I have Robert Pape’s Dying to Win sitting on my bookshelf, alongside Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris, because I feel like I don’t have the historical grasp etc to correctly analyze our “war on terror”. Because I haven’t read them yet, I’m extremely reluctant to cloud the issue with watching tv shows that seem to only propagate misinformation.
That said, Showtime’s Homeland has been getting rave reviews, and of the first 3 episodes I’ve seen, it is an excellent drama. I can’t pretend to know how accurate it is, but from a straight entertainment standpoint, I love it so far.
Can anybody here talk about it from a factual standpoint? I would love to let my guard down and just enjoy it without constantly analyzing it, but I’m having trouble doing that. I figure if I’m going to analyze it, I may as well do it correctly.
Edit:
I should say that I have not yet read Pape or Scheuer’s books. I haven’t had the time. I just say I have them to emphasize that I have a desire to be knowledgeable about the middle east and terrorism in general, and I’ve heard those are good books.
From looking at the plot summary on Wiki, all I can say is that such a plot can only come from the fevered imagination of a diseased and paranoid empire which has leeched this nation dry in its foolish pursuit of omnipotence. Al-Qaeda was created by the CIA and/or other spook agencies. Taliban was supported by ISI (CIA’s sister agency in Pakistan; likely a creature of MI6). Al-Haqqani actually is ISI.
A war more than twice as long as the second World War has been launched in which more than a million Iraqis and 10’s of thousands of Afghanis have been murdered - men, women, children and the aged. And then we make a television show adapted from a book written in the most paranoid country in the world which is running an active policy of apartheid genocide and who we support with billions of dollars in “foreign aid”. The TV show is about one of the Pentagon’s soldiers (they’re not our soldiers anymore… else why are they occupying us?) being “turned” by “the enemy.” What enemy? And how do two-bit goat-herders in the Iraqi desert “turn” anybody, let alone a US soldier?
The entire Federal apparatus is an alien element which has seized control of this country. Don’t you get it? There is no existential question of government, here. People will have a government one way or another because they generally believe they need one. So be it. But government must serve some purpose other than exploitation of its subjects, else we would be better off without one even if that meant we don’t get free roads, power lines, phone lines and water mains. The Federal government was bad news from day one but somewhere along the way it morphed from a “distant nuisance” to a jack-booted menace stomping every single American in the face 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Whatever benefits Americans might receive from having a big, powerful government that can bully other nations around cannot possibly offset its cost in wealth, lives and freedom. Not everybody has yet realized this is the case because the burden of the Federal government is very unevenly distributed. But the day of reckoning is coming. The Feds know it’s coming and they have already prepared for it. I just wish it didn’t have to come to this.
I’ve been watching since the start, but not very attentively as I am not that impressed with it.
I do, however, enjoy the irony of the show being about, wait for it… an American who had been held in captivity in the Middle East for 8 years without any charges brought against him and being tortured throughout. You know, just like hundreds of actual Middle Easterners in real life American custody. I don’t think the irony was intentional, however.
There has been a few of these terrorist focussed American tv shows last few years. The event was another one that I skipped, I have not heard of this one, just downloading it now - will check it out.
But I have low tolerance for these propaganda based entertainment shows and I refuse to watch police based or law based tv shows, which account for a large percentage of actual shows coming out of the US and the UK.
The UK had a police propaganda tv show running for three decades called, The Bill, this painted a specific picture in the minds of the British public about what the police do and how they are. They all do realy.
I prefer tv shows like, lost, walking dead, falling skies, x files (although x files is also a police based tv show, they are government agents, i will make an exception because i like the stories)
Thanks for the responses. My immediate reaction when I heard the premise of the show was “propaganda.” And I think to a certain degree it is, to the extent that almost all tv and movie treatments of the police and military are propaganda. However, this particular show does have a lot of non-terrorism related, interpersonal drama that, while slightly cliched (for examle, the POW’s wife moves on after believing him dead, ends up with his best friend, now he comes back “from the dead” and they haven’t told him) add some interesting layers. And the acting seems pretty solid.
I decided to watch it despite my misgivings because, a) I have not sworn off police shows yet, even though I recognize the absurdly cartoonish virtue and nobility that they all invariably credit to the police, so to do it with this would be inconsistent; b) this seems to be really well done. I’ve wasted my time on plenty of completely false, shoddy tv shows. At least this one has competent actors, writers, and directors. And c) the reason I posted this question is that I’m not totally convinced it’s simply a regime-praising propaganda piece. Without knowing how the series ends, at least at first some of the more sympathetic characters are suspected terrorists and some of the more ruthless, conniving characters are politicians and CIA employees. It may turn out differently, but 4 episodes in there seems to be some redeeming depth - it isn’t just 21st century cowboys and indians.
So if anybody gets around to watching it over the next few weeks or so, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I’ve seen a few episodes of NCIS and Law&Order and it’s enough to make me want to vomit. The whole “our hands are tied” schtick is unbelievable. I feel like a graphic Surgeon General’s warning should be required at the beginning of each show:
WARNING: This show may contain propaganda harmful to your well-being. 1% of all Americans are in prison. 25% of all imprisoned people in the world… are in America. America imprisons more people than any other country in the world, including Russia, China, Syria and Iran. Only 2% of all charges are actually brought to a trial. American prosecutors impose sentences on more than 90% of suspects through “plea-bargains.” This is achieved by threatening even worse sentences should the defendant be unable to prove his innocence in a trial, usually with only a court-appointed attorney against the combined legal resources of the entire State in which the defendant is charged.
If you find yourself falsely charged with a serious crime, it may be in your best interests to plea down to a 5 year sentence of which you will serve 3 years on good behavior, rather than end up sentenced 20 years because you could not afford a proper defense attorney to combat the false charges of the State’s prosecutor. In prison, the State is not liable for your treatment at the hands of other prison inmates, many of whom will belong to violent and dangerous street gangs and/or prison gangs. If you are not also a member of such a dangerous gang who can protect you, it is very likely you will be continually assaulted, raped and enslaved without legal or administrative recourse.
Didn’t mean to rain on your parade. What made me pay less attention than initially were a few over-written soap opera like moves, but it is a decent show overall. TV has really come a long way, and I really like today’s TV series and their continuous, anti-episodic approach to storytelling. Hell I’ll watch Southland again for the stories and character development, etc when next season arrives and that is a jet another ridicilously approving portrayal of LAPD officers.
Anyway, you are right Homeland is not the show that Richard Perle ordered. But if you watch attentively you will note that it is probably the anti-terrorism show Barrack Obama ordered.
Good ones albeit in Falling Skies you have had an alien apocalypse jet people are still fawning over former military personel. Also that they continue to have sharp dividing lines between fighters and “civilians” when they’re fighting an existential conflict against an alien invasion is silly.
They get the soldier to spend time with their son, so he can teach him to speak english and so he gets fond of/starts to care for the boy. And one morning right after the boy has left for school the windows of the house they`re staying in gets blown in as a result of an airstrike, so the soldier being concerned for the boy goes into the street to look for him, and find him lying on the ground dead. Later on he sees the US Vice President on television claiming that reports of innocent people being killed is propaganda.
I will eat my words if this show turns out not to be unadulterated, pro-war propaganda, no matter how much clever, pseudo-sympathetic plotline they put into it.
They were still gunning for an actual, already exiting terrorist in the vicinity (and nearly got him) so it is still consistent with the message of “mistakes were made, but they started it” + it is necessary for the greater good. Exactly the Democrat pseudo-touchy feely line.
I disagree with this. I used to think this but I have realized since that this is only true when art is politicized, that is, when the market in art is heavily controlled either through prohibition or, what is the same, subsidy.
I reject aesthetic nihilism and I think that art is something that stands on its own, wholly apart from coercion and violence and the brilliant, radiant beauty of pure art occasionally peeps through the nuclear winter of imposed artistic taste and production.
Rand defined art as “recreation of reality according to the author’s (artist’s) value judgments.” propaganda is strictly defined as creative work designed to persuade the audience to a given point of view. Given these facts, art does not become propaganda until it is exposed to an audience consisting of someone besides the artist. However, as a matter of definition, I think the statement is undeniable. Art is propaganda.
Art is simply a means to pleasure/satisfaction. Art originates not in the attempt to persuade others to see things your way but in the simple desire to have fun, that is, to enjoy pleasure. One of the female elders sings a popular tune while one of the male elders thumps a hollow log and the kids dance around the fire. There is no propaganda here, just pure pleasure for its own sake.
The need to persuade people to see things your way arises when you are attempting to lure them into accepting an unacceptable state of affairs. One method of persuasion is threats of violence. The other method is promises of joy and happiness. Both can be communicated through the appropriate application of art but art applied to propagandist ends is perverted. It is not the pure art of simple aesthetic pleasure for its own sake.
Consider adornment - a form of art which seems at first brush to be inherently propagandist. The best hunter in the tribe wears feathers or carved shells or whatever to indicate his prowess. This adornment can be used to intimidate his peer hunters and lure females. But another way to look at it is that the peers need to know who to listen to and these external regalia are signals that help them make this decision… if the guy with 150 shells around his neck says “let’s go north” and the guy with 10 says “let’s go south”, better to go north. Similarly, females need to choose a mate that she can rely on to “bring home the bacon” and those adornments help her choose from her available options.
The State perverts this signalling process and converts it to its propagandist equivalent. The carved shells no longer denote prowess; they now denote rank, which may or may not be correlated with prowess. In the process, the social signalling of true character and virtue (natural elites versus others) is destroyed and substituted in its place are the regalia of imposed rank and status.
Not all art is propaganda, only the vast majority of it is.
that sounds like the decorata are there to persuade, which would make them a form of propaganda. You threatened my thesis with this argument, however:
if we consider music to have meaning, then the male elder is communicating a specific rhythm and beat that is a component of life in that tribe or band, the female elder may not even sing any words, however she is also communicating a melody and an emotional experience. So in a political sense, they may not be attempting to persuade their audience to act towards a specific goal. But in a philosophical sense, it can be said that they are persuading their offspring to retain elements of their culture for their posterity.
I wasn’t making a value judgment on art as propaganda, I was just stating a simple fact. Whether it’s only meant to manipulate your emotions or to support some political ideology, it’s propaganda.
