Posted on 09/02/2006 9:26:09 AM PDT by quidnunc
Gabriel Range is a documentary filmmaker, of whom few had heard until this week. His 2003 television production, The Day Britain Stopped, was a pioneering essay in the “fake documentary”, in which imaginary future events are synthesized in fine detail. He has now achieved fame, even before anyone has seen his new essay in that genre, Death of a President. It will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 10th, and then show on the British TV channel, More4.
The fame, or more properly, infamy, is for his audacity in making a film about the assassination of a U.S. President who is still alive. It will not be for the content of the film — as Mr Range must know perfectly well. The face of the actual George W. Bush is digitally “pasted” over that of an actor, to create the illusion of reality. This method can only reinforce the sensationalism; it can only distract from any serious narrative or philosophical premise of the film. Thus, we cannot doubt that the filmmaker’s purpose is more political than artistic: that he wants a political sensation.
Is the film a wish-fulfilment? One can go too far in psychologizing the behaviour of an artist, but it becomes irresistible in an environment where, as in Britain today, rhetorical suggestions that Bush should be assassinated have become “mainstream” and commonplace. Mr Range must at least have anticipated the criticism that his film could be a goad to an actual assassin. It starkly provides that crucial element of pre-enactment, that is the textbook conditioner of the diseased criminal mind. And in so doing, it becomes more effective than any conventional death threat.
To put this another way, the film presents, and is intended to present, a threat to President Bush’s life, in a way that gets around the law.
“Xenophobia, the hidden costs of war, and the nature of civil liberties in a hyper-media age, all come under the microscope.” I’ve extracted this line from the publicity puffery that accompanies the film. It will contain a “detective mystery plot”, about the identity of the assassin, in which a “Syrian-born” man is falsely accused. We can safely infer from this much, that the filmmaker’s political views are the glib, smug, clichéd, and indeed, asinine views we are used to hearing from the institutional Left, about the nature of “Amerika”. Needless to say, this plotline is already being flattered, by the same, as a “thought-provoking critique”.
-snip-
Rod Liddle, a newspaper and magazine columnist who also makes documentaries for Channel 4, said he thought the Bush film gave voice to a common sentiment in Britain.
"You will never, ever be able to overestimate the degree to which the British people loathe George Bush," Liddle said. "It will be a free round of drinks in every pub for the person who plays the assassin."
Liddle said there was nothing wrong about making a documentary about the assassination of a U.S. president, even if it was difficult for some people to watch.
"I don't find it particularly objectionable, but then I'm not George Bush's family," he said. "It seems to me to be a reasonable premise, even if it is uncomfortable."
(Kevin Sullivan in The Washington Post, September 2, 2006)
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Porno for Lefties...
That idiot is just like the liberal media twit who wondered how Nixon got elected, since everyone she knew voted for McGovern. I see British leftists are like ours with their own little echo chambers that they think represents the majority, even though they keep getting trounced in elections.
The Brits have their own Michael Mickey Mouse Moore.
It's as though most of the world has gone totally insane. They view efforts to bring peace and freedom to the world as "evil" while applauding those who would destroy freedom and lives for the slightest reason. This is worse than pre-WWII, in my opinion, and the stakes are higher.
The loudmouth Left just makes noise to make it seem as if they're in the majority. I agree with the rest of your statement, though.
All we can do now is continue to marginalize them. And I don't think it will be all that difficult - all we have to do is make sure their insanity is broadcast to the public.
"No weapon formed against GWB will prosper".....
The traps the evil leftists have spun will be a web of deceit that ensnares their own wicked schemes and possibly tools of their own destruction they make for themselves.
Bush is well within his rights to order a government-funded documentary on the benefits of killing this filmmaker.
Maybe we should have a movie made about this film producer. One in which he's killed while a nation watches. Not that I want to endorse violence or anything.
Great, great point. We are seeing the fruits of decades of a liberal education system that values two things above all things: uniformity of thought (Multiculturalism is about skin color--there is a rigorous orthodoxy that must be followed, i.e. "we're all the same under the skin"; ditto Oprah and her belief that ALL religions are basically the same)and lack of conflict/aggression (male aggression/patriarchy/etc.).
"Let's not fight" is their mantra, because in the end, hey, nothing is so important that we have to get all upset about it.
Their goal is a room-temperature world where no one works, no one argues, no one says something truly disagreeable. In other words, they long for a zombified world of consensus. I mean, as long as they don't see women being shot in the head in Afghanistan or raped in Iraq, the one who is to blame for the ugliness required to end those practices is the REAL villain. Moore's F 9/11 is the perfect example of this: He ONLY shows idyllic shots of Iraq pre-invasion, and ONLY shows horrible imagery post-invasion.
George Bush is hated because he dared turn over the nice, quiet rocks out there and exposed the bugs and scorpions living under them, and the media have gleefully covered every moment of pain such an overturning regrettably causes...yet CNN covered up for Saddam when he was raining terror down on his people, so since we didn't see it, BUSH is the source of the horrible images we see.
The news media have no time for the innocents slaughtered by Muslims for their beliefs, but they endlessly caterwaul over some men arrested in a war zone. (If only those men were Christians, there'd be not a word of complaint...)
The leftists of the world prove that after decades of leaving them to educate our children while the rest of us worked in the real world, outside academe, there are two kinds of people now. They can be labelled a multitude of ways but for this post I'll say they are Curchill People and Chamberlain People. The latter are winning.
This is worse than pre-WWII, in my opinion, and the stakes are higher.
I'm starting to think more and more that we are fast approaching something that will make WWII look like a minor skirmish.
Should be said loudly, and OFTEN... until this blows over..
I predict that the next President will be GOP, and will suffer the same.
A Dutch filmmaker who got death threats after his movie sharply criticized how women are treated under Islam was stabbed and shot to death Tuesday on an Amsterdam street.
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Well, let's be careful.
It's easy to start sounding
like we're all Muslims . . .
Excellent post!
Hell, I've always advocated killing everyone who doesn't think just like me.
The only disagreement I have is with the comment above that they want no fights. Listen to their campaign ads. they promise to fight, fight, fight. All they do in the senate is fight. Most importantly, they refuse to go along with the tradition that we stop fighting after we count the votes. They just keep on fighting like an energizer bunny on steroids. Most of the time I can't tell what they are fighting for or about, just fighting for the sake of fighting, I think.
"Killing Bush would make Dick Cheney the NEW PRESIDENT?...
A liberal or RINOs worse nightmare.."
IMHO, the real worst nightmare for the libs is that they have to exist in the world as it is.
Poor babies are so out of touch with reality that they probably think that they only have to get Bush out of the way and we'll all be transported back to 2000, Gore will be elected and we will all go swinging down the Yellow Brick Road to Nirvana in our solar-powered dunebuggies.
As far as that Snuff flick is concerned, I'd just as soon the pukes show their little "documentary" and give every dim candidate in the country who wants them some copies to hand out. You want to see what these characters are and what they believe in, I think we should let them go right ahead and do the rest of their Full Monty.
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