tortured further.
Some in the press are speculating that Bigelow was played by the CIA’s right wing elements that followed Cheney’s lead on torture. Some think she’s a right wing ideologue endorsing torture herself. I say it is irrelevant to the end product being propaganda by merit of having a decidedly pro-torture message. Dupe or willing propagandist, the product is propaganda just the same.
ZDT is propaganda at its blackest. It starts with torture, never criticizes torture, bemoans the loss of the tool and never waivers that it was instrumental in capturing bin Laden despite the reality to the contrary. It ends with Maya on a plane home, crying – unrepentant, unquestioning, tears of her sacrifice that ignore her part in war crimes, still very much the hero. And that is the final nail in the coffin that makes ZDT almost work as a movie. There is no examination of whether torture is wrong or not. Just a tacit endorsement writ large in the self-pitying tears of the lead actress as she rides off into the sunset.
As the credits rolled, from behind me I heard another theater patron say, “Well . . . f@ck.” I turned to see a college kid with a t-shirt bearing the text of the 8th Amendment. I smiled a slight sad smile, tipped my ball cap to him and his girlfriend. “Nice t-shirt,” I said. They waved before walking away hand in hand up the aisle, excitedly mumbling to each other in that insular way young lovers do.
I knew how they felt. It was cold and rainy outside as I exited the side door of the theater opposite the young couple. It was rainy and cold in my heart. I thought, “So many people are going to see this movie and buy its bullshit without questioning the message, or worse, believing it.” But maybe not. Maybe it will backfire and act as unintentional agitprop to reinvigorate the discussion about torture and what we should do to hold those responsible accountable. Ah, hope. Our greatest strength as a species and concurrently our greatest weakness. But I digress.
There has been much defense in the media played by many involved with the film. Director Kathryn Bigelow said, “We depicted a variety of controversial practices and intelligence methods that were used in the name of finding bin Laden. The film shows that no single method was necessarily responsible for solving the manhunt, nor can any single scene taken in isolation fairly capture the totality of efforts the film dramatizes.” Which is utter nonsense as every bit of intelligence gathered is predicated on torture forcing a prisoner to tell us the nom de guerre of OBL’s courier when in real life we knew that from other traditional sources of intelligence. It’s abundantly clear in the film that no progress would have been made without torture first revealing that bit of information. Even a Sony executive weighed in. “We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in AMPAS as a platform to advance their own political agenda,” said Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and chairman of its Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. “This film should be judged free of partisanship,” she said, adding that the film “does not advocate torture.” Also utter nonsense and anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of propaganda can tell it is utter nonsense by the content of the film. The film doesn’t explicitly endorse torture, true, but the implicit endorsement practically screams off of the screen. Thanks, Amy, but I think I’ll judge the movie by simple human decency and the fact that torture is unconstitutional and illegal and any film that acts as a tacit endorsement of torture is vile no matter how well made it is. Then again, what do you care? You got my money and I’m not a member of the AMPAS. I will, however, probably choose to vote with my dollar on the next film either you or Kathryn Bigelow are attached to that I might be interested in seeing as well as any product in general from Sony or Columbia/Tri-Star. I don’t think I’ll see another Kathryn Bigelow film even if it’s so good it makes you cry tears of gold, sweat happy playful puppies and smell like fresh baked cookies.
I don’t regret seeing the film. It was not a waste of time. It is an excellent study piece in propaganda. It was well made. However, I do wish I had my money back. People who advocate torture – even implicitly – shouldn’t get a dime for doing so. Having seen this, I urge you to see it for as free as possible and make up your own mind in light of what you have learned from this series or elsewhere about the nature of propaganda.
If you’ve seen it or not, but especially if you have, what do you think?
Source(s): “Zero Dark Thirty“, CNN, Global Research
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
The Propaganda Series;
Propaganda 105: How to Spot a Liar
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Streisand Effect and the Political Question
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence
Propaganda 104: Magica Verba Est Scientia Et Ars Es
Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same
Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)
Propaganda 101: What You Need to Know and Why or . . .
Related articles of interest;
Here’s the comment that I had intended to post, Bruce:
anonymously posted 1, January 12, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Drones are fool’s gold: they prolong wars we can’t win
New appointments in the White House hail an era of hands-free warfare. Yet these weapons induce not defeat, but retaliation
The Guardian, Thursday 10 January 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/drones-fools-gold-prolong-wars
Excerpt:
The drone wars seem pointless yet unstoppable. Their appeal to western leaders lies partly in their sheer novelty, partly in the hope they may make defeat less awful. They are like the USS New Jersey’s shelling of Lebanon’s Chouf mountains in 1984, a blood-thirsty display to cover withdrawal. The drone is not an aid to victory, but it eases the defeat its use has made more likely.
The Taliban in Waziristan are no threat to London or to Washington. Al-Qaida can do no more to undermine the state than set off the occasional bomb, best prevented by domestic intelligence. Today’s “wars of choice” reflect a more sinister aspect of democracy. Elected leaders seem to crave them, defying all warnings of the difficulty of ending them. Mesmerised by Margaret Thatcher’s gain from the Falklands, they all want a good war.
In this the drone is fool’s gold. Driven by high-pressure arms salesmanship, Obama (and David Cameron) are briefed that they are the no-hands war of the future, safe, easy, clean, “precision targeted”. No one on our side need get hurt. Someone else can do the dirty work on the ground.
The tenuous legality of this form of combat requires the aggressor to have “declared war” on another state. But al-Qaida is no state. As a result these attacks on foreign soil are not just wars of choice, they are wars of self-invention. How soon will it be before the US finds itself “at war” with Iran and Syria, and sends over the drones? When it does, and the killing starts, it can hardly complain when the victims retaliate with suicide bombers.
Nor will it just be suicide bombers. Drones are cheap and will easily proliferate. Eleven states deploy them already. The US is selling them to Japan to help against China. China is building 11 bases for its Anjian drones along its coast. The Pentagon is now training more drone operators than pilots. What happens when every nation with an air force does likewise, and every combustible border is buzzing with them?
I did not fear nuclear proliferation because I believe such bombs are mere prestige acquisitions, so horrible not even lunatics would use them. Drones are different. When they were called guided missiles, they were in some degree governed by international law and protocol, as was the practice of global assassination.
Obama rejects all that. He and the US are teaching the world that a pilotless aircraft is a self-justifying, self-exonerating, legal and effective weapon of war. However counter-productive a drone may be strategically, it cuts a glamorous dash on the home front. It is hard to imagine a greater danger to world peace.
SWM, Jason Stanford, a Dem political operative who worked for Ann Richards gives a much different critique of this film today in the Huffington Post.
Bruce:
Posted to “Targeted Hype”
anonymously posted 1, December 1, 2012 at 12:02 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/americas-use-of-drones-the-legality-issue.html
America’s Use of Drones: The Legality Issue
Published: November 30, 2012
“Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy” (front page, Nov. 25) raises the issue of the legality of the United States’ ever-changing drone policy.
As his first term in office draws to a close, and with a vacancy to fill at the top of the Central Intelligence Agency, President Obama has an opportunity to press the reset button on American drone policy.
Over the last four years the use of drones has become ever more permissive. Lethal strikes are no longer restricted to “high-value targets,” Guilt, not innocence, is the apparent presumption.
Administration sources have told the media that in the tribal areas of Pakistan, men of fighting age are assumed to be combatant targets in the absence of intelligence to the contrary. If true, this is both unconscionable and a violation of the laws of war.
This can’t go on. American drones have taken lives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines. Meaningful public review of this most secretive of government programs is long overdue. We don’t need a new rule book; we just need the existing rules — international human rights and humanitarian law — to be applied.
SUZANNE NOSSEL
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
New York, Nov. 27, 2012
To the Editor:
You report that President Obama is finally expressing some “wariness of the powerful temptation drones pose to policy makers. ‘There’s a remoteness to it that makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,’ he said.”
What an understatement of the “mess on our hands” given how 76 countries now possess drones, having discovered how cheap and easy they are to develop and use! Whose hands will they fall into? More and more people in foreign countries living under American drone strikes have understandably become radicalized. Didn’t anyone consider how they would make the perfect weapon of asymmetrical warfare?
Pandora’s box has opened wide, adding to our “vexing security problems.” We should never have forgotten what Sir Peter Ustinov is credited as saying: Terrorism is the poor man’s war, and war is terrorism of the rich.
COLEEN ROWLEY
Apple Valley, Minn., Nov. 26, 2012
The writer is the retired F.B.I. agent who exposed intelligence failures before the 9/11 attacks.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world/white-house-presses-for-drone-rule-book.html)
Bruce:
Targeted Hype
Published 1, September 29, 2012 International , Justice
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/09/29/targeted-hype/
You comment on waterboarding, but not a word on the rise in droning by the obummer administration. ah libs
nick, I live in the Dallas area. My daughter is currently in Austin so I go down there every other month. Go to Fonda San Miguel in Austin. The Dallas restaurant is Mesomaya.
WOW! What a great piece. Having now seen it, I can report disappointment in the telling of this story. The writers had a chance to pose Other Questions and instead fell down the rabbit hole of torture. The ends, it appears, justify the means. As a cinematic gesture it ruined the film. It was worthy of hurling tomatoes at the screen far too early,
There will come a time when the Bush and Cheney families will answer for what they have done. A critical mass of grizzled hands holding our debate hostage for (pick one: torture, warrantless data mining, indefinite detention, debt ceiling, vaginal interests) will soon pass from this round earth and they will not be replaced.
Who will start talking once Bar Bush cannot intimidate them with her home-spun board of Bush family propaganda?
So long as we have Gene and others to Tell It, we shall overcome.
SWM, What’s the name..details, girl! My widowed brother-in-law has been struggling. I’m going to visit him on my trip out west and would like to take him out for a good, Mexican meal. It would be nice to take him somewhere he and my sister didn’t go, he gets quite melancholy. Some of my first real Mexican food was on Cozumel which is Mayan. When you weed out the tourist places there are some good authentic places. It’s really simple. Whether it’s Mexican, Chinese, etc., you go where they eat. Even in tourist areas there are authentic places. In Chicago’s Chinatown we go to the Evergreen. It’s @ the very south end of Chinatown and almost always more Chinese than Americans eating there.
nick, Had some red posole Saturday night at a Mexican restaurant which has a Mayan influence. The food was some of best mexican food I have had in this area.
SWM, I didn’t know that about Affleck. Then I hope not also. I did notice there was no Moet near Downey and Gibson seated next to Jodi Foster. I tried Girls for a couple episode, I think it’s primarily a girl show. Curb Your Enthusiasm is primarily for boys. I like shows that have their own niche..ala Arrested Development, Dexter, etc.
nick, I watched part of it. I watched Downton Abbey and HBO’s Girls, too. Poehler and Fey were great. Hope Affleck did not have too much Moet as he is an admitted recovering alcoholic. 😉 I am glad Argo won, too.
And enter John Brennan, whose time has come again.
Old news, but as The Daily Texan weighs in:
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2013/01/13/barack-obama-nominates-ut-alumnus-john-brennan-to-head-of-cia
“Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge the program and defended the ethics and effectiveness of the program before the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2012.
“The sense I have from a distance is that he’s been the principal architect of that program,” Inman said.”
Torture; drones; government-supported, criminal harassment networks…
Good Morning, America.
SWM, There is much not shown in ZDT. The movie is about the men and women on the front lines, CIA and soldiers, particularly Seals. In Saving Private Ryan we just got a glimpse of General Marshall. There was no FDR, Churchill, Ike, Patton, etc.
We spoke about Jennifer Lawrence previously. What I like about the Globes is they separate films between drama and comedy/musical. This allowed to the 2 best female performances IMHO to win. Lawrence and Chastain were both deserving and both gave quite different, but good speeches. On other Globe notes, I was very pleased to see Argo get the credit it deserved. Affleck was genuinely shocked and grateful. He showed his honesty and vulnerability when he said his career hasn’t been going well..it was raw. That’s what bottles of Moet on the tables encourage. I really like Jodi Foster a lot and she just went up a notch w/ her no bullshit acceptance speech. The gentle part about her mom who apparently has dementia was a real tear jerker. Daniel Day Lewis will also deservedly win the Oscar. My favorite curmudgeon Tommy Lee Jones had a front row seat, showed no emotion, and appeared to be eating dinner rolls throughout the first half of the show. Finally, Fey and Poehler are my favorite type women..funny, tough, and smart. They gave an A performance. Did you watch?
“What I find troubling and infuriating is that by turning the hunt for bin Laden, however expertly, into a glorified police procedural, Bigelow neutralizes the most controversial and charged aspects of this story. (To no avail, I might add: The film is controversial anyway.) President George W. Bush is never shown, ditto Dick Cheney, Iraq is AWOL, and President Obama is only glimpsed in a 2008 campaign interview. This is a bit like making a movie about the D-Day invasion without referencing FDR or Eisenhower.” review, Christian Science Monitor
With “The Hurt Locker”, Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. I really liked the “The Hurt Locker'” although I did not think that I would. She does tension well.
@Gene: I have not seen it. Thanks for the review, they shall not get MY money. And with you I shall remember, Pascal and Bigelow, let me try to avoid their work in the future. (Ah, the many enjoyable hours I have spent with Pascal’s Triangle and Bigelow’s Tea, it is a shame to have to attach negatives to those names.)
I’ll pass on the film. Whether the intent was to endorse torture or not isn’t the issue. The film deliberately implies torture was part of the pertinent information gathering. The killing of OBL is a very big factual event in US history. That the film chose to insert a deliberate falsehood about the contribution of torture to the end result will keep me from seeing it.
Perhaps the administration should denounce the film before we end up with another dead ambassador.
Swarthmore,
I agree on Lincoln. I though it was a magnificent film and Lewis was extraordinary.
Interesting.