Why?
You really wanna know why?
Here's your answer!
Posted on 10/07/2005 4:18:30 PM PDT by J. Neil Schulman
On March 30, 1981 outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, an insane young man named John Hinckley, Jr., in an attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, shot the President, the White House press secretary, James Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, and DC Police Officer Thomas Delanty.
The president’s life was saved by emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital, as were Agent McCarthy’s and Officer Delanty’s. Press Secretary Brady suffered incapacitating and permanent brain injury.
When asked why he attempted to kill the president, Hinckley claimed he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster. These are all historical facts.
Now. We’re writers of “what if” novels, short stories, and screenplays.
What if we screenwriters were to portray in a major motion picture reminiscent of the cold war thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, that Jodie Foster had seduced and brainwashed John Hinckley, Jr., into shooting President Reagan?
Since our movie would be clearly labeled as fiction, should anyone take our movie seriously? Should Jodie Foster have a cause of action against us for portraying her inaccurately and negatively in a movie? Would public rebuke and protests be forthcoming? Should we have an expectation that the movie studio releasing our movie would receive loud protests from Nancy Reagan and Sarah Brady?
Let’s ask another “what if.”
It’s 1943, and the United States is at war with Nazi Germany.
Walt Disney Studios releases an Alfred Hitchcock-style thriller in which German Americans on a cross-country air flight are wrongly suspected of sabotaging the plane, and it turns out the saboteur is actually an American soldier engaged in an elaborate robbery scheme.
Would President Roosevelt have considered such a movie to be Nazi propaganda? Would the House UnAmerican Activities Committee have subpoenaed Walt Disney to explain why Nazi propaganda was appearing in an American wartime movie?
Would American pilots have been painting over the Mickey Mouse cartoons on their warplanes, and the American public boycotting Dumbo?
Would Walt Disney have ended up in prison, charged with sedition during wartime?
Of course, except in our imaginations, none of this happened.
In real life Jodie Foster never had anything to do with the insane John Hinckley’s fixation on her, and in real life Walt Disney spent World War II producing patriotic films such as Victory Through Air Power and Private Pluto.
Then why, during a War on Terror that began on September 11, 2001, when a cabal of Arab terrorists hijacked four American commercial passenger jetliners, destroying the planes, murdering all passengers, bringing down the the World Trade Center in New York City, and severely damaging the Pentagon – murdering thousands -- do Jodie Foster, the Disney Studios (as Touchstone Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures), and the others involved with the production of the Number One Box Office hit, Flightplan, believe that it’s not enemy propaganda to portray a United States Federal Air Marshal and a flight attendant aboard a flight from Germany to New York as conspirators willing to commit murder, child kidnapping, and acts of terrorism, while the Arab passengers aboard the flight are portrayed as innocent victims of unfair suspicion and bigotry?
We asked this question of David M. Adams, Special Agent in Charge, Office of the Director, United States Federal Air Marshal Service.
Agent Adams told us, "The producers of Flightplan intially inquired whether the Federal Air Marshal Service would provide input to the portrayal of Air Marshals in the film. We agreed to do so but they never got back to us. … The inaccurate portrayal of Federal Air Marshals in Flightplan is unhelpful in that its negative portrayal of what I know to be dedicated law-enforcement professionals may potentially undermine domestic and foreign airline passengers' confidence in our mission to safeguard passengers and crew from terrorist threats."
So why has there been not one word of protest against what during World War II would have been called enemy propaganda, and during our current War on Terror is, at the very least, a vicious slander against the soldiers on the front line of defense – the Federal Air Marshals?
Why, apparently, do no prominent figures see it as their mission to identify and protest enemy propaganda when it hits the number one spot in box office revenues? Where’s the President? Where are the victims of the 9/11 attacks? Where are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly?
Don’t tell us that “it’s only a movie.”
Hitler and Stalin both understood the ideological value of Hollywood movies. The original mission of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee included rooting out Nazi propagandists. It’s only when World War II ended and the Cold War began that HUAC’s focus shifted from Nazi Party members conspiring to aid the Third Reich to Communist Party members conspiring to aid the Soviet Union.
And, yes. We’re aware that this article contains a spoiler, revealing the “plot twist” of Flightplan.
Isn’t attempting to financially hurt the supporters of terrorist propaganda supposed to be part of the War on Terror?
*******
Brad Linaweaver and J. Neil Schulman are award-winning science-fiction writers working in Hollywood. An early article by Linaweaver was praised by Ronald Reagan in a radio broadcast that is in print in the book Stories in His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan; and many of Linaweaver’s stories have been praised by Ray Bradbury. Schulman’s books have been praised by Charlton Heston, Milton Friedman, and Anthony Burgess. Schulman wrote one of the best remembered Twilight Zones and Linaweaver is co-author of the Doom novels.
I'm all for female equality, but with the releases of airplane thrillers "Red Eye" and "Flightplan" so close together, I'm starting to think that there's some kind of conspiracy to castrate both the male hero and the male villain and elevate the cerebral, anorexic woman to some kind of mythic status.
In "Flightplan," the men all seem completely powerless. Aeronautics engineer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is flying with her daughter, but when she wakes up, her daughter is missing. Having recently endured the death of her husband, Kyle panics and demands the crew search every inch of the plane. When the crew and its captain (Sean Bean) discover that Kyle's daughter isn't even on the manifest, they begin to think she's crazy and leave her in the custody of the air marshal (Peter Sarsgaard).
Before the big twist toward the end when we learn whether Kyle is imagining everything or her daughter really is missing, the men stand around like bulls waiting in a Rocky Mountain Oyster line. The air marshal spends most of his time running after Kyle as she scares everyone on board by dashing around demanding the crew search this place and that. The Captain gets out of his chair just long enough to twiddle his thumbs and fret over the decision to search the plane or not. Then, of course, there's the dead husband, who helpfully committed suicide. Then we get the obligatory argument about racism between some hillbilly and a couple of Arabs on the plane. Every guy is either psychologically or physically limp.
There's nothing wrong with a strong female hero nor is there anything wrong with reinforcing the idea that women aren't always going to cower in the face of danger, but I can't seem to shake the feeling that my cinematic testicles are in a vice of political correctness making it all but impossible for a strong man to even help, much less rescue, a woman in trouble. It suddenly seems something more than a coincidence that Cillian Murphy, who plays the bad guy in "Red Eye" is next starring as a transvestite in "Breakfast on Pluto." That he makes an incredibly believable woman makes it all the more disturbing.
Nobody ever believes Kyle because nobody can say for certain that they ever saw her daughter. Ultimately, the film tries to make a statement about our self-absorbed culture and our collective inability to connect with those around us. Kyle's daughter goes missing because nobody cares.
Self-absorption can sometimes be a good thing: Had I been more self-absorbed during this film, I might not have suffered so much during the slow descent of "Flightplan."
(Mr. Cranky reviews this sucky movie)
Wow!!!
Apparently, in order for females to have equality (according to the feminists), one must first emasculate the males...or give them a vasectomy.
Michael Savage was right about one thing: Hollywood is a den of vipers.
what about Vin Diesel in The Chronicles of Riddick?
I think that came out after The Incredibles....
Vise.
I have to admit that even before reading the body of the article I answered in the negative the question in its title. The very reason the War on Terror is still in progress is that all of Europe and one half of Americans no longer differentiate right from wrong and good from evil. Had they known the difference, all recent wars --- from Vietnam onwards --- would've been won. We have the capacity to win but for almost one half of a century were unwilling to do so. Why? Precisely because we no longer see evil as such. Evil does not care, of course, and becomes only emboldened. In 2001, it started to fight us on our own soil.
The question you posed lies thus at the heart of the matter. And it is answered in the negative because we are unable to see not only propaganda for what it is but even much greater evil.
I think *vice* was funnier.
You refer, of course, to the House Committee on Un-American activities, the amphibole for which (HUAC) was coined by the comsymps and their sycophants in the media to refer back to the committee itself.
As far as the anti-American drift in the movies and Holyweird in general is concerned, I believe the public is wising up more and more. Thanks for helping that process along.
No poster as yet has commented on the point of your article. Maybe they're all Bushies who believe that the Islam is the Religion of Peace.
Actually, the failure of Hollywood to reflect certain real-world villainies began during the generalized anti-americanism of the 1960's; communism was treated as pretty much an equivalent political system. The bad guys were (1) capitalists and (2) all those millions of seemingly immortal Nazis who were threatening BelAire with immanent Anschluss.
"No poster as yet has commented on the point..."
Read 8 and 10, you dummy.
Thanks for the idea.
It's Friday night and my girls want to watch a 'toon.
"The Incredibles" is one of their (and mine) favorite movies of the year. Strong role models all-around and a great movie.
I agree with you,but there is not a lot we can do besides boycott these films,and of course discuss this stuff(like FR)thereby spreading the word.
Why?
You really wanna know why?
Here's your answer!
You just have to be discriminating. I rented a movie the other night, and it was great. It was called "True Grit."
I think people are getting their knickers in a twist WAY too much about this film. It's just a movie!
Most films are propaganda, some a little less subtly than others.
If anyone doubts the power of movies as a medium for propaganda, I refer you to the Entertainment Industies Council's website at http://www.eiconline.org/. This is a well-funded organization dedicated to inserting propaganda into movies and TV.
Wikipedia also has an excellent article on propaganda at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
No, SuziQ, it's never "just a movie."
JNS
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