Posted on 09/02/2006 9:26:09 AM PDT by quidnunc
Gabriel Range is a documentary filmmaker, of whom few had heard until this week. His 2003 television production, The Day Britain Stopped, was a pioneering essay in the “fake documentary”, in which imaginary future events are synthesized in fine detail. He has now achieved fame, even before anyone has seen his new essay in that genre, Death of a President. It will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 10th, and then show on the British TV channel, More4.
The fame, or more properly, infamy, is for his audacity in making a film about the assassination of a U.S. President who is still alive. It will not be for the content of the film — as Mr Range must know perfectly well. The face of the actual George W. Bush is digitally “pasted” over that of an actor, to create the illusion of reality. This method can only reinforce the sensationalism; it can only distract from any serious narrative or philosophical premise of the film. Thus, we cannot doubt that the filmmaker’s purpose is more political than artistic: that he wants a political sensation.
Is the film a wish-fulfilment? One can go too far in psychologizing the behaviour of an artist, but it becomes irresistible in an environment where, as in Britain today, rhetorical suggestions that Bush should be assassinated have become “mainstream” and commonplace. Mr Range must at least have anticipated the criticism that his film could be a goad to an actual assassin. It starkly provides that crucial element of pre-enactment, that is the textbook conditioner of the diseased criminal mind. And in so doing, it becomes more effective than any conventional death threat.
To put this another way, the film presents, and is intended to present, a threat to President Bush’s life, in a way that gets around the law.
“Xenophobia, the hidden costs of war, and the nature of civil liberties in a hyper-media age, all come under the microscope.” I’ve extracted this line from the publicity puffery that accompanies the film. It will contain a “detective mystery plot”, about the identity of the assassin, in which a “Syrian-born” man is falsely accused. We can safely infer from this much, that the filmmaker’s political views are the glib, smug, clichéd, and indeed, asinine views we are used to hearing from the institutional Left, about the nature of “Amerika”. Needless to say, this plotline is already being flattered, by the same, as a “thought-provoking critique”.
-snip-
Rod Liddle, a newspaper and magazine columnist who also makes documentaries for Channel 4, said he thought the Bush film gave voice to a common sentiment in Britain.
"You will never, ever be able to overestimate the degree to which the British people loathe George Bush," Liddle said. "It will be a free round of drinks in every pub for the person who plays the assassin."
Liddle said there was nothing wrong about making a documentary about the assassination of a U.S. president, even if it was difficult for some people to watch.
"I don't find it particularly objectionable, but then I'm not George Bush's family," he said. "It seems to me to be a reasonable premise, even if it is uncomfortable."
(Kevin Sullivan in The Washington Post, September 2, 2006)
To Read This Article Click Here
Porno for Lefties...
That idiot is just like the liberal media twit who wondered how Nixon got elected, since everyone she knew voted for McGovern. I see British leftists are like ours with their own little echo chambers that they think represents the majority, even though they keep getting trounced in elections.
The Brits have their own Michael Mickey Mouse Moore.
It's as though most of the world has gone totally insane. They view efforts to bring peace and freedom to the world as "evil" while applauding those who would destroy freedom and lives for the slightest reason. This is worse than pre-WWII, in my opinion, and the stakes are higher.
The loudmouth Left just makes noise to make it seem as if they're in the majority. I agree with the rest of your statement, though.
All we can do now is continue to marginalize them. And I don't think it will be all that difficult - all we have to do is make sure their insanity is broadcast to the public.
"No weapon formed against GWB will prosper".....
The traps the evil leftists have spun will be a web of deceit that ensnares their own wicked schemes and possibly tools of their own destruction they make for themselves.
Bush is well within his rights to order a government-funded documentary on the benefits of killing this filmmaker.
Maybe we should have a movie made about this film producer. One in which he's killed while a nation watches. Not that I want to endorse violence or anything.
Great, great point. We are seeing the fruits of decades of a liberal education system that values two things above all things: uniformity of thought (Multiculturalism is about skin color--there is a rigorous orthodoxy that must be followed, i.e. "we're all the same under the skin"; ditto Oprah and her belief that ALL religions are basically the same)and lack of conflict/aggression (male aggression/patriarchy/etc.).
"Let's not fight" is their mantra, because in the end, hey, nothing is so important that we have to get all upset about it.
Their goal is a room-temperature world where no one works, no one argues, no one says something truly disagreeable. In other words, they long for a zombified world of consensus. I mean, as long as they don't see women being shot in the head in Afghanistan or raped in Iraq, the one who is to blame for the ugliness required to end those practices is the REAL villain. Moore's F 9/11 is the perfect example of this: He ONLY shows idyllic shots of Iraq pre-invasion, and ONLY shows horrible imagery post-invasion.
George Bush is hated because he dared turn over the nice, quiet rocks out there and exposed the bugs and scorpions living under them, and the media have gleefully covered every moment of pain such an overturning regrettably causes...yet CNN covered up for Saddam when he was raining terror down on his people, so since we didn't see it, BUSH is the source of the horrible images we see.
The news media have no time for the innocents slaughtered by Muslims for their beliefs, but they endlessly caterwaul over some men arrested in a war zone. (If only those men were Christians, there'd be not a word of complaint...)
The leftists of the world prove that after decades of leaving them to educate our children while the rest of us worked in the real world, outside academe, there are two kinds of people now. They can be labelled a multitude of ways but for this post I'll say they are Curchill People and Chamberlain People. The latter are winning.
This is worse than pre-WWII, in my opinion, and the stakes are higher.
I'm starting to think more and more that we are fast approaching something that will make WWII look like a minor skirmish.
Should be said loudly, and OFTEN... until this blows over..
I predict that the next President will be GOP, and will suffer the same.
A Dutch filmmaker who got death threats after his movie sharply criticized how women are treated under Islam was stabbed and shot to death Tuesday on an Amsterdam street.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, let's be careful.
It's easy to start sounding
like we're all Muslims . . .
Excellent post!
Hell, I've always advocated killing everyone who doesn't think just like me.
The only disagreement I have is with the comment above that they want no fights. Listen to their campaign ads. they promise to fight, fight, fight. All they do in the senate is fight. Most importantly, they refuse to go along with the tradition that we stop fighting after we count the votes. They just keep on fighting like an energizer bunny on steroids. Most of the time I can't tell what they are fighting for or about, just fighting for the sake of fighting, I think.
"Killing Bush would make Dick Cheney the NEW PRESIDENT?...
A liberal or RINOs worse nightmare.."
IMHO, the real worst nightmare for the libs is that they have to exist in the world as it is.
Poor babies are so out of touch with reality that they probably think that they only have to get Bush out of the way and we'll all be transported back to 2000, Gore will be elected and we will all go swinging down the Yellow Brick Road to Nirvana in our solar-powered dunebuggies.
As far as that Snuff flick is concerned, I'd just as soon the pukes show their little "documentary" and give every dim candidate in the country who wants them some copies to hand out. You want to see what these characters are and what they believe in, I think we should let them go right ahead and do the rest of their Full Monty.
There were people who loathed JFK too. Would Rod Liddle have bought a round for Lee Harvey Oswald? These people are so sick.
Wow. Bttt.
LoL.. So true.. The Moonbats have met the enemy and enemy IS THEM...
I'm betting this is one of the guys who wouldn't show the Mohammed cartoons and protested Falwell's call to assassinate Hugo Chavez isn't he?
Can you see presidential debates between Dick Dheney and hillary? Oh, that's a double size bag of popcorn event!
While I like Pres Bush very much, I don't know if this would be "Bad" for the country. Especially if it heats up the "war on terror".
They should do a "DocuDrama" about an abortion sniper - or would that be "insensitive"?
Let me get this straight, are you saying that Bush's assassination wouldn't be bad for the United States?
This Englishman thinks he is analyzing the current status of things in America!! How would he know?? Guess he reads the New York Times. What a pathetic bunch these Europeans are.
This Englishman thinks he is analyzing the current status of things in America!! How would he know?? Guess he reads the New York Times. What a pathetic bunch these Europeans are.
Not a question to me but the answer IS...
Answer: NO it wouldn't be bad for the U.S., his family maybe, but the U.S.. NO..
He is only one man(Bush)..
1) Cheney would be President..
2) The democrats glee would be exposed as terrorist dupes..
3) And the face of the 2006 and 2008 elections would change immeasurably..
** Bush's assassination would throw cold water into the face of Americans that think, "WE ARE NOT AT WAR".. Kind of a hard way to make that happen but it would/could work.. Some democrats are insenitive but not all are.. Not only that but it would galvanize the republicans.. into a voting block..
I nominate this for "Quote of the Day".
So this will be reported in the MSM Sept 11.
Tells me all I need to know.
Dumb bastids
THAT is some really weird thinking.
No, I don't think so. They hate him so much as a person - they would think 'he deserved it' and would be apathetic to the short time remaining of a Pres Cheney's watch. Yes, even the moderate demos. Don't think the dnc doesn't already have their talking points prepared in the hope that this does happen.
dam*, I don't even like to talk about this - so no response is fine.
>>THAT is some really weird thinking.
Look at it this way: If some islamofacist assassinated the president, would we (as a country) be taking the WOT more seriously? (I think so) would the Dem's (particularly Hillary) have a snowballs chance against an incumbent Dick Cheney? (No) Would this save lives in the Future? (I believe it would)
I as a patriot would give my life to further the interests of my country. I believe President George W Bush feels the same way. (Not that giving you life is the goal, just if necessary) Would this "Clarity" be good for the country? I believe it would, so I have to say this would not be all bad, even though it would start with a terrible act, one that is difficult to even contemplate, but the liberals have pushed me to contemplate it and it really does not help them at all.
Think about this, if they bad mouth bush after an assassination, what will happen to them? (Answer, they lose the support of the older generation for whom the dead are sacred, think Wellstone memorial, but with more teeth init)
Can you imagine a movie based on the killing of the Clintons . Now you know the Mean Streak Media would be all over the producers crying Fowl . . .
And the killer will turn out to be another Tim McVeigh, lily white militia member with a pickup truck and a grudge against the gub'mint.
And of course, the movie will paint the assassination as well-deserved and the American people as universally anti-Bush.
Then the filmmaker can get on to quickly solving the "Palestinian problem" and other world disputes now that the evil Bush is gone...
and my favorite:
"A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week." -Patton
>> "A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week." –Patton
I hadn’t heard that one, but it sounds good to me.
My favorites:
The correct quote “Violence, the least resource of the incompetent”
My Misquote:”Name calling the last resource of a liberal… Also sometimes the first.”
My father’s: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and his girl goes out with other guys.”
My father messed up once and accidentally said my tag line. (I liked it obviously)
I love saying these things to people after they have just illustrated it, without trying of course.
During the 1990's, there was no love lost on Free Republic for then-President Bill Clinton. But had a motion picture featured the assassination of Clinton during that time, I'm sure that no one on FR or any other conservative site would have condoned it.
I hope this film is never distributed in the United States.
Next day BUMP!
Gabriel Range is a documentary filmmaker, of whom few had heard until this week. His 2003 television production, The Day Britain Stopped, was a pioneering essay in the “fake documentary”, in which imaginary future events are synthesized in fine detail. He has now achieved fame, even before anyone has seen his new essay in that genre, Death of a President. It will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 10th, and then show on the British TV channel, More4.
The fame, or more properly, infamy, is for his audacity in making a film about the assassination of a U.S. President who is still alive. It will not be for the content of the film -- as Mr Range must know perfectly well. The face of the actual George W. Bush is digitally “pasted” over that of an actor, to create the illusion of reality. This method can only reinforce the sensationalism; it can only distract from any serious narrative or philosophical premise of the film. Thus, we cannot doubt that the filmmaker’s purpose is more political than artistic: that he wants a political sensation.
Is the film a wish-fulfilment? One can go too far in psychologizing the behaviour of an artist, but it becomes irresistible in an environment where, as in Britain today, rhetorical suggestions that Bush should be assassinated have become “mainstream” and commonplace. Mr Range must at least have anticipated the criticism that his film could be a goad to an actual assassin. It starkly provides that crucial element of pre-enactment, that is the textbook conditioner of the diseased criminal mind. And in so doing, it becomes more effective than any conventional death threat.
To put this another way, the film presents, and is intended to present, a threat to President Bush’s life, in a way that gets around the law.
“Xenophobia, the hidden costs of war, and the nature of civil liberties in a hyper-media age, all come under the microscope.” I’ve extracted this line from the publicity puffery that accompanies the film. It will contain a “detective mystery plot”, about the identity of the assassin, in which a “Syrian-born” man is falsely accused. We can safely infer from this much, that the filmmaker’s political views are the glib, smug, clichéd, and indeed, asinine views we are used to hearing from the institutional Left, about the nature of “Amerika”. Needless to say, this plotline is already being flattered, by the same, as a “thought-provoking critique”.
I take a dim view of documentary movie-making to start with, although I have seen a few historical documentaries, which use real footage and contemporary sound-overs to telling and useful effect -- in narrating a true story. The use of digital technology today, to clean up old imagery and sound recordings, and make them vivid and crisp, can wake us to the realization that events in the “mythologized” history of the last century, really happened.
But this technology is a Pandora’s box. Actors and digitizing tricks can be used to “reconstruct”, or fake events entirely, for audiences that have learned no solid history in our schools. Such audiences have no defences against such frauds, beyond their postmodern scepticism of everything. They are easily manipulated.
A deeper problem with cinema generally, is now brought to a head. Traditional art and drama never aspired to fakery in fine detail; it quite intentionally left much to the imagination of the viewer. The “suspension of disbelief” in a poem or a novel requires the reader’s full participation: he is the person who must flesh out the scene from the scant details provided. In doing so, he brings his moral intelligence into play, together with all his other faculties. A creative work requires a creative response.
Whereas the faked documentary is a kind of kitsch, naturally at the service of the pathological. To synthesize everything, to the tiniest plausible detail, is to leave no room for the viewer’s own imaginative response. It is to overwhelm his capacity for moral reflection. The viewer is simply used.
Mr Range’s documentary is a true “sign of the times” -- related, I think, to the extraordinary amount of fakery that was done by photographers and other media operators to “create news” from Lebanon recently. (See the website “Little Green Footballs” for a good inventory of the shams that have been exposed to date.)
People who find reality isn’t cooperating with their illusions, have often substituted a new reality instead. But they now have the technology to bring their fantasies to life.
Twice in the last six months my wife and I have had the occasion to socialize over several days with couples from the UK. Both couples were lovely, both were quite conservative, at least by UK standards.
And both couples were, beyond any shadow of a doubt, completely deranged on the subject of President Bush and his evil Christian plot to take over and destroy the Enlightened world.
Amazing, absolutely amazing.
But this technology is a Pandora’s box. Actors and digitizing tricks can be used to “reconstruct”, or fake events entirely, for audiences that have learned no solid history in our schools. Such audiences have no defences against such frauds, beyond their postmodern scepticism of everything. They are easily manipulated.
After every recent election (most of them losses for the Dems) we have to listen to their demands for "bipartisanship" and "moving forward together". As soon as the Republicans give in and try to be bipartisan, the Dems stab them in the back (filibuster).
"Both couples were lovely, both were quite conservative, at least by UK standards.
And both couples were, beyond any shadow of a doubt, completely deranged on the subject of President Bush and his evil Christian plot to take over and destroy the Enlightened world."
I read this morning in the London Times that Tony Blair's popularity was at 26%. Members of his government were going to meet with him this week to try and obtain a firm date for his resignation. I think that England continuing as a supporter and ally is coming to a close.
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