No Oscars for Hollywood pro-torture film

This video says about itself:

Dec 16, 2012

Writer Glenn Greenwald argues that Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, which is already a front-runner to win the 2013 Best Film Oscar, is politically and morally reprehensible and a glorification of torture. Hollywood and the film‘s director Kathryn Bigelow have climbed into bed with the CIA and produced pernicious propaganda for the view that the USA is always on the side of “good”, whatever our enemies do is always because they are “evil”, and anyone who is a Muslim is a “terrorist suspect”.

By David Walsh in the USA:

Opposition emerges in film industry to Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty

14 January 2013

Voices of protest have been raised in Hollywood against Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, an account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which endorses the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US military and the systematic use of torture.

In a statement published January 9 in Truthout (“And the Academy Award for the Promotion of Torture Goes to …”), actor David Clennon explains, “I’m a member of Hollywood’s Motion Picture Academy. At the risk of being expelled for disclosing my intentions, I will not be voting for Zero Dark Thirty—in any Academy Awards category.”

Clennon goes on, “Everyone who contributes skill and energy to a motion picture—including actors—shares responsibility for the impressions the picture makes and the ideas it expresses. … So Jessica Chastain won’t get my vote for Best Actress. With her beauty and her tough-but-vulnerable posturing, she almost succeeds in making extreme brutality look weirdly heroic.”

The Emmy-award winning actor (best known for his role on television’s thirtysomething) writes, “If, in fact, torture is a crime (a mortal sin, if you will)—a signal of a nation’s descent into depravity—then it doesn’t matter whether it ‘works’ or not. Zero Dark Thirty condones torture. … If the deeply racist Birth of a Nation was released today, would we vote to honor it? Would we give an award to [German filmmaker] Leni Riefenstahl‘s brilliant pro-Nazi documentary, Triumph of the Will?”

It is entirely to his credit that Clennon has made this statement, and spoken out against Bigelow’s film, which has received almost universal, shameful praise from the US media and its so-called “film critics.”

According to CBS’s Los Angeles affiliate station, veteran actors Martin Sheen and Ed Asner have also appealed “to other actors to vote their conscience on whether to reward the movie [Zero Dark Thirty] with a win on Oscar night.” …

Zero Dark Thirty (which borrows its very title from the US military) was developed and made with the fullest cooperation of the military, the CIA and the highest echelons of the American government. Is it likely that the latter would have facilitated a work that offered criticism of their activities?

New revelations about filmmakers’ collaboration with CIA on Zero Dark Thirty: here.

Related articles

• Academy member calls for Oscars boycott of Zero Dark Thirty (guardian.co.uk)
• Oscar-Nominated ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Picketed By People Who Say Movie Advocates Torture (losangeles.cbslocal.com)
• The Carpetbagger: Ed Asner Adds His Voice to ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Protest (carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com)
• ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Oscar Odds Fade… (bloomberg.com)
• Zero Dark Thirty, the CIA and film critics have a very bad evening | Glenn Greenwald (guardian.co.uk)
• ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Wins Albert Speer Oscar Award For Best Propaganda Picture (21stcenturywire.com)
• Zero Dark Thirty Wins Oscar for Best Propaganda Picture (leaksource.wordpress.com)