The three-hour "political analysis of the causes and consequences of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon" has already been shown in Britain where it won a BAFTA award, and will be trimmed to 2 1/2 hours for Cannes.
According to the Guardian:
This is a common conceit of artists and intellectuals. They are convinced that their work really matters, so in their minds the teachings of men like Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss are "massively influential" on society and culture. Such an interpretation, needless to say, is grossly simplistic and self-serving to the point of being delusional, but it is also useful, one might say necessary, to an "artist" who wishes to produce a dramatic conspiracy narrative. Such stories require simplistic causal links.His documentary took as its starting point the year 1949, when two men who would prove massively influential to the establishment of Islamic terror groups and to the neo-Conservative American tendency that now dominates Washington were both in the US. One was an Egyptian school inspector called Sayyid Qutb whose ideas would directly inspire those who flew the planes on the attacks of September 11. Qutb's summer visit to Colorado revolted him so much - he could see nothing there but decadent materialism - that he went home thinking that modern liberal freedoms were eroding society's bonds and that only a radical Islam could prevent its destruction. Meanwhile, in Chicago, an obscure political philosopher called Leo Strauss was developing a similar critique of western liberalism (though without the Islamic answer to individualism's purported ills). He called on conservative politicians to invent national myths to hold society together and stop America in particular from collapsing into degraded individualism. It was from such Straussian reflections that the idea that the US's national destiny was to tilt against seeming foreign evils - be they the Soviet bloc or, later, fundamentalist Islam - was born.
But the film is even more incendiary for its analysis of what Curtis controversially insists is the largely illusory fear of terrorism in the west since 9/11. Curtis argues that politicians such as Bush and Blair have stumbled on a new force that can restore their power and authority - the fear of a hidden and organised web of evil from which they can protect their people. In a still-traumatised US, those with the darkest nightmares have become the most powerful and Curtis's film castigates the media, security forces and the Bush administration for extending their power in this way. "It has really touched a nerve with people who realise something is not quite right with the way terrorism has been reported."
Similarly the second notion he propounds [one familiar to those who listen to Kennedy speeches, or read the transcripts since the words are often unintelligible] that Blair and Bush manipulated the terrorist threat so as to facilitate coups is a gross misrepresentation of a complex reality. But it certainly is dramatic and so embodies an "artistic" if not an actual truth.
Remember, artists are liars. They misrepresent the world so as to achieve specific effects.
Such misrepresentations are also politically useful. They provide a simplistic framework upon which people can hang their inchoate fears and desires. Curtis and other denizens of the left want to scare people -- to convince them that "a hidden and organized web of evil" (or is it "a vast right-wing conspiracy?") has taken control of their societies and is manipulating their lives. It is Curtis and his supporters, not the subjects of these hit pieces, who are the real purveyors of nightmares.
The article notes that the film is unlikely to appear on American networks, but last night it was shown on al-Jazeerah and will be shown in France this weekend.
Read it here.
Sigh!
No comments:
Post a Comment