Posted on 01/06/2005 12:59:23 AM PST by kattracks
The war on terror has not been the subject of a single American feature film nor, so far as I know, is there one in the works. But television is proving a bit braver and things should get interesting on Sunday, Jan. 9, when Fox begins a new season of its action show, called 24.
Why the absence of movies on the current war? Jack Valenti, then-head of the Motion Picture Association of America, once replied with questions of his own:
Who would you have as the enemy if you made a picture about terrorism? You’d probably have Muslims, would you not? If you did, I think there would be backlash from the decent, hard-working, law-abiding Muslim community in this country.
That’s what some call a pre-emptive cringe. Others call it dhimmitude.
In any case, the most recent big-budget movie to deal with terrorism was 2002’s Sum of All Fears (“27,000 Nuclear Weapons. One Is Missing”), based on a Tom Clancy novel of the same name. The novel had Arab terrorists setting off a nuclear device at football’s Super Bowl but the movie, under pressure from Islamist organizations, features neo-Nazi terrorists. (“I hope you will be reassured,” Director Phil Alden Robinson wrote in early 2001 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs, and I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination.”)
In an review
of recent movies, Jonathan V. Last finds that, “If anything, the PC pressure has been upped since the war on terror began.” The first break in the silence came in mid-2004, when The Grid, a TNT mini-series, took on radical Islam. Last termed it “the bravest, most-daring piece of entertainment in years,” precisely because Tracey Alexander and Brian Eastman, its executive producers, did not whitewash all forms of Islam.
An excerpt from The Grid’s second episode, concerning a Lebanese national named Fuqara, arrested as he tries to flee the United States after trying to murder an FBI agent, gives its flavor. Fuqara is interrogated by Agent Canary while his attorney tries to stop the proceedings:
Agent Canary: Mr. Fuqara, who ordered you to commit the assassination?
Fuqara: (Mutters in Arabic.)
Fuqara’s Attorney (to Agent Canary): Can we have a moment outside? (The two exit the room.) Don’t you dare threaten him with a rend writ.
Agent Canary: He has information about planned attacks here that could threaten thousands of American lives.
Fuqara’s Attorney: And that gives you the right to summarily dismiss Mr. Fuqara’s rights? Hey, why stop there? Deport all the Muslims in America to win your war!
Agent Canary: I might suggest some rights stop at mass murder.
Fuqara’s Attorney: They don’t. And until there is an amendment to the constitution to that effect, I will protect Mr. Fuqara’s rights.
A second break will come in a few days, when the Fox Channel’s 24 shows four episodes depicting an Muslim family as coming to the United States solely to implement attacks against Americans. To do so, they masquerade as just folk. Here is how Jim Finkle of Broadcasting & Cable describes them: “One of the villains is a Walkman-toting, bubble-gum-chewing teenager who fights with his conservative Dad about dating an American girl and talking on the phone.”
But this is a disguise.
The young man also helps his parents mastermind a plot to kill large numbers of Americans that begins with an attack on a train. Over the breakfast table, the father tells his son: “What we will accomplish today will change the world. We are fortunate that that our family has been chosen to do this.” “Yes, father,” his son replies.
The terrorists manage to take the secretary of defense as a hostage; and the movie climaxes with the secretary shown on a gruesome Internet video like those coming out of Iraq, then tried for “war crimes against humanity.”
Predictably, 24 has the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s lead Islamist outfit, in a tizzy. CAIR spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed complains that “They are taking everyday American Muslim families and making them suspects. They’re making it seem like families are co-conspirators in this terrorist plot.”
Melanie McFarland, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s television critic, has no patience for such whining: “this is 24, OK? Anyone who watches it knows the show borrows aspects of real nightmares to drive its plots, paying little attention to political correctness.”
But there is another reason to stick with the plot as it is. Nearly every terrorist suspect in the West is said to be a regular guy or a wonderful gal, as I have previously shown. The adjectives applied to Sajid Mohammed Badat, a Briton, are typical: “a walking angel,” “the bright star of our mosque,” “a friendly, warm, fun-loving character,” “a friendly, sociable, normal young lad, who had lots of friends and did not hold extreme views in any way.” Despite those raves, he has been indicted for helping shoe-bomber Richard C Reid to blow up an airliner and will face trial on conspiracy charges (he was found with parts for more shoe bombs like those Reid used).
Just last week, the Seattle Times reported on a Saudi now being deported from the United States:
To his co-workers at the University of Washington School of Nursing, Majid al-Massari was a happy guy who bounced down the halls and seemed like a "big teddy bear." What his friends didn't know about the burly, bearded 34-year-old computer-security specialist was that he had helped set up a Web site for a group linked to al-Qaida, quoted Osama bin Laden in his own Internet postings, lashed out against American policies on his father's London-based radio show and had landed in the sights of U.S. terrorism investigators.
This sort of surprise happens with such consistency that I am tempted to generalize: On arrest, every single Islamist in the West is initially hailed as a delightful person, and never as a hate-filled brooding loner.
So, hooray for Fox for portraying reality; and may it not cave to the Islamists.
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).font>
Don't forget JAG, which has also dared to show Muslim terrorists.
I heard Hollyweird is working on a movie about 911. Ugh, I can just see that; Leonardo DiCaprio and some girl saying standing on top of the WTC with her saying "I feel like I`m flying" while some incredibly awful Celine Dion song plays in the background.
"24" ping
I heard Hollyweird is working on a movie about 911. Ugh, I can just see that; Leonardo DiCaprio and some girl saying standing on top of the WTC with her saying "I feel like I`m flying" while some incredibly awful Celine Dion song plays in the background.
This time he'll be a hotshot bond trader and she'll be an immigrant admin. assistant he meets in the elevator. They'll have been pursuing a torrid romance much to the dismay of his too-perfect, blonde WASP fiance and his blueblood parents. They secretly marry and 9/11 happens just when they plan to elope. There'll have to be an endless, interminable dramatic scene in smoke-filled offices and up an down crowded stairwells as they seek each other out and then struggle to escape. He runs back to help an injured co-worker and is killed. She is carrying his child and the movie takes up when a documentary crew is interviewing survivors for a 75th anniversary film (in Smell-o-Vision)about 9/11 and... Dang! These scripts just write themselves. Perhaps I missed my calling.
How long is it before the FCC starts fining television programs for 'hate speech'. CAIR might want to get some pointers from Brent Bozell and his PTC since they're the experts; maybe they could even work together - then they could really clean-up tv.
lol! It will be like that! And of course there will be no smoke just like all Hollywood movies when it comes to fires in buildings. The hallways will be ablaze with fire but the people will be able to see just as clear as day and the fire will go on and on for hours like a campfire. Then being that it is Hollywood they will of course blame it all on Bush "Where is the President??!! What? By God man! What do you mean he is reading to school children??!!"
Also Pax's show Sue Thomas show has shown Muslim's as terrorist.
A few years before 9/11 the terrorist in The Siege were Islamic, even had the Muslims being put in internment camps because of fear in NYC. Haven't seen the movie in years, but I think it was the US's and CIA's fault that the terrorist went on the rampage...your typical Hollywood take on the subject.
Regent Entertainment might make a movie on my book, so don't tar all of Hollywood with the same brush.
remember the stink a few years ago when "true lies" showed terrorists praising allah and planning to nuke usa? the arab organizations went nuts. yet here we are years later, facing the same situation.
It'd be the OTHER 98.4%!!!!!!!
Roosevelt put the Japanese in internment camps and he was the champion of Liberalism.
He also had it right, up to the point of letting the Nazis kill Jews for five years.
Anti Semite B&^%ard. Just like the rest of the "inclusive" Libtards.
ha ha! Yes, the fantastic acting.."Jack..Jack..come back Jack..." then she grabs the whistle "peeep peeep peeep" as the building collapses. I never understood why James "I`m King of the world" Cameron would go through all that trouble to re-create the Titanic, to even be meticulous about the color of the paint in the hallways, then blow it all on two idiots who couldn`t act themselves out of a paper bag, but then I notice he does that in most of his movies. He just makes the acting horrible, like Mary Elizabeth Mastriantonio (however you spell her name) in The Abyss. What was that all about? "Oh Bud you are back..I am Mrs. Brigman" Aiiie! CRINGE!!
this was discussd
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1310910/posts?
but worth the renewal
I saw that movie.. That is a correct assesment.. It was our fault that they are blowing up NY.
One thing wrong in the article. The terrorists in "The Sum of All Fears" were always neo-nazis, even in the book. Just changed the governments and ****ed with the timeline in Jack Ryan's life (in the movie he wasn't Dr. Ryan yet and wasn't married yet, but he was in the book, and the Soviet Union still existed in the book, yet it was the Russian Federation in the movie--although the USSR still existed after he became dr. ryan in "The Hunt for Red October.")
More than 100 million were left homeless in the United States when the giant wave rushed ashore just eleven hours after a 9.0 Richter scale trembler jolted the mid-Atlantic. Mr. Al-Zaquri is quoted as saying, "Praise be to Allah. He is destroying the infidel for us. It would be Allah's will if all 100 million died."
United Nations Minister of Disaster Relief, Jan Englund of Norway, the only country to voluntarily join Hitler's Third Reich, said that the atheist, nihilist, socialist countries of the European Union would forego any disaster relief out of respect for their Muslim populations.
Mr. Englund emphasized the scope of support from he and fellow UN bureaucrats for Muslims. Mr. Englund said, "One must understand that we are giving up the opportunity to divert billions of dollars in aid money into our private Swiss bank accounts and to me, that is a sacrifice unparalleled in public service history."
Um... which book were you reading? My copy has the conspiracy primarily headed by Islamic terrorists, with technical assistance from Soviet-era holdout East Germans, and stateside assistance from an "American Indian Movement" type. Not a single neo-Nazi to be found anywhere...
There were plenty of mid-east / muslim terrorists in movies pre-9/11, as much of a cliche as Russian gangsters.
With regard to putting 9/11 front and center in a Hollywood movie, I think it'd be a mistake. It's too recent, the wounds are still fresh, and any commercial treatment - CGI flames and the falling towers - would [IMHO] be pretty tawdry. 9/11 showed nearly all disaster / action movies to be hollow. Why play on that emotion now when the emotion is still real?
But I am confused and cut up, surprised that even thinking about it has had such an effect. Hollywood so rarely gets it right.
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