Executives at “Frontline” do not yet know how many people watched their recent four-and-a-half hour documentary, “Bush’s War,” because of PBS’s complicated Nielsen ratings.Online, however, “Bush’s War,” which was produced for the fifth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, has set a record, with more than 1.5 million views of all or part of the program, which was streamed in 26 segments.“Frontline” has streamed most of its documentaries free since 2002 (www.pbs.org/frontline), part of an effort to reach younger audiences than typically tune in to PBS. The online viewing to date of “Bush’s War,” which was broadcast in two parts on March 24 and 25, is an estimated “10 times the traffic of a normal show for us,” said Sam Bailey, the program’s director of new media and technology. Viewers are also sticking around much longer than they usually do on the site, typically for 7 to 10 minutes.
Who says that quality doesn’t sell?Think again.————–*** I have long been a devotee of Frontline. I’m on record as saying that I wish all hard-news on TV were done with the depth of Frontline documentaries. But of course I know it can’t and won’t happen.Still: kudos! serious television lives!
The notion of an “information war” is not limited to the battlefield of the Middle East. Increasingly, politics will be fought through PR-Bordering-on-Propaganda.
With torture so much a part of the national conversation—in the blogosphere, at least—I’m wondering why this film not available on DVD (or even VHS, fer chrissake)?
“The Confession” is the real-life story of Artur London, a loyal Communist who certified his credentials by serving with the International Brigade in Spain and with the Communist anti-Nazi underground in France, and by a long term in a Nazi concentration camp. In 1949, Mr. London returned to his native Czechoslovakia from France to become Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Communist Government of President Klement Gottwald. Two years later, along with 13 other leading Czech Communists (11 of whom were Jewish), Mr. London was arrested for treason and espionage and found guilty in what became known as the “Slansky trial.”
The Slansky trial, named for the secretary general of the Czech Communist party, who was also a defendant, was one of the last major gasps of the Stalinist purges that began with the Moscow trials in the 1930’s. All of the Slansky defendants were found guilty and all but three, including Mr. London, were executed.
Mr. London lived not only to see the defendants rehabilitated and to write his book but also to return to Czechoslovakia on the day in August, 1968, when Soviet troops invaded his country to end the short Czech spring.
“The Confession,” with Yves Montand playing Mr. London and Simone Signoret his wife Lise, is the story of a believer’s ultimate betrayal by his belief, of intolerable physical torture and psychological harassment (London is urged to confess to crimes he did not commit to prove his loyalty to the party), and, finally, of survival.
Subtextually, what was notable about this Costa-Gavras film, which came out a year or so after his hard-hitting international sensation Z, was the appearance of Montand and Signoret in the principal roles. Well-known leftists, the French stars broke ranks with their brethren to make what they considered an important political distinction: between anti-Communism and anti-Stalinism. Of course, that was back in the days when celebrities—not to mention public intellectuals—on the barricades informed themselves about the issues and understood the intricacies and nuances of the politics they espoused: the good old days…
In his review, Canby glosses over the gruesomely anti-Semitic character of the Prague show trials and Communist Party purges.
J. Hoberman doesn’t make that mistake in his New York Times review [$$] of A Trial in Prague, a documentary by Zuzana Justman on the same subject:
It was scarcely coincidental that Slansky and all but three of his fellow defendants — many of whom he had imprisoned earlier — were Jews. This had less to do with the prominence of Jews in Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party — which, after World War II, had been the most popular Communist Party in Eastern Europe, with more than 1 million members, as well as the winner of a national election — than with events inside the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world.
Masterminded from Moscow, the Slansky Trial was of a piece with the virulent anti-Semitic campaign that characterized the last five years of Stalin’s reign. In part, the aging dictator’s paranoia was fed by disappointment with the pro-Western stance taken by the new state of Israel, which had been supported by the Soviets and heavily armed by Czechoslovakia during the war of 1948. Hence the convenience of targeting prominent Jewish Communists.
But the so-called Zionists on trial were all dedicated, lifelong Communists — if not loyal Stalinists — who in embracing that secular religion had largely abandoned their Jewish roots. Representatives of a now antediluvian sort of modernism, they had spent their youth obtaining a particular form of mid-20th-century European education: some survived Nazi concentration camps, most fought in the international brigades on the side of the Spanish Republic, a few had been involved in the French Resistance — all of which would be used to establish their guilt during the trial.
This film was a casualty of 9/11. (I haven’t seen it.) It was scheduled for release on 9/14/01. It is available on video, for $300. At that price, it might as well not be available.
Which is too bad, because the morality tale of the Stalinist show trials in Eastern Europe, which took place only a half-dozen years after the end of World War Two, is one well worth contemplating in this era of feverish partisanship.
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature this week, went on television Friday to criticize the French parliamentary vote that would make it a crime to deny that the Ottoman Turks’ mass killing of Armenians constituted genocide.
In a telephone interview broadcast live on the private television network NTV, Mr. Pamuk, who faced criminal charges for his statements acknowledging the massacre, said France had acted against its own fundamental principles of freedom of expression.
“The French tradition of critical thinking influenced and taught me a lot,” he said. “This decision, however, is a prohibition and didn’t suit the libertarian nature of the French tradition.” The legislation was approved by the lower house of Parliament, but it is uncertain whether the upper house will concur.
Bravo. Hate-speech laws suck. They’re illiberal.
————
The Journalist and the Jihadi aired on HBO. Among other things, this documentary it is a portrait of the grace and courage of Daniel Pearl’s loved ones: parents, sisters, wife, and friends.
Jerry Lee Lewis is older and tougher than you. At seventy, he could eat your liver for breakfast, sleep with your kid sister and then burn down your house after a light lunch. So rounding up twenty-one heavy hitters (Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, etc.) for a Jerry Lee Lewis duets album either means that they’re paying their respects to one of the inventors of rock & roll, the wild man of the piano who came up with the sonic explosion that is “Great Balls of Fire”- or that they’re just afraid of what Jerry Lee would do to them if they said no.
The inconvenient truth is that as a politician, Gore has always been more successful in a supporting role. …
The reaction to Gore’s movie has been impressive, but it doesn’t change the fact that he misplayed a winning hand in 2000. He gives great lecture, but mediocre stump speech. And global warming isn’t yet a central issue to build a presidential campaign around. On the other hand, it’s ideal for a vice presidential candidate, suggesting a ticket ready to grapple with the challenges of the future.
The New York Times’s David Carr picks up on the documentary trend that I began writing about here (in “Michael Moore, Eat Your Heart Out”) and elaborated on here (in “Of the Documentary Persuasion”).
Carr talks specifically about advocacy films (mostly liberal), whereas I also noted feature-length hagiographies (or “biopics,” to use Andrew Sullivan’s much juicier term) of Rudy Giuiliani and Cynthia McKinney and Al Gore.
Carr speculates about the reason for the trend.
But the cluster of serious, point-of-view documentaries may also represent something else, a coup d’etat on the status quo. Just as those big books of the 60’s took on the elites of the day (chemical companies, Detroit engineers) these films betray a disaffection with their postindustrial counterparts (Hollywood, the traditional news media) for filling theaters with brain-dead blockbusters and neglecting important stories.
HBO’s Sheila Nevins nails it:
“I don’t think the evening news is doing a good job of expressing the confusion about the state of the world, and this is a soapbox that a lot of people are turning to.”
Yep. Documentaries are, in part, a reflection of the failing TV news business.
(Don’t be confused by the name of my blog. That “infotainment rules” is merely an observation about the state of the news, not a hearty endorsement of the sound bite and the publicity stunt and the emotional storytelling and the slugfests and the takedowns and the tug at the heartstrings or the kick in the gut delivered by infotainment, which has all but replaced the “news” on television.
When I call for better infotainment, it’s not because I don’t like serious news. Indeed I do. I’m a geek. I think Frontline is the most valuable program on television. But I recognize that I am in a tiny minority. I know that if the mass audience liked that documentary series much as I do, TV would be wall-to-wall Frontline clones.
Television, however, delivers what sells, and what sells is entertainment—or stuff that is packaged like entertainment. Infotainment doesn’t have to be bad or stupid or crass. High-quality infotainment may in fact be superior to dry “news” as a vehicle for delivering information to audiences.
Good documentaries are, in fact, high-quality infotainment. More, please.)
It’s a third-rate documentary, which I went to see at the NYC Ethical Culture Society screening last week. I’ll let blogger Dean Esmay describe it:
Once upon a time, in faraway land called Afghanistan, the pious young prince bin Laden joined with the oily American hegemonic empire to fight Atheist-Red-Devil-Communism. Young prince bin Laden won the battle and saved us from communism! After this victory, he and his band of mujahideen became outlaws, had some bold adventures and battled their new archenemy, evil hegemonic America, now led by dark Lord George Bush. The decadent Americans, drunk on IPOs and rock music, were blind to the inevitable results of their sins. The 9/11 attacks were the wages of those sins. America demanded revenge and now the battle rages on, from the pixie dust Afghani pipeline to the dusty souks of occupied Iraq. This war will never stop until America admits the error of its oily-imperialist-colonialist ways. America must now repent - we must buy the hearts and minds of oppressed Arabs, Muslims and pious non-decadent folk around the world. Only then shall the world know peace.
I have to say: I don’t know how Christopher Hitchens does it. He is a trouper. He showed up (stone cold sober, for those who are interested) to debate Eric Margolis, who was infuriating.
I fled the auditorium during Margolis’s second rant, when he said that the Iraq war was about protecting Israel and about getting Iraq’s oil.
Ooooh! A new documentary, followed by a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Eric S. Margolis. I got an invite, which I’m happy to pass along (and scroll down for a blurb about the film):
American Zeitgeist: Crisis & Conscience in an Age of Terror
Look at a bigger picture.
NYC Premiere and DVD release, Thursday June 15, 2006
Followed by a debate b/w Christopher Hitchens and Eric S. Margolis
NY Society for Ethical Culture, 7:15pm (Doors open at 6:45)
2 West 64th Street at Central Park West
New York, NY 10023
We wanted to inform you of the upcoming NYC premiere of the award-winning documentary American Zeitgiest: Crisis & Conscience in an Age of Terror. The film takes an historical look at the underlying fractures of the War on Terrorism across a 25-year+ period of time.
The screening will be immediately followed by a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Eric Margolis zeroing in on issues raised in the feature-length film.
Free beer will be available courtesy of the Brooklyn Brewery.
In one of the most divided periods in U.S. history, questions of American empire and unilateralism are being levied abroad by friend and foe alike through the splintered lens of the War on Terrorism. What began as a widely supported effort to protect American lives has led us to an uncertain crossroads, more alone now than we have ever been.
Slated for release in 2006, Avenue E Productions’ latest film American Zeitgeist explores the underlying fractures of the War on Terrorism, considering how what America is, what it does and what it represents have become the most explosive questions on the world stage since September 11th.
Add to the growing list of political documentaries (a trend I’ve discussed here and here) a really juicy one, by Aaron Russo, surfaced at Cannes, to wild applause. It’s called America: From Freedom to Fascism.
Using interviews with U.S. Congressmen, the former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents, tax attorneys and authors, says the release, Russo “proves conclusively that there is no law requiring citizens to pay a direct tax on their labor. His film connects the dots between money creation, federal income tax, voter fraud, the national identity card - which becomes law in May 2008 - and the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track citizens.”
One HuffPost reader comments:
I can’t wait to see the troglodytes in the Bush Junta or its lick-spittle sycophants here claiming this to be another Michael Moore-like propaganda piece.
But the documentary phenomenon is catching on again. I first wrote about it in the context of the contentious race for mayor of Newark, New Jersey. And just the other day I followed up with a piece on the broader trend, mentioning Giuliani Time, American Blackout, and An Inconvenient Truth.
In the meantime, pundits have begun to pick up on the themes of Giuliani Time (i.e., Rudy as Benito) and are sharpening their anti-Rudy talking points—evidence, for those who need it, of the effectiveness of long-form video: it allows you to get your message out into the “culture.” (Or at least into the noise. Transmitting a signal is more difficult.)
the accusations now being leveled against MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali have long been known to the public, because she herself has been open about her history on many occasions.
The question remains as to why the matter took so long to become so explosive. The answer is as banal as it is surprising: because VARA, a television station with social democratic leanings, aired a 40-minute documentary last Thursday called “The Holy Ayaan.” VARA’s reporters had traveled all the way to Mogadishu in Somalia to obtain information they could just as easily have found on recordings of their own station’s programs: that Ayaan Hirsi Ali had long since admitted that she lied when she applied for Dutch asylum.
That Hirsi Ali may yet escape revocation of her Dutch citizenship does nothing to remove the dangers lurking in this new-old tool of propaganda.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Beware.
Has no one else noticed that “documentaries” are the new tool in politics?
No, I’m not talking about Fahrenheit 9/11 or Control Room or Outfoxed, though they are both a precursor and a continuing phenomenon. I’m not talking about Baghdad ER.
I’m talking about documentaries that target or elevate a given political candidate—not convention-hall hagiography likeThe Man from Hope but “non-fiction” films that track real people and real events and come with a point of view and an agenda. In other words: the kind of partisan or agenda-laden material that you can’t air on TV news (because it has a bias) but which you can throw out into the markeplace as entertainment.
I’m talking about films that you can air on (maybe) HBO or (definitely) PBS, or that you can run in movie theaters—films that get their message out into the marketplace of ideas via the seductive medium of film.
I’m talking about Giuliani Time (which its creator hopes will remind people of the “Little Mussolini” side of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and which was the subject of a very thoughtful and interesting review by A.O. Scott in Friday’s New York Times. Maybe I’ll get around to writing about that one day, too.).
I’m talking about An Inconvenient Truth, which was supposed to relaunch Al Gore onto the political stage, an idea I made fun of here. And which, a mere two weeks after its appearance, has sunk without a trace… I’m just sayin’.
I’m sure there are more in the works—I haven’t been following this trend, and I’m too busy to look any further into it. It just became obvious from reading the papers.
Now, Mr. James appears to realize the impact of the cameras he so vigorously shoved aside during the filming of “Street Fight.” His State of the City address last month included a 10-minute documentary tracing the city’s history from the riots of 1967 through the present, and a video of his visit to a new Home Depot on Springfield Avenue. Both films are now prominently displayed on the city’s Web site, www.ci.newark.nj.us.
Rahaman Muhammad, president of the local service employees union, said that “Street Fight” had awakened city officials to the power of the moving image, beyond just 30-second commercials. He said he might even make videos of his own if he sees any campaign tearing down signs or limiting access to public events.
Boldly, I predict this new political tool will become very popular. And did I mention that it’s infotainment?
March of the Penguins, a clear sentimental favorite, may have just snagged the Oscar in the non-fiction category, but one hot topic buried (on page 37 of the Metro section…but published! let’s give infotainment credit where it’s due!) in today’s New York Times is a muckraking documentary about the 2002 mayoral race in Newark, New Jersey.
Five-term incumbent Sharpe James beat out Yale-educated Corey Booker back then by 3,500 votes in a boisterous campaign. Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry, an open supporter of Booker, rolled tape during some of the most fractious goings-on and ended up with an Academy Award-nominated movie that is now making waves in Newark.
“It clearly makes Newark look bad,” said the Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers’ Council of New Jersey. “One of the benefits is that because of that, the citizens are going to hold the candidates accountable this time in terms of how they conduct their campaigns.”…
After “Street Fight” was televised for the first time last summer on Channel 13, New York’s PBS station, Mr. James sent a series of angry letters to the station denouncing its decision to display what he described as “nothing more than free political advertising for Mr. Booker.”
Most intriguing from an infotainment point of view, however, is this tidbit:
Rahaman Muhammad, president of the local service employees union, said that “Street Fight” had awakened city officials to the power of the moving image, beyond just 30-second commercials. He said he might even make videos of his own if he sees any campaign tearing down signs or limiting access to public events.
“They were not clean last time, and they will not be clean this time,” he said. “Being clean is not what it’s about; it’s about winning.”
The notion of an “information war” is not limited to the battlefield of the Middle East. Increasingly, politics will be fought through PR-Bordering-on-Propaganda.
"Even in the most civilized societies the demagogues are
always in wait, ready and testing. They are indefatigable and we will never entirely prevail over them. And that is OK.
But if we stop resisting them, they will prevail over us. And that is not OK."
