Ben Affleck in Argo: ‘At the Golden Globes, there were gongs for a heroically bearded CIA spook saving hostages and American face in Iran.’ Photograph: Allstar/WARNER BROS. PICTURES/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
The moral ambiguity of Homeland or Argo is a fitting tribute to the reality of US Middle East policy
Rachel Shabi
The Guardian, Monday 14 January 2013
America’s Middle East policy has been enthusiastically endorsed. Not at the UN or Arab League, however, but by the powerbrokers of Hollywood. At the Golden Globes, there were gongs for a heroically bearded CIA spook saving hostages and American face in Iran (the film Argo); a heroically struggling agent tracking down Bin Laden (Zero Dark Thirty) and heroically flawed CIA operatives protecting America from mindless, perpetual terror (TV series Homeland).
The three winners have all been sold as complex, nuanced productions that don’t shy away from hard truths about US foreign policy. And liberal audiences can’t get enough of them. Perhaps it’s because, alongside the odd bit of self-criticism, they are all so reassuringly insistent that, in an increasingly complicated world, America just keeps on doing the right thing. And even when it does the wrong thing – such as, I don’t know, torture and drone strikes and deadly invasions – it is to combat far greater evil, and therefore OK.
When I saw Argo in London with a Turkish friend, we were the only ones not clapping at the end. Instead, we were wondering why every Iranian in this horribly superior film was so angry and shouty. It was a tense, meticulously styled depiction of America’s giant, perpetual, wailing question mark over the Middle East: “Why do they hate us?” Iranians are so irked by the historically flimsy retelling of the hostage crisis that their government has commissioned its own version in response.
Zero Dark Thirty, another blanked-out, glossed-up portrayal of US policy, seems to imply that America’s use of torture – sorry, “enhanced interrogation” – is legitimate because it led to the capture of Osama bin Laden (something that John McCain and others have pointed out is not even true). Adding insult to moral bankruptcy, the movie has been cast as a feminist film, because it has a smart female lead. This is cinematic fraud: a device used to extort our approval.
Homeland was no better. It is the story of an American marine taken captive by a top al-Qaida terrorist who turns out, wouldn’t you know, to be Palestinian. Tortured while detained (though I’m guessing this would be bad torture, not the good kind used in Zero Dark Thirty), the marine turns to Islam and, coincidentally, to terror. Meanwhile, all the Arab and Muslim characters in Homeland – however successful, integrated, clever, whatever – are all somehow signed up to the global terror network. As Laila Al-Arian, a journalist and co-author of Collateral Damage: America’s War against Iraqi Civilians, puts it: “Viewers are left to believe that Muslims/Arabs participate in terrorist networks like Americans send holiday cards.” She describes this celebrated Golden Globe winner as “TV’s most Islamophobic show”.
When challenged, the creators of these travesties respond with pat dismissal: the director Kathryn Bigelow pointed out that Zero Dark Thirty is “just a movie”. Ben Affleck has spoken touchingly of his concern that Argo might be politicised.
But why would these renditions of US policy be seen in the Middle East as anything other than attempts to seize the moral high ground? It’s all supposed to be a massive stride forward in the portrayal of complexity, made to challenge American audience preconceptions – and a far cry from the bad old days depicted in Reel Bad Arabs, a documentary that shows how Hollywood caricatures Arabs as “belly dancers, billionaire sheikhs and bombers”, according to one reviewer.
But such slick, award-winning cinema isn’t about nuance, it’s just self-serving moral ambiguity – and in this sense it is a fitting cultural reflection of actual US policy in the Middle East.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Shabi has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East. Her award-winning book, Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands, was published in 2009. She received the Anna Lindh Journalism Award for reporting across cultures in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize the same year. She tweets @rachshabi
Editors’ Note: People in Britain seem to have far more working brain cells than those who inhabit this benighted nation. These comments —although skewed to the left as readers of the Guardian (UK) tend to be—represent a sampler of their insight. Bravo for them. _____________________ UnevenSurface 15 January 2013 8:37 But such slick, award-winning cinema isn’t about nuance, it’s just self-serving moral ambiguity Well, that’s a nice way of putting it. In other countries they call it propaganda. There’s nothing as effective as propaganda that isn’t recognised as such. BuckHucklebuck 15 January 2013 8:49 Yup. I remember reading somewhere (probably… Read more »
I haven’t seen either “Argo” or “Zero Dark Thirty” – and won’t (ever). Since according to reliable information Osama died in December 2001, the hunt and supposed capture are pure propaganda – like the “Let’s Roll” film about the allegedly hijacked plane that didn’t crash into a field in Shanksville. But I did watch “Homeland”. The series ends with the main character (hero or villain?) escaping across the border to Canada, with no final clarity as to his possible complicity in the car bombing which destroys a government/CIA building, killing some 200 people – in a deliberate echo, perhaps, of… Read more »
I would not see either movie elso. But in fact they appear to depict more openly the US-led wars against Islam than the more traditional making fun of towelheads. As these inhumane wars accelerate and have spread to Northern Africa the strategy of using Islam like Communism has successfully been used as a cover word to guide the prone public into believing that there is/was a real enemy out there. The real enemy is within, an enemy that relentlessly pushes for more power, more profits and more propaganda to reach their goal.