POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY FILMS.   Term Paper ID:30586 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines four documentary films (televison and movies) related to war, politics and the media.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines four documentary television films related to war, politics and the media. The the 1988 "Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair, the 1992 "Panama Deception," the 1991 "Desert Storm: The War Begins," and the 1993 "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media." Central concerns of the films. Role of news gathering organizations. Paper Introduction: Political documentary films have addressed a wide range of topics and have frequently seemed to produce action where the impact of the written word was far more limited. Indeed, filmed (or videotaped) news reports have even been credited with turning the American people against the war in Vietnam. But the responses of the military, the government, and the mainstream media to this presumed potential have concentrated on reducing the perceived threat of reporting by a number of means. Once it is clear, or seems to be clear, that a medium is capable of exposing activities to the public the leaders of the American executive and military often seem to think the logical response is simply to hide it better rather than, as it once seemed, to correct the problems. The 1971 CBs television documentary, The Selling of the Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Military strategists determined that it would be necessary in futureconflicts to employ the media for its own ends in combating propaganda andthat extremely strict management of press access to military sites andinformation was essential. This essay deals primarily with four documentary films related towar, politics, and the media, but they are different kinds of films.Director Barbara Trent's Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair (1988) andPanama Deception (1992) deal with the efforts of the U.S. The revelations that are being madein America by the film the audience is watching are thus shown to have beencommon knowledge, in several instances, among the citizens and press of therest of the world. we figured something must be terriblywrong: either the United States has the most incompetent military in theworld, which is not the case, or there is really another agenda at work"(Trent 17). Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair. military leaders and policy-makersthat it was true that television was the cause of America's defeat. . Filmmaker Jill Godmillow agrees with herand notes that "to change peoples' minds or ways of seeing is always thereat the basis of all non-fiction" and, she adds, "these films exercisepower by changing consciousness, by their deliberate attempt to alter theirviewers' relationship to a subject by recontextualizing it in the profferedtime, space, and intellectual field of the film" (Shapiro 62). Thewonderment, of course, was not just at the "advanced and expensive" newweaponry for which this desert war would be a "testing ground," it was alsoinspired by the new network's capabilities. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. But it is also the way fictions function. Fulbright but with almost no effect. Videocassette. Thegovernment, in turn, is supported in this by the unquestioning support ofthe mainstream media that repeatedly marvels at the openness of "oursystem." In the end, no matter how well made and revealing thesedocumentaries are, it is clear that the government that has become far moreskillful in the art of propaganda than it was when Selling the Pentagoncould upset it. Videocassette. Indeed, filmed (or videotaped) news reportshave even been credited with turning the American people against the war inVietnam. is "a nightmarish experience" because only private theaters andvideo stores will even deal with such material while "television is so muchmore monopolized and content-controlled [that] to really saturate thecountry with any new information is almost impossible unless you own anetwork or a national cable station" (15). NFB Studio C-Necessary Illusions, 1993. "How TV Covers War." New Challenges for Documentary. But another effect of this perception was thedevelopment of "Total TV," the new "military entertainment media" approachpioneered by CNN during the Gulf War (Burns 2). In the case of the hearings, however, the apparentwillingness of Oliver North to tell the truth and the stagey desire of theCongresspersons and Senators to get at the truth becomes more chilling asthe film progresses and, as the narrator notes, the members of thecommittee fade away into closed session every time the interrogationsapproach "exactly what is the CIA does in these places" (Coverup). As Chomsky says in Manufacturing Consent, one only need compare atelevision network or a newspaper to General Electric and ask whether thatcompany would not strive to present the product that was most attractive tothe consumer. Ed. Empowerment Project-MPI, 1988.---, dir. The Panama Deception. Political documentary films have addressed a wide range of topics andhave frequently seemed to produce action where the impact of the writtenword was far more limited. History and Theory 39.4 (1997): 8 - 1 1.Trent, Barbara. What wasimportant, however, is that the description of Vietnam as the "living-roomwar" created the perception among U.S. Those whodeplore this defeat hold that this was accomplished by demoralizingAmerican viewers with pictures of the war and by glorifying the activitiesof protesters but this is only true in a very limited sense. The audience was simply allowed to persist in itsconviction that a certain amount of independent, personal reporting goesinto the preparation of these stories, or that reporters speaking withPanamanians or American soldiers have actually selected their own subjectsto interview. This is, ofcourse, exactly the same way that a film such as CNN's Desert Storm: TheWar Begins functions. Videocassette. In the first case thegovernment learned how to exploit the seeming 'openness' of the televisionmedium for its own ends, and in the second case the government experimentedwith ways to keep its intentions and actions hidden while co-opting thenews media in this effort. The pooling requirement that limited the press to a select fewrepresentatives and the strict control of what information was fed to themmade any edge valuable to reporters. Although, as Miller argues, this notion is promoted by themedium itself it is perfectly clear how such simplistic analysis ignoresthe framing, the editing, the size of the screen and so many other elementsthat go into the presentation of this 'reality'. government todisguise illegal operations carried out by the military and theadministrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. CNN's Desert Storm: TheWar Begins (1991) is the first in a series which is ostensibly about the199 -91 Gulf War but, in truth, is much more interested in the network'swar coverage as the key to achieving dominance in world news in the 199 s.Finally, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1993), directedby Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar, consists of an extensive examination ofChomsky's activist career and a fairly inventive explication anddemonstration of his theories regarding the nature of the media in ademocratic society. Norton, 1979. Yet little uncensored information wasallowed through and it was necessary, therefore, for television networks tostage-manage their coverage by whatever means possible in order to minimize(and even disguise) the fact that the reporting was primarily a matter of afew "hotel warriors" covering military briefings and the network offeringthe government-provided film that showed the game-like targeting of bombson select targets (Burns 3). W. Thecongressional committee in Coverup acts out a charade of openness thatmakes its appeal to the members of this democratic society by paying (veryelaborate) lip-service to the notion of freedom of information. There is, however, noroom for this kind of extended discussion and so there is no room for newor alternative ideas in television. The "great myth of television," that grew in status during theVietnam War, has been that "the medium somehow gives us an immediateimpression, conveying not images, but actualities: and its coverage of waris supposedly the most compelling example of such supreme truthfulness"(Miller 366). As Michael Parenti notes in Panama Deception,"the media are not close to corporate America, they're not favorable tocorporate America, they are corporate America." The media, therefore, needto be viewed as corporations and the purpose of a corporation is to make aprofit. "War Reportage and the Military-information Society." Disinformation (12 Jun. CNN- Turner Home Entertainment, 1991.Handelman, Janet. Thus, Chomsky argues, "just asviolence is to a totalitarian state, so propaganda is to a democracy." Themedia is intent on persuading Americans to think about issues in certainways and, eventually, to accept the conclusions that the media deemreasonable or, as Panama Deception shows quite clearly, the media has beentold are reasonable. Trent's Panama Deception raises veryserious questions about the purposes behind the government's desire tomanage the release of news down to the smallest detail, about thelegitimacy of such control, and about the media's response to it. Handelman mentions "an Armed Forces day atan army base where the public is invited to a demonstration of ordnancefirepower" (518). Indeed, as Miller notes, "even in extreme close-up themedium maintains a subtle distance between viewer and victim, presentingevery pang and ruin with an ineradicable coolness" (367). The supposed alternative of public television is also exposed as ahoax. As former U.S. But what is less obvious,perhaps, is that even when all these factors are taken into accounttelevision still does not have anywhere near the immediacy effect that ittouts for itself. Charter and the treaty of theOrganization of American States (OAS). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Although the CNN compilation does make room for questions about theBush administration's strange passivity during the build-up to the war,covers war protesters, and criticizes the President's rhetoric as excessive(even going so far as to compare Bush sound-bites with Hussein quotes) thefilm aggressively supports the notion that this was to be a clean,manageable war, i.e., nothing like the Vietnam experience. "How Real Is the Reality in Documentary Films?" Interview with Jill Godmillow. Is it the inevitable fate of anychallenge to the practices of the military and the executive that it willbecome merely a passing concern for these institutions? Works CitedBurns, Alex. populace at home against thepropaganda of the enemy" (quoted in Burns 1). The CBS broadcast, however, "threwthe U.S. The CNN production, however, concentrates on the glories ofthe emerging network that held the world in thrall with its extraordinarynews capabilities and turned the Gulf War into a spectacle that generatedhigh ratings. This fits perfectly with the nature of the media in a democracy asdescribed by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent. As shesaid, when President Bush announced that he was "sending 26, troops toarrest one person in Panama . 365-74.Shapiro, Ann-Louise. Thecentral concern of the Iran-Contra film is that the nearly full coverage ofthe thirteen weeks of the congressional hearings was, in itself, anextension of the government's cover-up and in the Panama film thecomplicity of the media in the lies perpetrated by the government is, alongwith the exposure of the lies, the major topic. government into a frenzy of activity" as they denied the film'sclaims, attacked it methods, and made sudden policy changes at the Pentagon(Handelman 52 ). There is, however, something almost refreshingly straightforwardabout the lying that accompanies the Panama Invasion in Trent's film whenit is compared with the manipulations of the Iran-Contra hearings. The relative transparency of such maneuvers makes them easy tospot and the thinking filmmaker readily identifies a pressing need for acloser look. Yet there is, as in CNN's Desert Storm documentary, noacknowledgment that the network reports shown in The Panama Deception arebased almost exclusively on military briefings and statements from theadministration. Both of Trent's films (so-called for conveniencealthough the other producers and writers share credit for them) also takeon the problem of manipulative media coverage of important events. CNN's ownrhetoric is astonishingly favorable to the effort in some places with Shawreferring, for instance, to the new advanced and expensive militaryequipment such as the Patriot missile which was "canonized as the firsthero of the war" (Desert Storm). The "structural constraints" that Chomsky notes are only a part ofthe story, however, since the corporate media can also simply reject anyideas that it finds unacceptable. CNN, however, spent $22 million on war coverage and was determined tomake the network's reputation on the basis of this work. But it is interesting to look at a single example of theimages that had such an impact. "War and the Independent Filmmaker." Humanist 58.5 (1998): 15-23.---, dir. As he notes, everything that is said on television has to be saidconcisely in order to fit its format of set times and chunks ofpresentation between rigidly scheduled commercials. Alan Rosenthal. online journal http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id1298/pg1/CNNDesert Storm: The War Begins. Thisgenerated "a policy-making response to the 'Vietnam Syndrome'" that led tothe repressive measures tested by the military in Panama and perfected inthe "perception management" in the Persian Gulf in 1991 (Burns 1). The 1971 CBs television documentary, The Selling of the Pentagon,which exposed the millions of dollars the armed services spent to makethemselves look better, became a sensation for its revelations and inbecoming the center of a battle over freedom of speech and press rights.The same topic had been addressed one year earlier in a book by Senator W.J. This makes the mediumconducive only to received ideas and any attempt to present a new idearequires, as it should, support from the speaker. In adiscussion about the nature of documentary Shapiro notes that documentariesof the type made by Trent are instrumental in intent, that is, they do notjust seek to edify, they "seek to wield power in the world for particularends"--even though the power they may wield is extremely limited when theirgoal is to influence change (82). In that film the words of Pentagon spokesman PeteWilliams, President Bush, and other officials are shown to blend perfectlywith the talking heads of the major network news shows--whose reports alsoecho each other. Ed. By virtue of being members of a free society, however,Americans must be persuaded rather than coerced into accepting thegovernment's intentions or actions. There is a widely-held notion that the televising of the Vietnam Warin newscasts was responsible for the American defeat there. New York: W. 518-2 .Miller, Mark Crispin. And will learn farmore, in such cases, about how to prevent the next exposure than will learnabout the need to avoid such 'exposable' behaviors? It is noteworthy in this context thatboth of the first two videos are harshly critical of the media which are,as they argue, corporate entities just like General Electric. 2 1). But the responses of the military, the government, and themainstream media to this presumed potential have concentrated on reducingthe perceived threat of reporting by a number of means. Videocassette. Once it is clear,or seems to be clear, that a medium is capable of exposing activities tothe public the leaders of the American executive and military often seem tothink the logical response is simply to hide it better rather than, as itonce seemed, to correct the problems. Attorney General RamseyClark says in Panama Deception, the United States is a plutocracy and moneycontrols not only the political process but the media as well; "we reallyneed desperately to find new ways to hear independent voices and points ofview, that's the only way we're going to find the truth." But, as directorBarbara Trent remarks, trying to get any kind of independent film a hearingin the U.S. At the time this seemed interesting primarily as a proofof the truism regarding the superior power of moving images over thewritten word. CNN'sfilm demonstrates, quite clearly, how news-gathering organizations chose todeal with these limitations and, in turn, inadvertently raises the samequestions Trent asked. Twomilitary officers, Vallely and Aquino, noted that the difference betweenlosing and winning the war lay in the fact that they were simply "out-PSYOPed" (their slang use of 'psychological operations' as a verb) by warprotesters and the biased media and, they felt, the military and thegovernment had failed to "defend the U.S. In brief, Chomsky's"institutional analysis" of the American media leads him to the conclusionthat media ownership by the power elite means that they will serve theinterests of this elite. Lewis Jacobs. Both Panama Deception and Manufacturing Consent were rejected bynational PBS along with films such as Deadly Deception, "which exposedGeneral Electric for poisoning the earth, water, and air with radioactivityand covering it up" (Bennett 177). Trent also contrasts foreign coverage of the Panama invasion, whichwas violated the terms of both the U.N. Stacy Jolna (prod.). . Trent's films relate, therefore, to Chomsky's thesis that the media,being owned by the power elite, shape news to serve the interests of thatdominant group, stifling dissenting views and shaping public opinion (andknowledge). Review of The Selling of the Pentagon. As the narrator Bernard Shaw (CNN's chief anchor)says in his introduction, over a series of staring, weeping, frowning close-ups of people of different nations, this up-close coverage kept people"frozen in concentration, disbelief and wonderment" (Desert Storm). The Documentary Tradition. The network'sself-praise in Desert Storm: The War Begins shows a great deal about howthis image was presented. The overwhelming effect, in other words,is that CNN subscribed to the ideas presented by the President--even if itpicked at the edges of his public presentation--and, therefore, achievedits dominance in the world news arena by virtue of conforming to the needsof the power elite that approved of the war as an essential step inguaranteeing that the United States would not just retain access to Middle-Eastern oil but would, in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, be more or less incontrol of the oil. It begins, for example, with a completelyunironic dedication, from the network's president, to: The brave and talented men and women of CNN, whose persistent and insightful reporting represents journalism at its finest (Desert Storm).Thus, from the start, the problem of press pooling, strict control ofinformation, and refusal of press access is not only ignored (as it isthroughout the film) but counteracted by the claim that this is traditionaljournalism which is now at the center of an amazing new global news-gathering operation. As anyone who has endured an earsplitting 'air show'featuring armed forces' jets can confirm, rather than abandoning thepractice that was exposed during the anti-military heights of the war inVietnam, the Air Force and Navy simply produce far more sophisticated andentertaining demonstrations of force. Channel 4-Empowerment Project, 1992.Wintonick, Peter, and Mark Achbar, dirs. There has always been,Burns argues, a "co-evolution of global media institutions with military-information initiatives" and CNN in 1991 was an instance of this effect(3). The fact that ordinaryjournalism of the type Americans had come to expect was severely curtailedby the new armed forces regulations was conveniently ignored. In one of the best sections of Manufacturing Consent Chomskydiscusses the difficulties for these corporations of presenting alternativeviews. Another key element that relates these films to each otheris the fact that the government's control of news in the Panama invasioncan be seen as a testing ground for the absolute control achieved in thePersian Gulf a short time later. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.