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Bush Joins Forces with Hollywood to Boost U.S. Image
LOS ANGELES, Oct 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The war on terrorism is set to unleash a rare phenomenon in the U.S. film industry - a new, positive portrayal of the U.S. government and its agencies - experts say.
The emerging phenomenon comes in response to the protective role undertaken by agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, much-maligned both at home and abroad over the last few decades, news agencies reported.
The positive light for law enforcement is emerging in the wake of the September 11th terrorist strikes against Washington and New York, and fears of bio-terrorism as numerous cases of anthrax are identified around the United States.
"For the past 20 years at least the main villains in movies have been government, police, FBI, CIA conspirators," says Jonathan Kuntz, an associate professor with the Film and Television Faculty at the University of California in Los Angeles.
"Films like Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), and Three Days of the Condor (1975), directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, have helped seal the image of some of the government agencies," says Leo Braudy, professor of cinema history at the University of Southern California.
Another more recent critical series has been television's popular X-Files show.
"In the wake of the [John F.] Kennedy assassination, comes the idea that there is a cover-up going on at the highest level," says Braudy.
But U.S. questioning as to why the country was targeted by hatred in the attacks, and a call by the White House for better understanding of the U.S. nation, is likely to garner a strong response from Hollywood.
Part of that response is set to come from the heroic roles seen from law enforcement and emergency services agencies to deal with last month's attacks.
The Hollywood press, meanwhile, reports that officials from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush met Wednesday with leaders of the cinema and television industry to call on them to join the war effort.
Cooperative efforts would include helping to relaunch the image of the United States abroad.
But, "it's not going to be the unthinking patriotism of the past," according to Braudy, who notes Hollywood's contribution to World War II when there was an office of war information.
That office was essentially a government agency acting as a liaison office to Hollywood about the kind of films that should be made.
"During World War II, Hollywood was just kind of fulfilling a hunger that the public had to see war-related materials," says Kuntz.
"It was a different era then, there was no television, and the news had limited coverage of war so people really didn't have the visual experience of what was going on outside of Hollywood films.
"It takes so long to develop a movie, at least two years" nowadays, Simon notes.
"Any film would run the risk of becoming outdated very fast, because it takes a while to make a film and world events are moving very quickly," he adds, to explain why Hollywood is being slow to pick up on current events.
Nonetheless, parallels between how Hollywood worked then and now, could again emerge.
U.S. director Robert Altman said that Hollywood served as a source of inspiration for the September 11th attacks on the United States, CNN reported Wednesday.
"The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies," said Altman. "Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they had seen it in a movie."
So violent action movies with huge explosions amount to training films for such bold attacks, as studios spend a lot of time and money trying to appeal to young males, the 76-year-old filmmaker said.
"How dare we continue to show this kind of mass destruction in movies," said Altman, whose directing credits include
M-A-S-H, Nashville and Dr. T & the Women. "I just believe we created this atmosphere and taught them how to do it."
Altman hopes audiences will lean more toward thoughtful, character-driven films after witnessing the horror of the attacks on television.
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