Will we ever see a worthwhile film about the fight against Islamic terror? Forget stories about emotionally tortured soldiers who return home to abandon their combat fatigues for civilian armor and take to the streets to protest American war crimes while government agents illegally wiretap these men (and women) of conscience. Films of this nature – pictures that gloss over totalitarianism but reflexively attack any pretense for American military involvement – are a political cliché. But we will never see a film that depicts the complexity of this struggle – opponents may suggest that the contrasts are too stark – because, despite the many nuances a director could provide (including the tenacious way Islamic extremism can overrun a people, alongside the reluctance of Western civilization to acknowledge the gravity of this threat), there is still an obsession with that most absurd of all questions — Why do they hate us?
Think about that question for a moment. The question is itself an insult to every woman forcibly enslaved, beaten, subjugated or mutilated by the tenets of an ideology that commands silence among the very people, in Hollywood and elsewhere, who wouldn’t for a second countenance the same respect for Nazism. Try to imagine an intellectual give-and-take between, say, Leni Riefenstahl and Steven Spielberg, with the former explaining the Final Solution as (her own self-flagellation for her celebration of Adolf Hitler notwithstanding), the result of usurious interest charged by a minority of Jewish bankers. Thus, the mass deportations, summary executions, gassings — the use of industrialized murder can be an academic dispute in which answers may differ, but all are a response to the same question, Why do they hate us? Please.
And yet, we entertain this question when discussing Islamic extremism. We, the American people, are somehow to blame for every grievance the Muslim world has against us; we are the authors of our own destruction, all evidence to the contrary be damned. Even when Islam plagiarizes the tenets of the Third Reich, substituting “Zionist” for “Jew” (and reverting to medieval forms of sadism, in lieu of Josef Mengele’s scalpel), there is silence. Oh yes, there is nuance: criticism of American foreign policy, condemnation of Israeli “war crimes” and all manner of outrage about our effrontery to a religion and culture of such exoticism. Again, please.
Failure to produce a decent film about this dispute is the equivalent of moral amnesia where some Hollywood lackey doesn’t care who wins or loses but whether “they” still hate “us.” No wonder the entertainment industry has high hopes for President Barack Obama, since he has an aversion to the blunt talk that, frankly, can embolden our enemies but also encourage those who need our help: women, minorities, nonbelievers, Jews, Christians — all those who support science, reason, suffrage and individual faith in parts of the world veiled by ignorance and theocracy. To these citizens, President Obama might as well say, “Shut up”; and to these dissidents, Hollywood already says, “Who cares?”
If we can muster the courage to acknowledge this threat, then we might give those who need our assistance real hope. Anything short of that is a cheap campaign slogan.
Know Hope, the propagandists tell us. I’ll know it when I see it on screen first.
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