{"id":457,"date":"2015-01-03T23:55:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T23:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=457"},"modified":"2015-01-04T08:44:47","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T08:44:47","slug":"political-cinema-and-the-fine-line-between-depicting-and-inciting-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/political-cinema-and-the-fine-line-between-depicting-and-inciting-violence.html","title":{"rendered":"Political cinema and the fine line between depicting and inciting violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Il se fit un abondant silence \u00e0 l’entour, et la majeure partie du reste du monde se mit \u00e0 compter pour du beurre.<\/em><\/p>\n

There was an abundant silence\u00a0around, and most of the rest of the world began to count for nothing.<\/p>\n

Boris Vian<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Movies are considered a part of the arts in modern liberal democracies, and are not officially subjected to state censorship. In reality, I would argue\u00a0they\u00a0are subject to state and corporate censorship, although it consists of selectively hyping\u00a0and showing the forms of political cinema that are most beneficial to the establishment and cutting out parts of movies that are uncomfortable to the present regime and its corporate backers.<\/p>\n

Possibly the greatest figure currently alive in political cinema today, I believe, is Oliver Stone, although I regret not studying political cinema and Stone’s contributions in greater depth. Specifically, Stone’s\u00a0approaching\u00a0movie adaptation of The Snowden Files<\/em><\/a> is almost certain to enrage the US political establishment by accurately capturing the noble character of Edward Snowden’s actions in rebelling against the excesses of the surveillance state. I mention this, because of a\u00a0subject I addressed in recent posts: that of\u00a0The Interview<\/em> movie which attempts to ridicule and provoke the North Korean government, as well as encourage and glamorize specific actions like assassination\u00a0to overthrow\u00a0the North Korean regime. The movie did cross\u00a0the line from entertaining violence to actually inciting it<\/a>, and this was the intention, as is clear in leaked emails exposing the intent of the movie’s producers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US government better be prepared for exactly the same bombardment with political cinema against its own institutions via\u00a0Oliver Stone’s movie about Snowden, and not take the hypocritical step of resorting to censorship right after defying North Korean censorship. I believe that bombardment should be even more intense than simply saying the whistleblower was in the right.\u00a0How much fun\u00a0would be a movie or video-game about spraying bullets at\u00a0the fat faces of the heads of the NSA and CIA? Surely that incitement is just entertainment\u00a0too, if we’re allowed to make and watch movies about killing another country’s leader?<\/p>\n

I believe that Snowden’s actions have been\u00a0among very\u00a0few good things that ever took place in the halls of power of the US Intelligence Community, and are an example for all Americans to follow as they recognize the cruelties and excesses of a dwindling, isolated\u00a0political elite directed fearfully against the American public. I see in Oliver Stone’s movie a fantastic opportunity to help influence and raise the millennials who are going to hold the reins of America’s technological future. In particular, I hope that the movie is seen by teenagers in the United States\u00a0and has a strong impact on their formative politics.<\/p>\n

Oliver Stone’s cinema has been consistently anti-establishment. For instance, I have noted that Stone’s controversial\u00a0Natural Born Killers<\/em> (1994) has engendered reactions of censorship in liberal democratic countries, and is accused by many of encouraging violence, including against the authorities. When we consider, however,\u00a0the excesses\u00a0of violence exerted by the US police against the public and most of the entertainment\u00a0media’s servile defence of such murder, it seems hard to believe that encouraging the murder of police officers in entertainment media including the Grand Theft Auto (GTA)<\/em> videogames and movies like Natural Born Killers<\/em> could be less harmful than encouraging the assassination of a foreign head of state like The Interview<\/em>\u00a0movie does.<\/p>\n

A challenge to those who would\u00a0oppose North Korean style censorship in the liberal democratic countries: I submit to you that if\u00a0a movie such as The Interview<\/em>\u00a0deserves to be\u00a0allowed\u00a0to encourage the assassination of heads of state like Kim Jong-un in popular entertainment and make a joke of it, similar forms of political cinema\u00a0should be allowed to\u00a0glamorize the killing of actual American police and other security officials, the mass lynching of specific police officers in response to\u00a0their murderous tendencies. In fact, I believe a\u00a0revenge movie specifically and blatantly encouraging the assassination\u00a0of Officer Darren Wilson over the murder of Michael\u00a0Brown would be a great success at the box office, more so than The Interview<\/em>. Why is the now retired Darren Wilson so much better than Kim Jong-un, that he should not be made to pay and subjected to entertainment media encouraging his death? I simply call for consistency. Let’s not say death to a specific state like North Korea via\u00a0political cinema, but death to the state everywhere. Why should one regime be shielded from assassination threats and mockeries while another is subjected to these? If they’re so superior to\u00a0Kim Jong-un, why\u00a0are\u00a0the American government and its officials special and so fragile that the people can’t fantasize about shooting or blowing up\u00a0them\u00a0too?<\/p>\n

Once again, I don’t argue here\u00a0either\u00a0for total information freedom or for censorship, but for erasing all respect and special status afforded to regimes without legitimate reason.<\/p>\n

\n

By Harry J. Bentham <\/a> \"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Il se fit un abondant silence \u00e0 l’entour, et la majeure partie du reste du monde se mit \u00e0 compter pour du beurre. There was an abundant silence\u00a0around, and most of the rest of the world began to count for nothing. Boris Vian Movies are considered a part of the arts in modern liberal democracies,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,353,68,17,313,72,127,153,18,66,40,45,15,69,89],"tags":[354,284,1483,361,323,357,315,359,20,356,362,314,319,355,360,358],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antistatism","category-censorship","category-conflict-2","category-edward-snowden","category-entertainment","category-international-relations","category-journalism","category-lordre-2","category-nsa","category-politics-2","category-publishing","category-techno-progressivism","category-us","category-violence","category-wikileaks","tag-censorship-2","tag-cia","tag-edward-snowden","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-natural-born-killers","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korean-government","tag-nsa-2","tag-oliver-stone","tag-political-cinema","tag-the-interview","tag-the-interview-movie","tag-the-snowden-files","tag-us-government","tag-whistleblowers"],"yoast_head":"\nPolitical cinema and the fine line between depicting and inciting violence - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/01\/political-cinema-and-the-fine-line-between-depicting-and-inciting-violence.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Political cinema and the fine line between depicting and inciting violence - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Il se fit un abondant silence \u00e0 l’entour, et la majeure partie du reste du monde se mit \u00e0 compter pour du beurre. 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