The government has stated this itself. As reported by Agence France-Presse, on Wednesday, December 19, for example, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (head of the Senate Intelligence Committee), Carl Levin, and John McCain wrote a letter to Sony Pictures head Michael Lynton stating:
"Regardless of what message the filmmakers intended to convey, the movie clearly implies that the CIA's coercive interrogation techniques were effective in eliciting important information related to a courier for" Bin Laden.
"We have reviewed CIA records and know that this is incorrect. "Zero Dark Thirty' is factually inaccurate, and we believe that you have an obligation to state that the role of torture in the hunt for (Bin Laden) is not based on the facts, but rather part of the film's fictional narrative."
When conservative Democrats like Feinstein and conservative Republicans like McCain have to ask liberal and hip Hollywood "feminists" to back away from right-wing representations in their films is when we might have cause to wonder about whether we have stepped into a gathering of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.
The film's depiction of the key piece of evidence coming from torture and from information that after the torture Chastain's character discovers was already there from information not extracted by torture, is not going to make the average movie goer say: "Well, see, all the torture that I just watched wasn't necessary after all!"
The average film viewer is going to follow the broad strokes of the film's narrative to conclude, and correctly so given what is being shown them and the film's sequencing, that torture produced the key piece of evidence to get bin Laden.
Greenwald has described the film's overall perspective as that of the CIA -- and I would add, minus the fact that a number of prominent and rank and file CIA officers as well as other members of the government disputed the propriety and/or efficacy of the U.S. committing war crimes to the point of some of them resigning or being ousted and demoted. So even on the level of claiming to represent the historical truth here, Bigelow conveniently omits the loud dissent within the CIA and the government over the use of torture.
The film begins with the actual audio track of cries of help from people in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the torture sequence follows that. What is any viewer to conclude, consciously or unconsciously, except that these two are intimately connected?
Whatever this film's makers' subjective intent in making this film -- and one has to wonder what they think they're going to end up with given their priviliged access to the CIA in the making of the film and their entirely false representation of aprà ¨s-torture producing the key piece of evidence that gets bin Laden -- this film is going to be understood by the vast majority of people as showing why torture is unfortunate but necessary. Zero Dark Thirty, in other words, is going to contribute further to the brutalization and degradation of not only detainees but of the American people as a whole. And as the revelations of and depictions of torture did when the nation learned of it under Bush, it will also contribute to the further violent and vile acts by individuals and groups against other individuals and groups in unsanctioned and sanctioned ways alike.
Like the argument used by the Democrats in calling for progressive-minded people to vote for Obama as the "lesser evil" versus the alleged greater evil of Romney, Zero Dark Thirty claims that the lesser evil of torture is superior to the greater evil of the numerous acts of anti-state terror depicted in the film. But the argument around the elections, just as in the war of terror (not war on terror), are both false.
When you make a film about the most politically charged event of our times (9/11) and manhunt in history (the pursuit and assassination of bin Laden), how can you truthfully claim that you are not making a political statement? How could you possibly avoid making a political statement, even if that was your express intent? And why would you falsely present how the key piece of evidence was obtained, if you were trying to be journalistically honest, which is what Bigelow and co-writer Boal claim they are doing?
I don't know if the descriptor of a "civilized lunch" is a Freudian slip on Bigelow's part. But one can readily see her notion of who the civilized are and who the uncivilized are in the film, based on her own comments and those critics who have written extensively about the film, both pro and con: the civilized ones are the ones who, despite whatever reservations they might have about using these methods, have used torture to extract information and the uncivilized ones are those Arabs who have been blowing up buildings and people. We in America can have our "civilized lunches" " as long as we're not trying to eat in a mall (Portland), a high school (Columbine, Colorado), a movie theatre (Aurora, Colorado), or in an elementary school (Newtown).
When
Bush was building the case for invading Iraq, juxtaposing 9/11 to
Saddam Hussein over and over again, he was preparing Americans to commit
atrocities upon an entirely innocent people. In that propaganda
campaign The New York Times, trading upon its liberal
reputation, played an indispensable role, particularly through Judith
Miller's articles, in greasing the path for the war upon Iraq. People
who did not ordinarily accept claims by someone like Bush were won over,
thinking, "Well, if The New York Times says Iraq's got WMD, and if the
Times says they're a grave threat, then it must be true." When liberal
and hip Hollywood types juxtapose 9/11 to graphic scenes of torture by
the "good guys," they are likewise preparing Americans to accept
atrocities as acceptable, even if stomach churning.
First posted at http://DennisLoo.com.
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