viernes, 23 de noviembre de 2012

ARGO

Título: EL GOBIERNO INVISIBLE ¿Quién manda en los EE.UU.? Kennedy, Johnson o la CIA. Autores: DAVID WISE & TOMÁS B. ROSS. Buenos Aires, Editorial Hemisferio, 1966, 413 páginas. [Original title: THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT. Authors: David Wise, Thomas B. Ross.]

Página 37:

"Mientras tanto, la CIA no desatendía el frente de la propaganda.
En agosto de 1960, el frente contrató los servicios de Lem Jones, veterano especialista de relaciones públicas en Nueva York y ex secretario de prensa de Wendell Willkie. Jones había trabajado una vez para la "Twentieth Century-Fox" y para Spyros P. Skouras, pero no lo había preparado para trabajar en una pelicula como la que estaba a punto de protagonizar.
Jones tenía un amigo en la CIA. Decidió acudir a él para estar seguro de que su representación de los exiliados cubanos convendría a los intereses nacionales. Jones le dio a su amigo los nombres de algunos cubanos en el frente.
Media hora después el hombre de la CIA le devolvió la visita. Parecía sorprendido. "¿Te has dado cuenta en lo que me has metido?", preguntó a Jones. Después, bajando la voz: "Dentro de media hora vendrá a verte un individuo que dirá que es nuestro amigo mutuo, pero este hombre deben encontrarse con Jones solamente".
Este fue el comienzo de una serie de reuniones esbozadas entre Jones y los hombres de la CIA. Algunas veces, las entrevistas se efectuaban en habitaciones de hotel; la CIA también prefería la terminal Grand Central. De ese modo Jones, a petición de la CIA, informaba a la agencia de sus actividades para el frente, actividades que a su vez eran financiadas por la CIA".

The New Military Industrial Congress Complex
http://www.iraqwar.org/micomplex.htm

jueves, 22 de noviembre de 2012

ASOCIACIÓN DE CINE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE NORTEAMÉRICA: ¿ABUSO DE PODER? (MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA / MPAA: ABUSE OF POWER?)


¡EL COMPLEJO MILITAR - INDUSTRIAL - CONGRESAL - HOLLYWOOD EN ACCIÓN!
THE MILITARY - INDUSTRIAL - CONGRESSIONAL - HOLLYWOOD COMPLEX AT WORK!

The 14 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits Filed by the RIAA and the MPAA




Why Hollywood Hates RealDVD


Why MPAA Should Lose Against RealDVD


Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world



MPAA Shows How Teachers Should Record Movies By Camcording Their TVs

from the ok-then... dept




VIDEO: MPAA’s Chris Dodd Stumps For Piracy Act

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 5, 2012 @ 8:33am PST



RealNetworks accuses MPAA of antitrust violations

In court filing, Real claims the six largest film studios violated Sherman Antitrust Act by conspiring against the software maker.


 May 13, 2009 7:27 PM PDT



Judge seals courtroom in MPAA DVD-copying case

DVD Copy Control Association says public should be barred from the courtroom because information about the technology used to encrypt DVDs is a trade secret.
 


RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.




miércoles, 14 de noviembre de 2012

FORO PANEL: "YO NO LLORO CAMARADA. ANÁLISIS COMPARATIVO DE LOS PERSONAJES JUAN Y MODESTO DEL FILME "PALOMA DE PAPEL" EN LA UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL MAYOR DE SAN MARCOS

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 "Paloma de Papel" (2003). 00:01 - 00:08 segundos.

 "Paloma de Papel" (2003). 00:09 - 00:11 segundos.

 "Paloma de Papel" (2003). 00:12 - 00:14 segundos.
Esto es muy interesante. "Paloma de Papel" presenta a los miembros de una organización terrorista prácticamente como víctimas del Estado Peruano... Dos auspiciadores de la película son: 
1) INSTITUTO CUBANO DE ARTE E INDUSTRIA CINEMATOGRÁFICOS (ICAIC) y 
2) UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNACIONAL DEVELOPMENT (USAID) (AGENCIA DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS PARA EL DESARROLLO INTERNACIONAL). 
Desde un punto de vista propagandístico o de guerra psicológica cabe preguntarse,  ¿qué objetivos políticos comunes tienen ICAIC de Cuba y USAID de los Estados Unidos contra el Perú al auspiciar un mensaje como el de "Paloma de Papel" que agrede al Estado Peruano? Supuestamente Cuba y Estados Unidos de Norteamérica son enemigos. Y Cuba pretende exportar su revolución socialista a todos los países de América Latina mientras Estados Unidos teóricamente defiende la libertad de empresa y la propiedad privada de medios de producción. Tal vez en este caso aplica la máxima "el enemigo de mi enemigo es mi amigo". Y también... "dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres". Cabe preguntar ¿qué es realmente Sendero Luminoso?... ¿Es la organización de guerra irregular de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica contra el Perú?

 "Paloma de Papel" (2003). 00:15 - 00:17 segundos.

"Paloma de Papel" (2003). 00:17 - 00:22 segundos.

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martes, 13 de noviembre de 2012

DVD - VIRGEN DE COPACABANA: SU HISTORIA Y SUS MILAGROS

¡MENSAJE MARIANO EN DVD!
¡EL AMOR SALVARÁ AL MUNDO!

Actriz estelar y cósmica MARIANA LIQUITAYA ZENTENO y el REVERENDO PADRE SEBASTIÁN OBERMAIER.

DON LEÓNIDAS ZEGARRA UCEDA: Co-guionista junto al REVERENDO PADRE SEBASTIÁN OBERMAIER de la película VIRGEN DE COPACABANA: SU HISTORIA Y SUS MILAGROS, y también director del filme. En la fotografía muestra el trofeo PERFIL DE LA VIRGEN, que también fue concedido a la actriz estelar MARIANA LIQUITAYA ZENTENO y al REVERENDO PADRE SEBASTIÁN OBERMAIER por sus contribuciones a la Nueva Evangelización.

domingo, 11 de noviembre de 2012

LA EXPROPIACIÓN DE LOS DIARIOS Y LA CRÍTICA DE CINE EN EL PERÚ 1974-1975

LA LÍNEA POLÍTICA CINEMATOGRÁFICA COMO TÁCTICA DE LA REVOLUCIÓN PERUANA PARA EL CONTROL DEL INDIVIDUALISMO EMPRESARIAL

"LA EXPROPIACIÓN DE LOS DIARIOS Y LA CRÍTICA DE CINE

Una de las consecuencias más positivas de la expropiación de la prensa diaria, expropiación que ha llegado a ser en la práctica una virtual estatización, fue la renovación de los cuadros críticos de los diarios. Sólo se mantuvieron en sus puestos Hugo Bravo, en el dominical de El Comercio, y Alfonso Latorre, quien desde hace algunos años se limita a hacer críticas eventuales en Expreso. La salida más beneficiosa - para la crítica y no para los dueños del negocio - fue la de Alfonso Delboy, quien ha continuado en meses anteriores su labor de promotor del cine comercial habitual en las páginas del semanario Equis X. El puesto de Delboy fue ocupado durante un año en 7 días del Perú y del mundo (revista semanal del diario La Prensa) por Ricardo Bedoya. Igualmente, en el período agosto 74 - agosto 75, Isaac León Frías, luego de haber hecho la crítica durante varios meses en la revista Caretas, realizó esa misma labor en el dominical Suceso del diario Correo, en compañía de Francisco Lombardi durante los primeros meses. A comienzos de 1975, Federico de Cárdenas asumió la crítica de La imagen, dominical del diario La Prensa, y a partir de agosto de ese año un equipo conformado por Juan M. Bullita, Francisco Adrianzén y Mario Tejada tomaron la página de Suceso. A su vez Bedoya pasó a escribir en La Crónica, mientras que León se encargó de hacer lo propio en Variedades, dominical de ese mismo diario, que durante el primer año de la expropiación tuvo la sección crítica a cargo de Rosalba Oxandabarat. 
La renovación de los cuadros críticos - que ha tenido dos bajas luego del último cambio de directores en el mes de abril: Bedoya y León - se manifestó de inmediato en un acercamiento mucho más serio y riguroso al cine y en un lenguaje más agresivo y polémico.
A pesar de que la situación de la prensa en los últimos meses ha reducido el alcance polémico de los textos, y que el desarrollo de la experiencia de la transformación de la prensa - frustrado en su mayor parte - no permitió un replanteamiento más radical de la función y metodología críticas, no cabe de que se dió un paso adelante bastante significativo y que por primera vez, en forma amplia, la crítica empezó a molestar: a los censores, a los distribuidores y exhibidores y seguramente a muchos de los mismo lectores habituados a los comentarios complacientes y frívolos".

Fuente: "HABLEMOS DE CINE. REVISTA DE INFORMACIÓN Y CRÍTICA CINEMATOGRÁFICA". Número 68. Año XII. 1976. Página 5. 

domingo, 4 de noviembre de 2012

EL ARGO DE BEN AFFLECK: DE HOLLYWOODISMO A IRANOFOBIA (BEN AFFLECK´S ARGO: FROM HOLLYWOODISM TO IRANOPHOBIA)

http://english.pravda.ru/history/08-11-2012/122740-argo_ben_affleck_iranophobia-0/


Ben Affleck's Argo: From Hollywoodism to Iranophobia

08.11.2012
By Ismail Salami
In recent years, Iranophobia has come to encompass a wider scope of media including cinema which is incontestably capable of exercising a more powerful effect on manipulating the audience.
Along the recent Iranophobic attempts comes Argo (2012), a 'nail-biting thriller' which according to David Haglund, takes a few liberties with the history. A few liberties, indeed! The false façade of the movie and the glorification of CIA agent Antonio Mendez (the hero, played by Ben Affleck) in particular and the intelligence apparat in general in smuggling the escapees out of Tehran gives a flimsily larger-than-life flair to the movie on the one hand and a too-good-to-be-true feeling to the multitude of audience whose minds have already been hijacked by western media about Iran.
In its idiotically crude manner, the movie attempts to describe Iranians as overemotional, irrational, insane, and diabolical while at the same, the CIA agents are represented as heroically patriotic. Argo is replete with historical inaccuracies and distortions. One might say that the titling of the film mentions it is loosely based on Antonio Mendez's account of the incidents. However, the audience barely finds any slim chance to realize this and all he believes is all he sees. Aye, there's the rub for in doing so, the moviemaker craftily sees an audience too engrossed in the movie to pay any attention to the titling. Even if he does, the audience's mind has already imbibed all the lies secretly and dastardly dictated by the movie. This is done with incredible ingenuity. For instance, in one shot, morosely veiled Iranian women are shown to be in military uniforms, a falsity also depicted in an earlier anti-Iran movie titled "Not Without My Daughter (1991)". After the elapse of thirty-odd years, you may find Iranian women in uniforms but only in female garrisons let alone on the streets. So, the depiction of Iranian women in military uniforms is but a figment of the writer's imagination.
It appears that Argo owes enormously to Brian Gilbert's Not Without My Daughter (1991) though the former is technically a step forward.  Not Without My Daughter (1991) details the story of an American woman who is married to an Iranian doctor. They live happily in America but once they travel to Iran, the man (Alfred Molina) changes from a well-bred and highly educated man to a rustic boar who decides to force his wife Betty (Sally Field) by any means of brute force to stay in Iran. No one knows the reason for such a drastic change in the man, and interestingly, no hiatus apparently takes place in the storyline. Apart from the stereotyped and caricatured view of Iranians the filmmaker delivers, he consciously pokes fun at the very customs and traditions within the Iranian community. In one scene, when Betty arrives in Iran (the movie has been ironically filmed in Israel), they slaughter a sheep as a votive offering at the sight of which Betty falls into a swoon. This incident which is part of the Iranian tradition becomes a matter of scorn for the filmmaker.
Film critic Roger Ebert describes the film as vitriolic and spiteful and says, "If a movie of such a vitriolic and spiteful nature were to be made in America about any other ethnic group, it would be denounced as racist and prejudiced."
Likewise, Argo is another dastardly attempt at fanning Iranophobia by continuing Brian Gilbert's Not Without My Daughter (1991).
Though Argo achieves some degree of success in stereotyping and demonizing Iranians, the movie is at its best a propaganda flick barely unworthy of the kudos it receives, not because it is nothing more than one big yawn but because it is poorly structured and frivolously written.
Strange as it might be, the film ingeniously seeks to sound balanced by inserting a voice-over at the beginning of the film describing how the popular government of Mossadegh was overthrown through a coup engineered by the CIA and how Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (who is erroneously referred to as Reza Pahlavi) tyrannized over people. However, the mere mention of a CIA-engineered coup is not enough to make the film sound balanced. In fact, Argo is a far cry from a balanced narration. Everything is narrated one-sidedly. Everything is depicted in black and white. The escapees are good and have to be saved with the help of the CIA agent who ridiculously functions to bring about catharsis in the audience and the Iranians are depicted as demonic and hysteric. Thus, sympathy is easily wrung from the audience in favor of the CIA agent and the entire Iranian population is tragically plunged in a negative light.
In fact, authoring a coup in Iran is not CIA's magnum opus. The intelligence apparatus has been notoriously instrumental in fomenting a war against Iran at the hands of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and bringing about over one million casualties.
According to Said K. Aburish, author of Saddam Hussein: the Politics of Revenge, Saddam made a visit to Amman in 1979 before Iran-Iraq War. There, he met King Hussein and three CIA agents. Aburish says there is considerable evidence that he discussed his plans to invade Iran with the CIA agents. As a political product of Washington's mind, Saddam was on intimate terms with the US. Aburish says that it was "a relationship of cooperation, but never trust. Neither side never trusted the other. And they helped him stay in power by providing him with electronic systems to guard against a coup d'état. They helped him stay in power by providing him with armament that he needed badly. They helped him stay in power by refusing to raise the issue of human rights. And they helped him to stay in power by supporting him during the war with Iran. So they really helped him, practically politically, practically financially, any way you can look at it."
It is very probable that Ben Affleck and the screen writer Chris Terrio are sorely ignorant of these facts or else they would have incorporated some of these facts in Argo to sound balanced.
Or would they? 
Overall, Argo is an arrant instance of Hollywoodism. In point of fact, it is yet another attempt to foment Iranophobia not only in the USA but across the world as well.
Ismail Salami

Title: HOLLYWOOD, THE PENTAGON AND WASHINGTON: THE MOVIES AND NATIONAL SECURITY FROM WORLD WAR II TO THE PRESENT DAY. Author: JEAN-MICHEL VALANTIN. 
Título: HOLLYWOOD, EL DEPARTAMENTO DE DEFENSA ESTADOUNIDENSE (EL PENTÁGONO) Y WASHINGTON: LAS PELÍCULAS Y LA SEGURIDAD NACIONAL DESDE LA SEGUNDA GUERRA MUNDIAL HASTA HOY. Autor: JEAN-MICHEL VALANTIN.

sábado, 3 de noviembre de 2012

"ARGO" INCENTIVA EL RACISMO DE HOLLYWOOD AL SELECCIONAR A BEN AFFLECK PARA QUE REPRESENTE A UN LATINO ('ARGO' FOSTERS HOLLYWOOD'S RACISM BY CASTING BEN AFFLECK AS LATINO


¿ES ÉSTE EL PROBLEMA QUE SURGE CUANDO ESTADOS UNIDOS DE NORTEAMÉRICA 
DEJA PUEBLOS SIN EXTERMINAR?

‘Argo’ fosters Hollywood’s racism by casting Ben Affleck as Latino

Quality vs. Equality: Why it's More Important to be Ethical than Entertaining



"Most people tend to think of the medium of film as nothing more than entertainment, and once upon a time I probably did too.
But it isn’t true, not in the slightest.
Film is an extremely powerful medium that affects the way our society sees the world. And as such, it has the power to inflict great hurt on people. A common saying is: “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.” So when that line is crossed, it needs to be addressed.
Argo has been praised at multiple festivals and is receiving rave reviews from critics. The subject is a true story about how during the Iran hostage crisis, a CIA agent got the ball rolling on a fake film production that saved the lives of several people trapped in that country. The movie is directed by and stars Ben Affleck.
But there is a huge problem, one that should not be happening in this day and age: Affleck is white. The real life man he is playing, Tony Mendez, is not.
A la izquierda, TONY MENDEZ, agente de la AGENCIA CENTRAL DE ESPIONAJE ESTADOUNIDENSE, siempre listo para hacer el trabajo ¿menos limpio? de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. A la derecha, BEN AFFLECK, actor y cineasta, siempre listo para representar a los miembros de la COMUNIDAD DE ESPIONAJE ESTADOUNIDENSE (U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY). Como se observa, TONY MENDEZ y BEN AFFLECK ¡son igualitos!: ¡parecen gemelos idénticos! Basta con que el gran actor que es BEN AFFLECK ponga cara de sufridito o alguito perturbado para que se transforme instantáneamente en TONY MENDEZ. De paso, utilizar una corbata roja y azul sobre terno plomo, lo ayuda a representar el mal gusto típico de los hispanoamericanos. ¡El cabello sobre el rostro le da ese aire de que su madre no lo cuida propio de todo hispanoamericano! Si usted piensa que TONY MENDEZ y BEN AFFLECK se parecen poco, le anunciamos que usted ha sido ganado por el comunismo internacional: ponga las manos sobre la nuca y espere un minuto. ¡Recibirá una llamada de la COMUNIDAD DE ESPIONAJE ESTADOUNIDENSE! (Descuide, tendrá tiempo para despedidas [rapiditas, nomás]).
When I see the true Mendez, I see someone that looks more like Esai Morales or Edward James Olmos than Affleck. There are plenty of talented Latino actors in Hollywood that could easily have played the role. Yet, once again, Hollywood chose to whitewash the part and add yet another example to its long history of racial discrimination (a UCLA study found that of all leading roles, only 1.2% go to Latino actors).
Yet, not a single review out there has mentioned this. None of them. Not even Roger Ebert, who has brought up such issues for other films. It boggles my mind that any fellow critic with a brain, heart, spine, or conscience would outright ignore this fact.
But what makes this film especially offensive is that it’s based on real events and real people.
I’m reminded of U-571, which presented the Americans as the ones who cracked the Enigma code during World War II. This is a complete lie; the code was actually cracked by the British.Argo apparently does something similar, as it portrays the involvement of the Canadian government in the operation with having less of a role than they really did. A role that was perhaps even more important than the CIA. So credit for an incredible heroic feat by a Latino man and the Canadians is now given to white Americans.
So how should a critic judge this film? Do these factual distortions taint everything else about the movie?
Yes.
If I were to review Argo, it would receive an automatic 1. Racism like this is not tolerable whatsoever, and those who perpetrate it need to be reviled.
Think of it this way: do we judge books by the grammar or the actual words? Does it matter to us if something like Mein Kampf is well-constructed grammatically and features an extensive vocabulary? That The Turner Diaries has a well-crafted plot?
The bad these works do far outweigh any redeeming qualities. In fact, it makes those qualities impossible to value. Who’s really going to enjoy the descriptive language in a passage that promotes racial genocide?
So now let’s transfer this over to film.   The heyday of obvious propaganda may be behind us, but films that serve as propaganda still get made, and that is precisely what Argo has become. By striping away the true identities of those involved, the movie only serves to foster racist attitudes, undermine Canadian valor, and could go so far as goad Americans into supporting yet another war with a Middle Eastern country.
People will see this film and believe it, and in many cases, remain ignorant of its distortions and lies.
Think about it, what sticks with an audience the most after they leave the theater? Do they discuss the acting and camera tricks? Probably only if they are very incompetent. What sticks is the overall message. And what you think about that message is what you take away from the whole thing.
Social justice is of a much higher importance than amusement. No matter how large the amount of the latter there may be, it means nothing if it’s in something that contributes to this world’s evil. When themes of morality and decency are present, then the factors that provide the entertainment can truly be appreciated."
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"And Palladino

And Palladino is a graduate of Connecticut College with a BA in film studies. He has been writing about films since the age of 14 when he first started contributing to the Home News Tribune newspaper in New Jersey. You may have seen him on 30 Rock walking by Tina Fey, and will in the upcoming films Noah and A Little Game. He has worked on the documentary for the band Leftover Crack, and more to come..."
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viernes, 2 de noviembre de 2012

ARGO: ¿Y SI DAS UN PASEÍTO Y REGRESAS LUEGO? ("ARGO: F*CK YOURSELF")

“Argo, F*ck Yourself”


by KIM NICOLINI
I have to admit that the numerous times I saw the trailer for Ben Affleck’s Argo (too many to count!), I wasn’t very enthusiastic about it. I wondered who the hell would want to watch this movie about the 1979 Iran hostage crisis as seen through a Hollywood-CIA covert operation. I tend to enjoy historical movies, but this one just looked so weird, scattered and unsure of its message. After seeing it the other night, I can say that while the movie is indeed a little weird, it is far from scattered. Its message is pretty clear and insidious. In fact, Argo is so un-scattered and linear that it is boring while also being politically dubious.
I checked out the reviews of the film before deciding to watch it. Metacritic turns up with an astonishing number of 100s from all the main press, and Rottentomatoes gives the film a 95% positive rating. I thought that maybe my initial impressions from the trailer were wrong.  Given the overwhelming positive responses to the film, maybe Argo really is a good movie. So I went to see it. I should have trusted my initial instincts. As a movie, Argo is a total dud. Besides the fact that it is an exercise in problematic revisionist history, it’s just a crappy movie. I’m fine with using historical material to create a movie that is not wedded to being accurate, but at least the movie should be good, interesting or entertaining. Argo is none of these things. It is a crappy movie with an insidious political agenda. It turns a fascinating “real historical event” into a lousy and tedious screenplay. It is so wedded to its CIA-Hollywood patriotic narrative that the film completely lacks complexity and tension. Its tiresome linear progression mirrors the film’s “Middle of the Road” politics and ultimately left me both bored and bugged at the same time.
The movie is based loosely on real events: Tony Mendez’s account of the historical rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran. “Loosely” certainly is the operative word here. Argo is a piece of cinematic revisionist history if ever there was one. Not only did I find the movie incredibly dull in its exceptionally linear narrative perspective of these historical events, but I was also more than a little annoyed by its historical manipulation.
For me, the only “good” thing about the movie was how it used the cinematic medium to recreate a historical time – 1979. Certainly Affleck’s recreation of history is visually accurate.  If you’re interested in indulging in Set Detail and Costume Fetishism, Affleck’s  cinematic recreation of 1979 fashions, technology and cars delivers the goods while also delivering six white Americans to safety. The cinematography perfectly mimics the look of late 70s film, and the integration of archival news footage lends a sense of authenticity. But there is only so much entertainment value that can be gleaned from indulging in late 70s fetishism. Once I oohed and ahhed a few times at the haircuts and television sets, I found the movie’s seemingly interminable 120 minutes so boring that I actually fell asleep twice.
The movie starts during the tumultuous riots in Iran when Iranians were demanding that Americans return their deposed Shah (Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī) for prosecution in their own country. The movie is packed with rioting American-hating Iranians with guns, yet the film has no tension whatsoever. Other than a brief history lesson in the beginning of the film and one scene in a public market when an outraged Iranian insists that the diplomats give him a Polaroid photo they shot and mentions that the Shah killed his son, the movie completely neglects to provide the Iranian’s side of the story. The film is a sanitized version of the events. It minimally alludes to the back story of the Iranian revolution but then turns the Iranians into window dressing. They are simply a backdrop that allows the film to tell its patriotic story of the American Hollywood-CIA heroic and covert operation to rescue the diplomats.
Speaking of authenticity, there is nothing authentic about the film’s manipulation of historical events. Its authenticity stops with its haircuts and its use of archival news footage and photographs to give a sense of historical accuracy. Underneath the set details, the burning American flag, and the mirror images from photo archives, Argo really is pure political propaganda. I have some questions to ask here. Why didn’t the Americans just return the Shah to Iran? Why do Americans feel it’s their right to take care of other countries’ business? Why not let the Iranians prosecute their deposed corrupt leader? What’s that old saying about “cleaning up your own backyard before . . .” Also, excuse me in advance if this sounds harsh, but given the vast number of people who have died in the Middle East (Americans, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, etc.), why should we give so much attention to 6 white American diplomats who were saved by Hollywood and the CIA? What about all the other people from so many cultural demographics who have and are continuing to be massacred, murdered and tortured daily?
Needless to say, since it is based on true events, we know the end of the story before going into the movie, and that can take the wind out of a movie’s sails if the film is not done well. But why is it that Hollywood Lefties (Ben Affleck has a clear track record for leaning staunchly to the Left) made a movie about Hollywood joining forces with the CIA to save some diplomats right before the 2012 Presidential election? Why is it that in this film the fact that the hostages were released after Ronald Reagan was elected President and during his inauguration is completely ignored? Why is it that the film ends with the stamp of Jimmy Carter (the Official Voice of American Centrist Democrats) in an actual voiceover narration? And why does it manipulate the delivery of historical information and disregard all the covert financial wheeling and dealing that led to the release of the hostages?
I’ll tell you why. Because Argo, above all else, is a piece of conservative liberal propaganda created by Hollywood to support the Obama administration’s conservative liberal politics as we move toward the Presidential election. In addition, it also primes the war wheels for an American-supported Israeli attack on Iran, so that Leftists can feel okay about the war when they cast their vote for Obama in November.
This leads me to why this movie is one big bore. It’s not a movie at all. It’s exceptionally underhanded political propaganda created by Hollywood to try to win over right leaning war supporters to Obama’s conservative liberal politics while appeasing centrist Leftists (which Hollywood embodies to the max) to feel good about voting for a President who supports war.
Propaganda, as a general rule, does not make good film. So why do so many movie critics love this movie? I seriously don’t know. If they were looking at the film critically, they would have to see it as boring and flawed.
Perhaps it is because movie critics are also part of the movie industry. The movie industry plays a considerable role in the patriotic heroics of this film. In Argo, Hollywood works with the CIA to save the day and the 6 American diplomats. Not surprisingly, Hollywood as an “institution” is the most entertaining part of the film. For the record, the movie industry is played by a tremendously amusing John Goodman and Alan Arkin. Their performances are enormously entertaining. They give us a chance to laugh, and they insert humor into this piece of propaganda as another level of making war comfortable by making it funny. Goodman and Arkin play the movie executives who work with Affleck’s Tony Mendez to create the fake film Argo as a ploy to get the diplomats out of Iran by “casting” them as members of a film team scouting for shooting locations for their science fiction film. The best part of the movie is Goodman and Arkin’s on-going joke “Argo Fuck Yourself.” After digesting the film’s conservative liberal patriotic agenda, I can pretty much say the same thing that Arkin and Goodman say about the movie they star in: “Argo fuck yourself.”
To wrap up the political agenda, the movie ends with Ben Affleck’s Tony Mendez returning home to reunite with his family as a hero, a father, and a husband. If you’re going to make a 2012 election year propaganda film, you’ve got to have your family values! Then finally, we get the reassuring “stamp of authenticity” as the film pairs photos of the real diplomats with the actors who played them while Jimmy Carter assures us that there can be peaceful resolutions to international crisis (even if a few thousand people die along the way, ahem). But the movie never talks about those people – all the ones (Iranian and American) who actually did die just because we felt like we needed to clean-up the world’s dirty laundry (so we could keep our American dirty hands in the oil supply).
Personally, I found the movie hard to stomach, not just because it is boring but because it is so ideologically problematic. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no enthusiast for Obama’s centrist Democratic politics, and never have been.  However, I do understand how the politics of this country work, so I will be voting for Obama in November. I understand that as much as my ideals would like to believe otherwise, there are only two choices in this America – More and Less Bad. Voting for the Less Bad Democrats is the only way to beat the More Bad Republicans, and I do not want my daughter living in a world where Mitt Romney is President. She has already inherited the nightmare legacy of two Bush administrations. Despite my antipathy toward Obama and his policies, I sure in the fuck hope he does win the election because the alternative makes me puke. But Democrats are not saints by a long shot, despite what movies like Argo make them out to be. Argo is just another piece of Democratic Party Packaging made to win votes by walking a conservative line that somehow attempts to be liberal while also supporting the problematic politics of the conservative liberal agenda. (e.g. It’s okay for Israel to bomb Gaza on a daily basis.)
Am I sorry that I wasted my time and money watching Argo? No, I’m not. Watching a movie like this and thinking about why people like it so much when it’s so wrong is worthwhile. I put my money on this film to win the Best Picture Oscar (even though there is nothing remotely “best” about it) especially if Obama can pull off winning the Presidential election. Since Ben Affleck has made Argo, if Obama does win, Hollywood will be so happy with itself. It can give itself a big pat on the back for helping save the American diplomats back in 1979, for supporting the conservative Democratic agenda, and for helping the Democrats win the 2012 election. Argo may be the most self-congratulatory film Hollywood has ever made, but that does not make it a good film, not by a long shot.
Kim Nicolini is an artist, poet and cultural critic living in Tucson, Arizona. Her writing has appeared in Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Souciant, La Furia Umana, and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She recently published her first book, Mapping the Inside Out, in conjunction with a solo gallery show by the same name. She can be reached atknicolini@gmail.com.