T.V.'s Promised Land (review)
2007; Volume: 37; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/flm.2007.0070
ISSN1548-9922
Autores Tópico(s)Media Studies and Communication
ResumoT.V.’s Promised Land Sharon L. Zuber T.V.’s Promised Land (2003) Directed by Nicholas Dembowski Distributed by Arab Film Distribution (www.arabfilm.com) 75 min The images come in seeming random order, as if the viewer were sitting on a couch flipping channels with a remote. Yet TV's Promised Land, a film by Bronx public school teacher Nicholas Dembowski, is anything but randomly structured. Dembowski carefully builds his indictment of the Western media's depictions of the Arab/Muslim world. In the tradition of found footage documentaries, Dembowski re-presents everyday images, recorded directly from his television, to reveal the way the media reflect and shape attitudes toward the Middle East. As the images accumulate, they establish links between the United States and Israel—the Promised Land—using iconic images of the early American West mixed with Biblical prophesy. Dembowski re-contextualizes images that most people take for granted to reveal their ideological assumptions and encourage critical reflection on the culture that created them. The diverse sources Dembowski uses show the pervasiveness of the negative depiction of Arabs and Muslims. They include Disney's Aladdin, Paramount's Indiana Jones, Warner Brothers' cartoons, and news clips from Fox to the BBC. Although [End Page 83] Dembowski began collecting these images in September of 2000, the sources reflect a longer time frame. One of the Hollywood movies included in the montage is John Ford's 1939 Stagecoach. The use of these older images implies that the contemporary depictions of Arabs and Muslims reflect a long history of prejudice evident in narratives about European settlers conquering the American West. Arabs slip too easily into the position that American Indians held in tales about "Cowboys versus Indians." Suddenly, phrases from the daily Iraq war reports, "Apache helicopters," "Tomahawk missiles," and "Blackhawk Down," take on new meaning. The film relies a little too heavily on clips from FOX News and conservative shows such as "The O'Reilly Factor," making it easy for Dembowski to make his point, but he uses enough of a variety of sources (not all identified on screen) to make clear that these destructive images permeate the Western media and U.S. culture on many levels. Dembowski shapes his argument through the placement and repetition of shots, using intertitles to reveal the structure. Beginning with "Burned into our Brains," the film suggests why persuading the U.S. to go to war against Iraq and to stand on the side of the Israelis in their conflict with Palestinians has not been difficult. Dembowski exposes the rhetoric that leads to a U.S. alliance with Israel through clips about the "Settlement" of Israel and movement of Israelis into the West Bank to "Camp David" and "War." The implication is that Israelis, like Americans, are civilized and have a democratic form of government. Dembowski undercuts even the logical connections by exposing contradictions in this alliance. When rhetoric of the "War on Terrorism" is repeated, Dembowski ironically juxtaposes the words with images of civilian suffering: mothers holding starving children and children being killed by Israeli rockets. All too soon fighting in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine begin to blur and overwhelm the viewer. This effect, powerful as it is, could lead to oversimplifying complex international relationships. Another way the film oversimplifies its re-presentation of the images is by claiming, on the back cover of the DVD, that the film offers "no narration or other commentary of its own." This claim of objectivity and truth hides the enormous amount of editing that went into this piece. It is true that a viewer never hears Dembowski's voice or any other narrator, but the audio in the film is not always synchronous. For example, the "Arabian Nights" song from Aladdin is played continuously under images from other movies including The Mummy Returns. The message in the original lyrics is less than subtle: Oh I come from a land, from a faraway placeWhere the caravan camels roam Where they cut off your ear If they don't like your face It's barbaric, but hey, it's home It is a short stretch from this popular animated children's film, and news...
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