By: Ahmed ELNAHAS – Montopoli, May 20th 2013.
Sometime in the 80s of last century, and while delivering the traditional “thank you mom” speech, for receiving his second golden statuette named Oscar; he said: “…holding this doesn’t mean that I am the best, it means I am one of the best.. There are over 250000 individuals working in the wonderful American Movie Industry.. I know all the sufferings and sacrifices each and every one of them is giving and will continue to give.. This distinguished recognition I’m holding in my hand before you now, I’m receiving it on behalf of all the magnificent men and women sharing our glorious career, and contributing in the perfection of our noble art …..”.
As the globalization process matured, competition got more fierce with Europe and Asia in every thinkable human activity, no less comes that ‘noble’ art of illusions.. So in order to stand up high and maintain a better share of the international entertainment pie, Hollywood came up with the most brilliant, even genius, idea of all its history: Exploit and master the TV fiction production.
Hollywood decided to use the utmost potentials of its army of first, second and third raw artists, technicians, directors, producers, script writers, drivers, light directors, composers, stunt specialists, costume designers, set decorators, cameramen, make-up experts, sound and visual effects studios, extras and background figures, digital/HD/3D laboratories, animation experts…Etc; to invade the small flat screen by a “Shock & Awe” type bombardment of TV series, having as objective to:
a) produce an avalanche of relatively low cost series, of every genre on the basis of consequential production by seasons each of 10 to 20 episodes of 40 to 45 minutes each, to be perfectly worked out on the same technical basis of modern movies production, and cleverly marketed worldwide in a way to monopolise prime time airing and to generate endless cascades of revenues and profits;
b) reinvest the continuous flow of profits in training new entries, creating more series, in order to expand the dominion over thousands of networks worldwide;
c) Allocate the bulk of the revenues to conventional movie productions, whether for summer holidays or for the Oscars; and
d) use such dominance to convey whatever ‘cultural’ message(s) America wants to divulge and spread around the entire world.. Specially the third world aka Developing Countries.
Well prepared.. Excellently produced.. Perfectly written.. Professionally executed and played.. Wrapped and sealed to cover all political, cultural and social domains; and to serve every conceivable objective.. NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, Touch, Glee, Desperate Housewives, Cougar Town, Lie To Me, Lost, Mad Men, Criminal Minds.. And many many more. Each serving its own patron for a specially designed objective.
Let us have NCIS to demonstrate what I mean.. At first when G. W. Bush was President, the production was completely oriented to convince the world how important it is to conduct a merciless war against ‘Terrorism’ (today referred to as terror).. To do so Hollywood’s producing studios received generous contributions from the Pentagon and the CIA in terms of sponsoring funds as well as technical and logistical assistance; to enhance its capabilities to build-up these characters designed to seem at the same time heroically patriotic as cult, intellect and sensitively observant to the ‘other’.
Later on when the democrats came to office, NCIS found a way to introduce the contradicting figure of the Israeli Mossad Liaison Officer Ziva Davìd, the daughter of the Director of Israel’s main intelligence agency, the Mossad, whom is a ruthless assassin with a golden heart; a person who is young, intelligent, ambitious, cruel, tender, seductive yet decent, extremely well trained and highly motivated as to become almost the perfect female icon of Israel’s supremacy. Mostly convenient to represent Israel’ s modern image and to fluidly convince the audience that Israel ties with the US agencies are indispensable, well knitted and growing to last.
Another example are the CSI tribe.. They all are targeting mainly one objective: to convince and educate the world that it is alright and even necessarily vital that whatever personal liberties be sacrificed and privacies become subject to constant easy and tolerated institutional profanation; all is well as long as it serves the endless war on terror.. The people of the entire world must accept that their mail, phone, e-mail, bank account, travel, jokes, sport, marriage, divorce, love, belief, work, blog, car, purchases and even trash are monitored, controlled and analysed!!
Other series of an apparent ‘social’ aspect vested tragic-comic.. Actually I can’t define, or comment, what is the end message or cultural values to draw out of something like “Desperate Housewives”, or the one dispensed generously by another series with similar ‘social’ characteristics delivered as “Cougar Town”.. Such genre can result funny and somehow entertaining, but its ‘too liberal, too blunt and too vulgar’ aspect can be a matter of serious discussions.. Knowing that the religiously observant and family values promoter United States is the origin of that globalised cultural exports.
I don’t consider myself a moralist, but I know that TV and Art are the most impressive education mediums man have ever developed since the ancient Greek ones: ‘Agora’ and ‘Theatre’.
My point is that we must educate ourselves to regain our initial primordial critical mind if we want to develop our thoughts, convictions, ideas and beliefs; in order to better form and tutor our youngest generations on how to meet the complicated challenges of modern times.. Times where we all are living hypnotised inside an HD/Led flat screen.
Throw away the remote control to free yourself from an addiction worse than synthetic drugs, because it leaves you vulnerable, full stop. Vulnerable not only to a specific virus or decease; but to anything and everything.. Because you allowed your brain to concede your mind to someone who doesn’t want anything more in the world but your money on top of your soul.
Pass On The Word.
*PsyOps stands for “Psychological Operations”.. An integral part of America’s Psychological Warfare Program.
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