One of the things you have to wonder about is why people like the CIA and the NSA allow the dozens and dozens of movies a year that involve secret government conspiracy to continue being made. You have to know that if they really wanted to, they could halt production.
A friend of mine once pointed out how common government conspiracy theories were in television shows and movies, especially The X-Files, as opposed to corporate conspiracies, and I think she was on to something. I don't know if corps are more powerful than governments at this point, but Chomsky has some very powerful evidence that suggests that they, the corps, have been deliberately fostering 'anti-democratic' sentiment in the populace for the better part of a century. If the general population doesn't trust governments, they turn to corporations for support. Look at the push for privitisation, almost all of which is based on heresay and falsely 'self-evident common sense'--corporations are more efficient and fair than governments because they run on the principles of the free market, a supposedly 'natural' system--and you'll see the results of this kind of propaganda.
Even without the (in my case inevitable) turn towards identifying the corps as the real power-brokers of the 20th/21st centuries, there's still a very clear purpose to be served by exposing the most heinous of government crimes in films. And specifically, I'm thinking of action/adventure films, things like torture, black detention facilities, all the stuff that this article explains in detail, and that none of are particularly surprised to hear. First, by puting such things in a James Bond movie you cover them with a thing sheen of fantasy. If it's in a movie, it can't be real; therefore when you encounter it in reality it isn't real. "Government torturers? That's silly. You're talking about bad TV my friend!"
Second, though, working in the opposite direction but facilitating the first effect, you get viewers accustomed to it. I'm not quite talking about the tried-and-true concept of desensitisation. What I mean is that it's simply no longer a surprise. Most people would still be horrified and sick if they had to witness actual torture. But that's not important. What today's US government needs is for people to simply be okay with torture, in the abstract, much like we'd all be sick if we had to watch a pig being slaughtered, but bacon's a delicious breakfast treat. What they're going for is a lack of surprise that such things are happening, because it so easily leads to a lack of outrage. If you tell the average person that politicians lie, that person will laugh at you and say, "No shit!" as if that closes the conversation. In one sense, they're right. None of us have any right to be surprised at this behaviour, but its commonness should not diminish our outrage. If anything, it should increase it, but humans are not logical creatures. And it's exactly the same with secret detention centres and government sanctioned, not to mention government trained, torturers.
Posted by orion at November 19, 2005 11:24 AM