Not Coming to a Theater Near You

The Power of Nightmares / The Rise of the Politics of Fear / UK / 2004

In my year-end screed for 2007, I cited Adam Curtis’s three major BBC documentary series for their intellectual rigor, rhetorical force, and sheer televisual watchability. And recently, with the voices of Clinton, Obama, and some other guy ringing in my ears, I thought it high time to revisit this, probably his most vociferous about American politics and foreign policy. Originally aired just before the election of 2004, The Power of Nightmares is indeed one-sided, focusing on the vicissitudes of the Republican Party from the 1950s to the present, with only sparing mention of their political counterparts. But this emphasis is forgivable, especially given the film’s timing, and it gives Curtis room to take a long look at the changes in the Grand Old Party’s ethos over the decades.

If one bears the political urgency of 2004 in mind, watching the film today makes for a gripping and deeply upending experience. Not only does Curtis connect an army of angry little dots between Leo Strauss’ neo-conservative movement and Sayyid Qutb’s militant Islamism, he also provides an alternate history to the recent post-9/11 past with great emphasis on trumped-up doomsday scenarios and media-fueled nightmares of terrorism and disorder. Even if you’re unprepared to accept Curtis’ claim that al Qaeda as we know it is a conveniently fictional bogeyman created by the U.S. government (indeed, that the very name of al Qaeda was only adopted by bin Laden after 9/11), it’s nonetheless fascinating to rethink the widespread assumptions (and seductive fantasies) of the War on Terror, from the apparently unviable dirty bomb to bin Laden’s awesome, Blofeldesque lair in the mountains of Tora Bora.

To be fair, Curtis’ style is TV-savvy to an occasionally maddening degree, and he is in no way above the occasional glib edit, mocking music cue, or unflattering archival fossil to make his subjects (neo-cons and Islamo-fascists alike) appear ridiculous. But beyond his calculated provocation — which I would argue is itself valuable in raising, however bluntly, some very tough questions — Curtis’ history of ideas is meticulous and often revelatory. Mapped onto the current campaign, it throws into sharp relief the foreign policy standards of the Republicans and Democrats, and more specifically, Clinton and Obama: the former, a consistent adherent of the politics of fear; the latter, a skeptic with an eye to replace this fear with a more constructive frame of mind. As superficial and ungrounded as this latter position seems to some, Curtis’ documentaries repeatedly demonstrate the importance of psychology, emotion, and narrative coherence in shaping a nation’s politics and therefore guiding that nation’s effects on the world.

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by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Internet Download
25 Feb 2008 4:49 PM | Submit Comment