Politics with your Popcorn?

By Naeem Mohaiemen, AlterNet. Posted June 21, 2004.

Agent Hubbard: What if what they really want is for us to ... put soldiers on the street and -- and have Americans looking over their shoulders? Bend the law, shred the Constitution just a little bit? Because if we torture him, General, we do that, and everything that we have bled and fought and died for is over... [Denzel Washington, The Siege (1998)]

Michael Moore: Oh, well, see, there's not that many Congressmen that've got kids over there, and in fact, only one. So we just thought maybe you guys should send your kids there first. What do you think about that idea? [Michael Moore to Congressman John Tanner, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)]

On first glance, the publicity over Fahrenheit 9/11 gives the impression that the local multiplex is about to be deluged by a flood of pre-election political manifestos -- which may well be the case. But considering the current historical moment, the slate of political films is still missing one crucial, if ironic, element: fiction.

The U.S. is engaged in two major foreign wars, one of which has disintegrated into a full quagmire; U.S. foreign policy, formerly expansionist and covert, now expansionist and bumbling, has enflamed anti-American passions worldwide; GIs are coming home in body bags; and the President is engulfed by scandals surrounding CIA reports, leaks of agents' names and crony deals to Halliburton. In a similar moment in the mid-1970s, American theaters were filled with dark, political and anti-establishment narratives. By contrast, Hollywood's fictional fare in 2004 is mostly distraction and fluff. Several projects are bucking the trend, however, and though they're all in the historically un-sexy documentary genre, that genre itself is undergoing a renaissance.

Michael Moore's latest offering is grabbing headlines for the moment, but coming up quietly behind him are other, lower profile offerings. Among these are the John Kerry biopic Tour Of Duty; Silver City, John Sayles' fictional account of an ultra-conservative political dynasty; The Hunting of the President, which investigates the impeachment of Bill Clinton; You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, a profile of historian and peace activist Howard Zinn; and Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War. Uncovered, which doesn't open in theaters until August, has already sold an astonishing 100,000 copies online.

Premiering at the Human Rights Film Festival is the anti-capitalist screed The Corporation and Persons Of Interest -- a hard-hitting look at the post 9/11 round-up of over 5,000 Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslim men (of whom, only three men were ultimately charged, and two of those were acquitted). From the entertainment end of the spectrum comes a major studio release, The Yes Men, which follows the antics of a rabble-rousing crew of political performance artists who manage to crash WTO meetings disguised as entrepreneurs. In one scene they demonstrate an indispensible contraption for the modern CEO -- an outfit that includes a monitor for his/her overseas sweatshops.

Entering its second month in New York theaters is the searing Control Room, a documentary by Jehane Noujaim (co-director of another fly-on-the-wall masterpiece Startup.Com). Tracking the Al Jazeera TV network through the first phase of the Iraq invasion, the film provides a masterful dissection of modern media's role in fomenting jingoism, hiding casualties, and falling into obedient sycophancy. The action takes place in the U.S.-military-manned CentCom (Central Command), where information is disseminated on the war's progress. The Al Jazeera correspondents' suspicion and cynicism stand in marked contrast with their Western colleague's docile head-nodding. When an Al Jazeera correspondent is killed by US fire, in an incident perceived in the Muslim world as reprisal for showing footage of captured American GIs, all the reporters in CentCom are united in grief and anger. But when the cameras start rolling, CNN correspondent Tom Mintier's questions seem oddly restrained -- tacitly acknowledging an invisible line that can't be crossed.

Control Room's singular achievement is in bringing out the invisible voices of the Muslim world. Veteran Al Jazeera journalists Hassan Ibrahim and Samir Khader give voice to the widening gulf that separates American self-perception from the rest of the world's views. As Americans roll into Baghdad, US television broadcasts images of the stars and stripes being draped over Saddam's statue (a PR miscalculation that was later reversed). Meanwhile, Al Jazeera broadcasts images of an angry Iraqi man shouting at the camera, "America, You lose! You lose the war." Staring at the latter image, Hassan wryly notes, "And these are the Shias who are 'receiving the Americans with flowers.'" At another point in the film, frustrated by an endless barrage from US media, Hassan says, "You are the most powerful nation on earth, I agree. You can defeat everyone, I agree. But don't ask us to love it as well!"

Naeem Mohaiemen is Editor of Shobak.Org and Director of the documentary Muslims or Heretics?.

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