Zero Dark Thirty...

[Ben]

Zero Dark Thirty: new torture-glorifying film wins raves

Can a movie that relies on fabrications to generate support for war crimes still be considered great?
by: Glenn Greenwald...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...torture-awards


Scarborough Takes Bin Laden Movie as Proof Torture Works:

[trish]

I'm not at all sure the movie relies on fabrications to support war crimes. Rather, it allegedly utilizes fabrications about efficacy of criminal torture to spice and sell a film that purports to be a mix of historical-journalistic-fiction. The film's "greatness" diminishes with the veracity of the allegations.

I am always left dumbfounded by "historical-fictions." I'm disturbed by them and I enjoy them. I'm disturbed by their heady mix of fact and fabrication and the blurred boundaries between. Yet, when well done, they're fun to read (or watch, as the case in hand) and they often induce public interest in issues of importance.

[Stavros]

I'm with Trish on this -apart from the fact that torture will force its victims to admit to anything and everything, the warriors who were involved in the attacks on the US were usually quite open about it, if interrogated correctly -there is so much evidence on this that one suspects that torture is merely a form of revenge. As for Bin Laden's whereabouts, nobody needed to be tortured to find that out -all that was needed was for someone within the Pakistan Intelligence Services (the ISI) to tell the US, which may in fact be part of the truth. The real issue is why bin Laden was not arrested and taken to the US, which would have been on one level a profound humiliation -but did the US ever have any evidence that would stand up in court of his involvement in any of the attacks on the US?

Anyway, how many films about Abe Lincoln show him in bed with other men, as, we are told, was common in them days? And then there is Abe's poem which rarely gets cited:

For Reuben and Charles have married two girls,
But Billy has married a boy.
The girls he had tried on every side,
But none he could get to agree;
All was in vain, he went home again,
And since that he's married to Natty.

I think Tarantino should make a film about Lincoln...

[jm813]

The most humorous thing of all is how everyone states "facts & fabrications" as if they were there or something.

[trish]

Oh a deconstructionist in our mists? Or perhaps the post is a figment of our imagination. Fortunately I said, "alleged" fabrications.

[Ben]

Zero Dark Thirty: CIA hagiography, pernicious propaganda

As it turns out, the film as a political statement is worse than even its harshest early critics warned:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...cia-propaganda


Zero Conscience in “Zero Dark Thirty”

Jane Mayer:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...rk-thirty.html

[beandip]

It's not torture...it's "rendition"......remember.....WE VOTED OUT THE HATE (and put in new euphemisms.

[beandip]

Shrub had drones killing innocents = bad thing.

Now we "voted out the hate" and have a Nobel Peace Prize winner who LOVES drones that kill innocents = good thing.

Go back to sleep. Nuthin' to see here.

Shrub, Patriot Act = bad thing
Oblabla NDAA = good thing

Shrub opening GITMO = bad thing
Oblabla keeping GITMO open = good thing

Shrub TARP (going against the will of 92% of the voters) = bailing out banksters = bad thing
Oblabla TARP 2, QEI, QE2, QE3, TWIST and now QE4 = bailing out banksters = good thing

Does the term cognitive dissonance mean anything?

[Ben]

Has torture become acceptable?

[trish]

Is Kill Bill pro-violence propaganda or is it just that violence sells movies? Is Caesar assassination propaganda? Is Romeo and Juliet suicde propaganda? Torture, violence, gunfights and swordplay are perceived as drama in the dramatic venues.

The troublesome question is, "How truthful is the movie?" Is it journalism or fiction?