There are films that simply should not be made, and this is clearly one of them. The historical context in which a work of mass communication is created and distributed should be taken into account by morally responsible artists. It rarely is.

Bryan Cranston. and Affleck (as Mendez).

By Patrice Greanville
FILM BLITZ REVIEWS: ARGO [2012]

Synopsis

Already hailed as one of the year’s best, Argo is a 2012 American political thriller film directed by What’s so bloody wrong with this film

TIMING

Appearing in late 2012, prior to the US presidential election, and in the midst of an all-out propaganda campaign to demonize Iran and take America to war against that long-victimized country (a stealthy dirty war of sabotage and assassination has been waged against Iran for quite some time now by NATO assets and the Mossad, with probably ample support from the Gulf royal mafia), the film can only add fuel–what else–to the flames. This film, under the guise of a thriller, can only exacerbate anti-Iranian feeling in America and elsewhere, and, in passing, perhaps as an unwitting bonus, give the sinister CIA a cuddly wink of approval.  Which is exactly what you’d expect from nincompoop liberals like Affleck and Clooney.

MISDIRECTED TALENT

As film-makers Affleck (just check out The Town, a taut, absorbing heist thriller he helmed in 2010) and Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana) are on solid ground.  Their acting, producing and directorial chops command respect and they are still maturing as artists. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for their political vision, or shall we call it…tact? For what kind of self-indulgent blindness causes otherwise smart individuals like Affleck and Clooney to suddenly become oblivious to the possibly harmful social and political repercussions of their work?  We’re not talking here about being blind to issues like widespread hunger or gay rights violations, which, as card-carrying centrist liberals, both vociferously (and correctly) agitate against. With vehicles like Argo they’re messing with international politics, with the laws of the universe…entering the sphere of grand propaganda, and serving as clueless handmaidens to US foreign policy, especially when they clamor for intervention for “humanitarian reasons” in Libya, Syria, Darfur, etc. (the latest Hollywood fad), thereby providing cover for Washington’s own criminal agenda in precisely those regions.  Clichéd as it sounds, as far as the ruling cliques are concerned, if Hollywood liberals didn’t exist they’d have to be invented.

BAD CELLULOID

Argo is bad cinema. Not qua technique, nor acting, nor any of the many other categories by which a complex work like a film is normally judged. Argo is bad because it is a toxic social product. By raising still higher the probability of a horrendous war in the Gulf, by glorifying what Western intelligence agencies actually do in our name, Affleck and Clooney are not doing us any favors, and no amount of entertainment can justify such undertakings. If they really sat down and thought about it perhaps they might finally get it, but I doubt it.  Insulated, privileged creatures like big Hollywood celebs are largely immune to the deeper political truths that define the planet’s current dilemmas. In any case, whatever Argo’s cinematic value, this is a film to avoid. Political obtuseness, artistic vanity, or worse—witting complicity with the forces that are bringing this poor world to a tragic end—are not to be rewarded.

Of course, as usual, I probably am pretty much alone in thinking this way.

The Greanville Post.

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The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel
By Steven Jonas
(Punto Press, Winter 2013, Revised and Expanded Edition)
NOTE: Advanced excerpts of this book have been published by the author on various venues, including Truthout.org, The Greanville Post and other sites. See for example, The 15% Solution, Serialization, 8th Installment: Chapter Seven 2005: The Morality Amendment.  For more details contact the author or the publisher.

Ralph Reed, first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s.

Reminiscent of It Can Happen Here and The Iron Heel, the 15% Solution, a complex novel about a likely future in the US, warns us eloquently about the dangers of religious fascism in the new world—a threat at present firmly encapsulated in the new Republican Party. The author visualizes a gradual takeover of the American government by Christian zealots and their prompt annihilation of the American Constitution, all perfectly prefigured in these fanatics’ own declarations. A number of American sociologists, historians and journalists have argued that American Christofascism is an old phenomenon in the United States, a nation born out of transplanted religious fervor. Chris Hedges, among others, has persuasively shown that religious authoritarianism first reared its head during the Great Depression, suggesting that the tendency is latent in American culture, and, like a dormant virus, can be detonated by profound social dislocations. In Steven Jonas’ view, the demise of what remains of American democracy is a long announced political cataclysm, but, inexplicably, the alarms continue to fall on deaf ears.  Packaged as fiction, this volume is a serious new effort to shake the population out of its lethargy before time for effective action runs out.—Branford Perry, Blitz Reviews, The Greanville Post

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