When I say that the MSM is become a black art of dissimulation, there are few better illustrations of that than the film Zero Dark Thirty. Which rears it's ugly hydran head again on NPR today - soon again, with the Oscars. A conversation about torture, and whether or not the film sanctifies it. Some people say of the forty minutes of torture scenes (we are a sadistic culture and need our fix) that that one clue worked out - indeed, that it shows torture at all - means the film justifies torture. Others say it's a 'true' representation of a dirty but necessary business, and is merely a reflection for us to ponder, whether or not that's a course we want to continue as a culture. Others think torture is great. Others are freaked out about the very idea of torture, and that this supposed good country could ever justify it in any context; for them the film is repugnant. But again, all-in-all, the message is, this is a discussion about State authorized
torture.
I haven't seen the movie. I don't know that I want to condition my brain and body to that kind of scenery if I don't have to. I'm certainly not going to pay movie theatre prices. Maybe I'll see it when they show it at the Riverview theatre ($2 ticket), or here at the house out of the Red Box ($1, if I bring it back the next day). But again, it's a bullshit story at it's core, so why pay to be duped? Which I don't have to see the movie to comment on the meaning of it, the effect of it, as I see that on my culture and in other people; and knowing what a skilled filmmaker Katherine Bigelow is; which I did see her Hurt Locker, and got off on it like a lot of guys did. She was married to James Cameron, btw, at one point, the Titanic/Avatar guy who used that money to reach the bottom of Marianas Trench, and want's to use it to mine the solar system (!) Katherine Bigelow knows what drives powerful men. Fascinated by the violence of it, she tells it well.
Which it is sort of comical to me, the way the Left has gotten so uppity about torture (which was a GWBush introduction to law) but not drone killings of Americans or anyone, really; or Indefinite Detention of Americans (or anyone); or O's Libyan escapade, getting our Ambassador killed and destabilizing the whole of North Africa; or that gun running into Mexico; continuation of the Patriot Act, etc.
But hey, we got Osama, Left and Right rejoice. We spent billions, billions of dollars were spent tracking down and killing Osama Bin Laden. How much was spent in the investigation of 9/11? I've heard numbers as low as $600,000. I don't know that there is any evidence pointing Osama bin Laden to 9/11; as time goes by, he looks more and more like a CIA asset turned patsy. There's plenty of evidence to suggest our Federal government, or rather some cabal within the government, perpetrated 9/11, but again, mostly all you'll ever hear from the MSM is Mockingbird piping, from Anderson Cooper to Glenn Beck.
Torture in this case becoming like a red herring then, in the terminology of State propaganda, to hide the fact that something very like a coup took place on 9/11. Surveillance state America. Which might be a conversation America might want to pursue, but not one that is ever going to be addressed in any meaningful way but to denigrate, by the MSM.
Which story Katherine Bigelow in all her genius is never going to get to tell, nor would she want to, Ms self-styled rebel. You know what I mean, the story about the coup, by the rotten beating Western heart of the Military Industrial Global Banking Surveillance State. The true story of the centralization of power.
Instead, she made a movie that says basically, the State exists to protect you, the story it has told about Osama bin Laden and 9/11 is true, and so the War on Terror is justified. State propaganda, in other words, masquerading skillfully as Art. Which they really would just about have to force me to watch. Plenty of people payed though, $11-15, and ate it up, like true institutional wards. Getting off on Katherine Bigelow's machismo. LOL She is hot.
Every Imperial State having it's message managers. Katherine Bigelow being an exemplar.
Maybe she's our Leni Riefenstahl...
ReplyDeleteAnon.
ReplyDeleteNaomi Wolf argued so. Though Kunstler would argue that Ms Wolf's premise is wrong, that Bigelow isn't sanctifying torture in this film. As I have called uber-centralizers the descendents of Augustus unt Mein Fuhrer, I suppose it will depend on how fascist/Imperial things become, for the comparison to be apt. Though I think it's likely, yes.
My poor brain gets bombarded with enough propoganda for free, I wouldn't even consider paying a dollar to see it.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this review. I'm with stewie, I wouldn't have even paid a dollar to see it, but now I know it has 40 minutes of torture, I won't subject myself to it even if I can watch it for ~ free on Netflix.
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ReplyDeletestewie and John,
ReplyDeleteMy sentiment mostly. Though now that I have written about her, I'll probably do her the courtesy to watch the film. Maybe. My feeling about it, from the reviews I've read, is that it's an ink blot onto which the consumer projects whatever they feel about the War on Terror.