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>
Im gonna make that my new tagline...I AM JACK DAWSON!
LOL... you're gonna have a lot of FReepers asking you: Who the heck is Jack Dawson? ;-D
islam is a death cult which deserves no respect. NONE
I read Daniel Pipes "Militant Islam in America". If Americans want a good scare, they should put down Stephen King and pick up this guy. He tells it like it is, no holds barred...
You sure did; I almost threw up reading your screenplay!
BTTT
lol!!! I heard about that!! I could just see the ghost of this real Jack Dawson saying to himself, "What in the name of God is going on here??" HA HA!! Yeah that`s the only reason that movie was so huge because all the teenage girls would go see the movie a 1000 times in the theater, now all these idiot movie studios cast Leo in every damn movie that comes out thinking they`ll get another billion dollar return, Leo as Howard Hughes. Oh yeah, he looks just like him! lol! Hey, lets cast Leo in the life story of Miles Davis next..Yeah it could work! Yeah! The worst was Gangs of New York, my God was that a train wreck. I read that book years ago and loved it and I go see this movie and it`s nothing more than a Leo DiCaprio info-mercial. I don`t know how Martin Scorcese screwed that one up, all he had to do was follow the book, but I guess the studios were on his back to make it into "Titanic II in NYC". That`s why I wouldn`t doubt it in the least if Leo is cast in this 911 movie. "Come on Rose! The building is collapsing! Now sit on the edge and when we get to the bottom hold your breath from the dust! I`ve been through this before, I know what I`m doing!"
That is so true--the actress was awful in the Terminator as well. He got it right with Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in Aliens though..thank God there was no romance in that one; except maybe between Carter Burke and an alien thing.
What was the movie a few years ago where muslims on an airplane were carrying some kind of bio plague and ended up shooting the pilots? Kurt Russell was in it, and Steven Seagal was too for about five minutes. Haven't seen that one lately either.
Why does Hollywood care so much about what the slime over at CAIR think? Because the left has solidly allied itself with radical islam. I remember a sign from an anti-war protest a few years ago. "I Love NY even better without the WTC". Nice, huh? Simple minded bastards.
I agree with your point about a 9/11 movie--I cannot imagine Hollywood tackling the sheer evil of this horror. How would the people on the doomed planes, who perhaps suffered the longest torture, be portrayed? No, its too fresh and it cuts too deeply.
AND an apocalpytic christian to boot. Yeah, sure, you pinko allah suck up b--tard producers out there in ya ya land. It still makes me sick when I think of that wussy cop out ending.
LOL!
Hot tea all over the keyboard..thanks Race!
Never saw this pic before, its really funny..the look on Madam Mao's face..
Threat Matrix was another short lived TV show that had a number of episodes with Islamic terrorists.
maybe that mystery guy who's in all of the photos on 9.11 will be in the movie too? he he.
Let's not forget the Man in the Iron Mask, with dueling Leo's playing French brothers; no accent, no regional dialect from the 18th century..no, changed my mind, let's DO forget it.
Well Aliens really wasn`t King Camerons original idea as Ridley Scott did the first one, but I`m sure if King Cameron did the first we would have had the usual overblown pretentious scenes, Ripley being overly dramatic. "Whyyyy is everyone dyyying peeeep peeeep..come baaaack come baaack" He`s a nut that guy, ever since Titanic all he`s done is visit the Titanic in a submarine over and over, and obsess over the Terminator. He`s made something like 10 billion Terminator video games, that`s all he`s done since Titanic. You would think he might want to move on after 7 years, but nooo.
Post Dec 7, 1941 movies were made and no one seemed to blame anyone other than Japanese.
So insert the word Japanese where MUSLIMs are and tell me PC has not taken over this country?
bttt
executive decision
That's the one. I remember watching it and thinking that this wouldn't happen, they wouldn't kill everyone on the plane. What a naive lib I was. Trouble is, liberals still think that way, three years after 9/11.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.