American Propaganda ARTS

"They are leaking this for political reasons. They were secretly and inappropriately co-operating with these filmmakers and doing things in such a way as to generate a criminal referral."
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch

Hollywood a propaganda arm of the Government of the United States of America? Really? If we blink? Remember those films portraying the CIA as a criminal agency? Those were clearly not unctuous displays of love and affection for America's feared secret intelligence agency with its tentacles around the world to whom are attributed countless acts of criminal espionage, surely.

But there are, and have been in the past, other films which clearly seem to qualify for those who insist that there is an unhealthy symbiosis between the White House and Hollywood. On the other hand, it may just seem so. Given that most Americans are proud of their country, its superior accomplishments and its place in world history.

So there are the three Oscar contenders for the past successful season; Lincoln, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, all self-congratulatory, allowing for adulatory praise and box office munificence. Critics of portrayals of America The Perfect insist that close collaboration between Hollywood and the U.S. government point to political manipulation through America's most popular export product.

White-washing torture through nomenclature-alteration and demonstrations through the acting skills of American thespians that water-boarding does make sense; it persuades those with critical knowledge to divulge details enabling agents of defence and intelligence to protect the country from those who plan to do it ill, and do.

There are echoes, those critics seem to claim, of Nazi Germany's suborning of the arts to reflect well on fascism and the Nazi agenda, like the 1934 documentary film Triumph of the Will which the filming genius of Lennie Riefenstahl gave legitimacy to, extolling the superhuman virtues of the Aryan race. A horror border a bit much, that.

But it is fact that some films require the generous assistance of government and its agencies to lend authority and authenticity to their portrayals. Enabling Hollywood to make use of aircraft carriers, jets, tanks, soldiers - as "extras" on the set - in exchange for script approval. Script approval, in fact, gives a type of legitimacy of its own, demonstrating that the professionals aid the professionals.

Every branch of the American military, and the CIA, operates a liaison office in Hollywood. The credits rank them toward the end of those lengthy finishing displays of films like Saving Private Ryan, for example, but who even notices? Other than that they do add credibility. And a tickle of interest that such co-operation exists.

Documents received by Judicial Watch in Washington under freedom-of-information laws reveal the collaborative approach's full scope, where the CIA and the Pentagon welcomed director Kathryn Bigelow and scriptwriter Mark Boal, enabling them access to the agents who hunted Osama bin Laden, and to the Navy SEALS who planned and executed that infamous raid.

President Obama's inherited killer-drone policy in Pakistan and elsewhere, dispatching leaders of jihad and terror is given legitimacy as well, as a mechanism by which America may commit its technical resources, while saving its personnel in the critical job of making life safer for the country by eliminating vicious existential threats.

"It says, 'We have eyes everywhere, we have a vast surveillance network and we are going to find you and snuff you out, extra-judiciously, and if we have to torture we will because it works'", commented Roger Stahl, professor of communications studies at the University of Georgia.

And?