Skinny Mirror: How pop culture normalizes a false image of the "War on Terror"

Transcription

1 Skinny Mirror: How pop culture normalizes a false image of the "War on Terror" Will Potter 1 Not happy with your reflection? The "Skinny Mirror" is a new product funded through Kickstarter.com that offers a skewed and, the entrepreneurs say, improved vision of yourself. The creator says she was tired of feeling bad every time she looked in the mirror. With the "Skinny Mirror," the glass is imperceptibly bent so that the viewer sees their desired reality. Marketing materials call it "the mirror that compliments you." The mirror doesn't change how you really look, of course, and it doesn't change the culture that makes countless people ashamed of their appearance. Instead of addressing those problems, it shows you what you want to see. As the manufacturer says: "Much more crucial to our overall well-being is how we feel about ourselves what images of ourselves we hold in our minds." 2 If it works properly, this mirror will make you forget. It has been more than a decade since September 11 th. We are still reminded of the threat of terrorism every day, through color-coded advisories, news coverage and speculation, and political speeches. Terrorism, and the "War on Terrorism," has become so entrenched in our lives that it's not only a source of fear, it's a source of entertainment. Television shows like 24 appear to mirror our current political reality, particularly with references to surveillance powers, the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo Bay pulled from the headlines. But they reflect a false image. For instance, in the real world, torture by U.S. forces was official government policy in violation of international law; in 24, it was an effective tool to stop the bad guys and keep us safe. Human rights groups warned that 24 was depicting torture as necessary, effective, and normal, and that it was influencing how real-world soldiers perceived torture. As Adam Green of The New York Times said: "How [torture] plays out on 24 may say a great deal about what sort of society we are in the process of becoming." 3 In response, executive producer David Fury dismissed the concerns and said that viewers know the show is a "heightened reality." 4 There's some truth to Fury's statement. We can't discount the agency of the viewer. Audiences can certainly distinguish fiction from reality, or at least we like to think we can. When watching Red Dawn, we of course know that a small band of high school students are not actually fighting a guerilla war against a communist invasion. But what happens when viewers don't know that what they Will Potter, The Skinny Mirror: How pop culture normalizes a false image of the War on Terror Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Volume 6, Number 1, Winter 2013, pp

2 109 are watching is a "heightened reality"? The natural limitation of the Skinny Mirror is our own cognitive dissonance; at some point we inevitably remind ourselves that the reflection is not real. But what happens when we lose sight of how things actually appear? In the last few years, eco-terrorism has become a hot topic for television and films. It is not surprising that producers have latched on to the issue. The public is more aware of environmental issues, and more sympathetic to them, than ever before. Forty years ago, Edward Abbey saw the appeal of environmental outlaws willing to risk their lives and freedom to protect the planet. He was an environmental outlaw himself, and The Monkeywrench Gang inspired a wave of environmental direct action and monkeywrenching. Whereas Abbey's work was grounded in a political and ecological context, the recent thrillers have lost all touch with reality. In The East, 5 a young corporate spy infiltrates an anarchist eco-terrorist cell. The environmentalists have launched what they call a counterattack against corporations for their "worldwide terrorism." Their intent is to poison and kill corporate executives. "We want all those who are guilty to experience the terror of their crimes," one member says. The film includes plenty of nods to real life environmental saboteurs: references to anarchist free kitchens, Earth First!, freegans, train hopping, dumpster diving, YouTube videos in the style of Anonymous, and communiqués reminiscent of the anarchist collective CrimethInc. However, the violence committed by the East has never actually happened. Groups like the Earth Liberation Front have made headlines as the FBI's "number one domestic terrorism threat," but in the history of the radical environmental and animal rights movements, no human being has ever been injured. There have been no assassinations, no shoot-outs with cops. In 2014, another film will be released in the United States that employs similar tropes. Night Moves is described as an "eco-terrorism" thriller starring Paul Dano, Jesse Eisenberg, and Peter Sarsgaard as three environmentalists plotting to blow up a dam. Something like this has happened in real life but not in the way the film depicts. A young FBI informant named "Anna" infiltrated a group of protesters, provided them with bomb-making recipes, financed their transportation, food and housing, and prodded the group to blow up the Nimbus Dam. "Anna" grew increasingly frustrated because the group wouldn't carry out the action. The FBI pulled her out of the investigation, and arrested the bunch. One of the activists, Eric McDavid, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, as a terrorist, for conspiracy charges. 6 His crime was "conspiring" with an FBI informant who was trying to convince him to break the law. Meanwhile on television, the debut of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D featured a shadowy group called "Rising Tide" that is a threat to the heroes of the show. The Will Potter

3 110 problem is that there is already an activist group called "Rising Tide," which nonviolently organizes around climate change. The fake Rising Tide's logo even rips off the real logo. That doesn't sit well with the non-violent activists. "We don t want to be seen as a shadowy terrorist organization," says Rising Tide's Scott Parkin. "This is par for the course in a Hollywood that uses pop culture to turn government agents into heroes, and seekers of truth, justice and ecological sanity into evildoers." 7 This isn't a new phenomenon. A Law & Order episode in 2006 was devoted to the case of "eco-terrorists" who raped an FBI informant. 8 This, too, has never happened. In real life, activists might be more wary of sexual predators within law enforcement. For instance, in the UK, a police informant named Mark Kennedy infiltrated a wide range of protest groups for years, even having sexual relationships with activists. 9 All the while, they knew him as "Mark Stone" the environmentalist. Does any of this "heightened reality" matter? It's just entertainment, right? Industry groups seem to think it matters quite a bit. The National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR) is an organization that represents the biomedical industry. It has played a central role in lobbying for new laws like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which reclassified non-violent protest by animal rights activists as "terrorism" and included enhanced penalties for those activists. As part of its public relations efforts, NABR promoted a book called Uncaged, written by its executive vice president, Paul McKellips. 10 According to press materials: "After animal rights extremists unlawfully manipulate public opinion and successfully shut down animal research in the United States, the country is left exposed to an international bioterrorism plot that threatens the lives of the entire population." All proceeds from the book benefit the industry group. 11 The activists-caused-armageddon plot has been used before (in 28 Days Later, animal rights activists are responsible for the zombie apocalypse). What's telling is that NABR uses the same imagery and rhetoric in its advertising campaigns as this fictional book employs. The public relations campaigns 12 of an industry group bent on reclassifying activists as "terrorists" are indistinguishable from these fictionalized accounts. The hope is that over time, this false imagery, no matter how absurd, becomes normal. Corporations literally could not have asked for better propaganda, even when they make it themselves. We can find opportunities for resistance, though, in how these false mirrors are constructed. There's a reason that movies like The East are about violent plots, rather than civil disobedience. There's a reason that Night Moves doesn't tell the story of Eric McDavid spending the next 20 years in prison. And there's a reason that groups like NABR promote apocalyptic fiction. If the plots were based on reality, nobody would believe it; even worse, people would be outraged. There's The Skinny Mirror

4 111 power in recognizing this: these false mirrors are constructed because the truth is so audacious that it would enrage and inspire. Perhaps that's the challenge we all face, no matter which social justice movements we are part of. We have to keep our eyes, and the eyes of those around us, fixed firmly on the political and cultural reality, no matter how unsettling, until it reflects a better vision of ourselves. Will Potter

5 112 Endnotes 1 Will Potter is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker based in Washington, D.C. who has become a leading authority on the animal rights and environmental movements, and civil liberties post-9/11. His reporting and commentary have appeared in media outlets including Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The Los Angeles Times, The Vermont Law Review, The Washington Post and testified before the U.S. Congress as the only witness opposing the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. 2 The Skinny Mirror. (nd). The Story Behind the Skinny Mirror, last accessed 23 October 2013, 3 Green, A. (2005). Normalizing Torture on 24. The New York Times Online. 1&_r=3&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx= gi2YIsl5G1eD3/2x//8kVg& 4 HRFNYC. (2007, March 8). Is 24 s Jack Bauer Teaching Torture to U.S. Soldiers? [video file]. Retreived from 5 The East. (nd). The Internet Movie Database, last accessed 23 October 2013, 6 Potter, W. (2008). McDavid Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison as a Terrorist. Green Is The New Red. 7 McMillan, G. (2013). Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Gives Its Hacktivists the Same Name as Actual Activist Group. Wired. 8 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Season 8, Episode 1. (nd). The Internet Movie Database, last accessed 23 October 2013, 9 Hattenstone, S. (2011). Mark Kennedy: Confessions of an undercover cop. The Guardian Online Foundation for Biomedical Research. (nd). Uncaged A Thriller, last accessed 23 October 2013, 11 Stemwedel, J.D. (2012). Book Review: Uncaged. Scientific American Blogs: Doing Good Science Foundation for Biomedical Research. (nd). [Untitled image of three masked individuals], last accessed 23 October 2013, The Skinny Mirror