Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

glorification in her movies*

He and Zoller Seitz had a back and forth earlier about running straight to Leni for comparison.

<I>1) those reviewers who state that the film glorifies torture with falsehoods yet nonetheless praise the film as great; I'm arguing that this should not be possible since their view that it contains falsehood-ridden torture glorification should preclude that sort of praise; and,</I>

This is embarrassing even for Greenwald.

Glenn Kenny ‏@Glenn__Kenny
That movie doesn't say "torture works." It says "The Real doesn't care what you think of torture." Unpleasant notion but NOT THE SAME THING

when did Obama start using The Real as his Twitter name

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/zero-dark-thirty/all/1?ww

isn't this somewhat like what Kubrick said re: the violence in A Clockwork Orange. something to the effect of being against the torture of an innocent isn't the point--you have to consider the torture of the guilty. he wanted to put the audience in the uncomfortable position of feeling sympathy for a monster.

the same point being the successful extraction of info from torture has to be shown/argued as still wrong. if the movie merely shows torture *working* i dont think that necessarily elides that debate--cf. Kenny's point.

apparently it doesn't show torture working?

well i guess i shouldn't speak about a movie i havent seen.

that wired writeup makes me want to see it

clearly I am a terrorist

1) The film shows UBL's courier being identified partly through the torture of a detainee
2) That courier is found and leads intel directly to the UBL safe house

The rest you'll have to interpret from the film directly.

You can't even use American initials, dammit.

that's what they call him in the film! our spooks were spelling it Usama back when Bill Clinton failed to take him seriously enough.

Usyrmama

sorry

Ubomber

hah

SPOILERS

Morbs: The closest the movie comes to presenting a case for the utility of torture is by presenting the name of a key bin Laden courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as resulting from an interrogation not shown on screen. But — spoiler alert — the CIA ultimately comes to learn that it misunderstood the context of who that courier was and what he actually looked like. All that happens over five years after the torture program initiated. Meanwhile, the real intelligence work begins when a CIA agent bribes a Kuwaiti with a yellow Lamborghini for the phone number of the courier’s mother, and through extensive surveillance, like a police procedural, the manhunt rolls to its climax. If this is the case for the utility of torture, it’s a weak case — nested within a strong case for the inhumanity of it.

?

mixed messages? in a (likely) hit movie?

Scott Tobias ‏@scott_tobias
Enjoying @MarkHarrisNYC's schooling of @ggreenwald and @froomkin over ZERO DARK and torture. Big advantage to have, you know, seen the film.

And to not be Morbs.

from Harris' New York essay:

Judicial Watch and GOP noisemakers like Long Island congressman Peter King were hungry for evidence that the CIA was offering inappropriate cooperation—and possibly revealing classified material—so Hollywood could make a movie that would get President Obama reelected. But the two most scandalous reveals in the CIA memos are (1) that the agency is rather too agog about Hollywood (one Argo-esque e-mail discusses the importance of establishing “stronger relationships with CAA”) and (2) that the CIA uses emoticons. “I want you to note how good I’ve been about not mentioning the premiere tickets :-),” wrote George Little, at the time the agency’s director of public affairs, to Boal.

XD

Zero Dark Thirty does not present torture as a silver bullet that led to bin Laden; it presents torture as the ignorant alternative to that silver bullet.

Yeah, that's just as much an overstatement as saying the film "glorifies torture." (I wouldn't say it does.)

Eric, have you seen the film?

the CIA ultimately comes to learn that it misunderstood the context of who that courier was and what he actually looked like.

still presented as a breadcrumb on the trail.

No, Mpls. doesn't get screenings until January. At which point we're supposed to give it breathless reviews in conjunction with it's Oscar nominations, I'm sure.

Or just breathless reviews in conjunction with its release in Mpls. Our choice.

Interesting story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-zero-dark-thirty-shes-the-hero-in-real-life-cia-agents-career-is-more-complicated/2012/12/10/cedc227e-42dd-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_story.html

ok i love the idea of cia agents being jealous that a co-worker is the anonymous subject of a movie

lol "musicfanatic"

A shame Alan Admin couldn't play the crusty but benign prlducer

Arkin either

I doubt an Obama cultist like Tony Kushner's Husband is 'schooling' anyone 'bout shit.

man so at least three nearly guaranteed best movie noms will be about how a government's gotta do what a government's gotta do

I love this place!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZWbpEKqWRE

Roy Edroso:

I hate to get on Glenn Greenwald's bad side but his claim that he isn't really reviewing-without-having-seen Zero Dark Thirty, when his hostile non-review contains phrases like this . . . is extremely disingenuous. Greenwald's points about some of the journalism surrounding the film are valid, but his characterizations of the film itself are ridiculous. Zero Dark Thirty isn't a shadowy political figure whose hidden movements you track by eyewitness reports. It's a fucking movie. Have your editor buy you a ticket.

This is still more proof -- as if more were needed -- that you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art. It is both more personally edifying and more pleasing to the Muses to approach a work of art as a work of art, however obnoxious it may be to you on other grounds, than to approach it as a political phenomenon. Because when you do the latter, you get into company you really don't want to be keeping.

If the thing you've actually seen, heard, or read is a piece of shit, then fire away.

I would explain further, yet again, why this is so, but I'm busy and I assume adults already know this.

you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art

adults stop reading there.

(obnoxious libs would really be lost these days without desperately sneering about how "adult" they are)

Roy Edroso and the Temple of Art

Haha, if Roy Edroso is "obnoxious" to you, especially vis a vis Glenn Greenwald of all people, I don't know what to say.

you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art

adults stop reading there.

The key word there I'm sure is meant to be "obsessions," but basically yeah, OTM.

Ad on the side of my FB page for ZDT: "LIKE the brave heroes who hunted down the world's most dangerous man."

Very ambiguous!

But but but it's a tailored ad for you where you're the hero and you're hunting the President.

When I was watching this I thought the protagonist was going to be the mystery woman in the situation room photo :/

Greenwald may well be right about the movie he hasn't seen but his Twitter responses to anyone challenging him (all "dumb", "confused" or suffering from "reading comprehension issues," apparently) confirm what a tetchy, condescending asshole he is. And one who ignores or sneers at the many critics who have in fact already noted that the torture is problematic.

spencer ackerman saw the movie:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/zero-dark-thirty/

These are not “enhanced interrogation techniques,” as apologists for the abuse have called it. There is little interrogation presented in Zero Dark Thirty. There is a shouted question, followed by brutality. At one point, “Maya,” a stand-in for the dedicated CIA agents who actually succeeded at hunting bin Laden, points out that one abused detainee couldn’t possibly have the information the agents are demanding of him. The closest the movie comes to presenting a case for the utility of torture is by presenting the name of a key bin Laden courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as resulting from an interrogation not shown on screen. But — spoiler alert — the CIA ultimately comes to learn that it misunderstood the context of who that courier was and what he actually looked like. All that happens over five years after the torture program initiated. Meanwhile, the real intelligence work begins when a CIA agent bribes a Kuwaiti with a yellow Lamborghini for the phone number of the courier’s mother, and through extensive surveillance, like a police procedural, the manhunt rolls to its climax. If this is the case for the utility of torture, it’s a weak case — nested within a strong case for the inhumanity of it.

that was posted yesterday, and i still disagree w/ his interp of that plot strand.

ah ok. guess i'll have to see it myself to determine the degree to which you are wrong :)

The most important thing is that we keep our own conscience clear.

i think the "glorifies torture" is kind tangential to the general reason to find the movie kind of distasteful. It's not like the administration WANTS to glorify torture. Acknowledging its lack of success and making sadfaces - while leaving it on the table is pretty much the cw

interesting in that WaPo piece that some CIA folks are annoyed it was even brought up at all