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Doctor Strangelove: Or How I Said Goodbye To Mickey Mouse And Now Love Pandas

Franthiesco Ballerini — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 14:50:40 +0000

Dear Mr. President,

You’ll never know me, so my sincerity here could not be greater. I’m from the country you recently tried to impose a barrier over, even though your nation has had a trade surplus over us , and this year, , reaching $1.7 billion. I’m from Brazil, the fifth-largest country and the economy in the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if you don’t know anything about us, since your only visit here was for a in Rio, with your former wife Ivana, in 1989.

I’m one of the millions of Brazilians who were historically seduced by the greatest soft power of your nation over the last decades. And you got huge profits from it. Brazil has the fourth most users of , the third of and fourth of . From 2004 to 2024, we jumped from the 11th to most frequent visitors of your country. Hollywood has earned an incalculable fortune with us. From 2009 to 2019, in Brazil was 77%, against 13% from national movies and only 1% from China. We are the second with the most subscribers of , the largest VOD market in Latin America and one of the biggest globally, reaching subscriptions by 2027.

Millions of us also felt your government’s hard power in different ways in recent history, like when the US supported the 1964 that led to 21 years of military dictatorship, secretly supporting opposition leaders and police training to overthrow the democratically elected president João Goulart during Brazil’s best attempt at deepening reforms, like the long-awaited agrarian reform. Ironically, the US provided support to the dictatorship through , which you recently . Over those two decades, we witnessed deaths, human rights abuses, censorship and political repression under the dictatorship your government supported. In fact, it resembles what we are watching in your streets now.

But the reason for this letter is to express my shock at how fast you are melting US soft power in all areas, except, maybe, sports. Diplomacy, science, arts, entertainment and political values were all pillars of soft power that the US was admired for by other nations and cultures for almost a century are going down the drain faster than the hair on your head.

And if you think about it, soft power is the only long-term power the US can rely on after World War II, which, by the way, was the last war your nation had won in traditional terms, followed by the loss of Vietnam war, the mess left in the Gulf War, the false pretext of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that led to a new war and hundreds of thousands of since the 2003 invasion and the shameful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

I know you love bombs just like Putin and your other role models in Doctor Strangelove. But deep down, you know you can never rely on nuclear weapons as hard power. Those weapons, tested by your government over civilians 80 years ago in Japan, triggered a worldwide race for the same device and initiated the Cold War, making the world a more dangerous place with weapons that can eliminate civilization in the hands of countries like North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and, of course, your own. No one can use it; otherwise, your golf club, hotels, mansions and family lifestyle will turn into dust.

And then there is China. The second-richest nation on Earth is learning to use soft power as fast as you melt yours. First, diplomacy: China has Israeli actions in Gaza and has a better relationship with Russia for a possible mediation over Ukraine. Although Beijing only stands on for peace, Xi Jinping uses diplomacy rather than blunting imposing tariffs or sabre-rattling with nuclear power to get his way.

Second, science. China has become a scientific superpower faster than any other country. , Chang’E 6 returned soil samples from the far side of the moon for the first time; developed the first primitive-based vision processor with complementary pathways, the first optical storage device with petabit capacity; a new approach in helium-free cryogenic technology and a treatment with genetically engineered CAR T cells for refractory autoimmune diseases.

Third by arts and entertainment. China’s domestic films are thriving. ‘’ became the only movie in history to reach $1 billion at the box office in just one market and the only non-Hollywood film to cross $2 billion globally. China’s music economy became the fifth-largest recorded music market in the world in 2023, with growth, making it the fastest in the world, with cultural policies emphasizing international competitiveness and developing talents by formal education and independent labels.

At last, there is social media. Since you got back to power, Chinese influencers flooded TikTok with very popular videos showing how fast and modern their cities became; one , with perfect English, has gone viral with a bold critique on how America killed its middle class and guys like you blame China; there’s even , called Chinese Trump, with the exact same voice, showing the beauties of Chinese culture and habits.

We Brazilians will survive your random tariffs. We’ve been through worse with previous US administrations. As you read in the , it’s pointless to distortedly use the Magnitsky law over our Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and cut his credit card as a veiled pretext to save your friend, former extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro, now in house arrest for supposedly leading a coup after the 2022 presidential election.

After 44 years, and half my life researching cultural soft power, I found myself divorcing Mickey Mouse and flirting with pandas. Which, by the way, is a Chinese tool of diplomacy and wildlife conservation since 1941. Soft power.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Does the US Really Want to Annex the Vatican?

Peter Isackson — Wed, 07 May 2025 11:44:14 +0000

The world now awaits the iconic puff of white smoke indicating the election of an individual who may be regarded as holding the unique remaining position of power with a claim to exercising a form of universal moral authority. Whether one accepts that authority or not, we cannot avoid sensing that the authority of every other institutional leader on Earth appears to focus exclusively on something very different from moral logic, if not clearly at odds with it.

The problem today is that moral authority doesn’t carry much weight in a world motivated by financial success and celebrity at the individual level and national security at the collective level. Moral authority, at least in the Western world, persists only amorphously in each individual’s heart — which means nowhere in the shared landscape — and officially in each nation’s laws. Moral standards exist in the form of reigning fashions. Tradition quotes Winston Churchill as the for Stalin’s dismissive question: “How many divisions has the pope?”

So why are so many people willing to put up hard-earned cash to bet on the eventual winner in the race among papabiles? It isn’t just practicing Catholics who feel concerned by the conclave’s decision. An by Rose Morelli on the website LBC informs us that “betting houses are cashing in on the opportunity” as “gamblers’ interest in the future papal rivals even Formula 1 and the Europa League on betting sites.”

And just to reassure us that this isn’t a modern vice associated with late-stage capitalism and its culture of financialized speculation, the article claims that the tradition of betting on the conclave’s decision dates back to 1503. As two popes were elected that year — the unfortunate Pius III died 26 days after his election, some say by poisoning — Morelli doesn’t provide sources to determine which of the two elections got Renaissance bookmakers excited enough to post their odds.

Posterity retains two major associations with Julius II, who lost the first but won the second election in 1503. It was Julius whose idea of commissioning the work to Michelangelo made it possible for today’s visitors to the Vatican to marvel at the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Perhaps more significantly, Julius, whom his contemporaries called “the Warrior Pope,” made a major contribution to Italy’s and Europe’s political instability over the subsequent century. His style of papacy transformed the Vatican into a European military empire Stalin might have respected. It helped create the conditions that would eventually lead, four years after the pope’s death in 1513, to Martin Luther’s open revolt against the Vatican’s militarized empire. The pope’s political adventurism set the stage for the humiliating disaster known as the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Pope Francis, whose successor will soon be elected, provided a stark contrast with the popes of half a millennium ago, such as Julius or his predecessor, Alexander VI, the Borgia pope. Could a new “warrior pope” — for example, hailing from a nation committed to war — succeed a Holy Father who famously that all wars are unjust?

USA Today features an by John Bacon with the title, “Will we see the first-ever American pope? How USA’s image could come into play.” It expresses a secret hope regularly evoked in recent decades following the death of a reigning pontiff.

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

American pope:

A fantasized historical figure, who speaks Latin and maybe Italian as well as English, but probably not Spanish.

Contextual note

The same article contains this true assertion: “Francis made history as the first pope from Latin America.” A totally logical visitor from Mars — even after colonization by Elon Musk — who happened upon this article would probably struggle with the idea that a “pope from South America” might be succeeded by a “first-ever American pope.” Does “first-ever” mean “second” in English? If so, that might make some sense.

Just asking the question in the title of the article appears to indicate the logical answer to the question. The reason there has never been a pope from the US lies in the hubris contained within Bacon’s use of the word, “American.” Of course, there’s nothing original about applying the term exclusively to things proper to the nation officially known as “The United States of America.” After all, among the five words that compose the nation’s somewhat cumbersome title, one happens to be “America.”

People from the US long ago somewhat presumptuously developed a habit they subsequently shared with the world. It is based on the assumption that, because of the history of US economic, military and cultural dominance, the adjective “American” refers exclusively to one of the three North American nations (Canada, US and Mexico) and not to the entire continent. We have all been conditioned to use language in precisely that way. Particular thanks go to Hollywood, the soft power machine that has used the adjective “American” in so many of its titles: “American Beauty,” “American Psycho,” “American Gangster,” “American Sniper,” “American Hustle,” “American Graffiti,” “American Pie,” to name only a few. And it has celebrated the Marvel superhero, “Captain America.” All that belongs to the broader idea of “the American dream.”

But honestly, wouldn’t it be a generous gesture on the part of a US journalist to acknowledge the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first American pope? It’s true that Papa Francesco was of Italian stock and probably had no true “native American” ancestry. Argentina is, nevertheless, an American state, far more substantially than Idaho or Rhode Island.

Some cultural icons have taken the trouble to make the distinction. Bruce Springsteen described his true origins in the lyrics of “Born in the USA.” Of course, he could do it because he’s a “cool rocking Daddy in the USA.”

Historical note

Springsteen’s song recounts some of the effects of a particularly painful episode in the history of US hubris: the war in Vietnam. That was the period that featured patriotic bumper stickers inciting war protesters to “love America or leave it.” Some chose to stay in America… but in Canada or even Mexico. “Oh, but that’s not what we meant by America,” the dyed-in-the-wool (and authentically sheeplike) owners of the bumper stickers might have objected.

Speaking of Mexico, when visiting Mexico City’s wonderful anthropological museum many decades ago, I’ll never forget the moment when I found myself in a room also occupied by a group of US youngsters. Upon examining the displays and discovering the Mexican symbol of an eagle seizing a snake, one of them shouted out: “They stole our national bird.” This is the same mentality that recently incited US President Donald Trump to claim naming rights over what he wants everyone now to refer to as the “Gulf of America.” We cannot deny that this gulf is located alongside the American continent… but that name could place it anywhere from the North Pole to Tierra del Fuego.

The legendary US architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, conscious of the rich variety of national and regional architectural and cultural traditions that existed across the globe understood the need to offer equal respect to all nations and people. To avoid confusion when speaking about anything pertaining to the US, he coined the word, “Usonian.” Wright spent a significant period of his career designing and building some of the most exquisitely original homes in and around Hollywood. Had he instead worked on movies, adopting the great studios’ mindset during that period, he might have had more success convincing the general public to adopt the epithet Unosian.��

In the USA Today article, Bacon quotes Reverend James Bretzke, a theology professor at John Carroll University in Ohio, who offers an interesting explanation of the real issue the article addresses: Why, even after the reign of an authentic American pope (from a different part of America), the Catholic church has never dared to elect a pope born in the US.

“Bretzke says a pope is a diplomat who must be accepted globally, and the papacy must appear to represent a cross-section of the world. In the past, Italians were viewed within the church as diplomats, so they were more acceptable across ethnic groups − although this appears to be less important now.”

Now that’s a convincing explanation. It has never been more evident — in the current age of former US President Joe Biden and Trump — that despite the superficial differences those two presidents have embodied, they have both maintained a principle that has become sacred in US geopolitics: the rejection of the practice of diplomacy. �մǻ岹��’s US leaders see diplomacy as wastes of time and money, the kind of thing that should be rooted out in the name of “government efficiency” and unipolar rectitude. That has become baked into the contemporary US psyche. It’s something the Vatican cannot afford.

Trump was probably sincere when he, “I’d like to be pope.” That attitude may indicate why so many people find The Donald refreshing. Unlike other presidents, who carefully disguise their intentions by ranting about democracy and human rights, Trump wears his hubris on his sleeve. Hubris only works if you know how to hide it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Is the World Ready for German WWII Movies?

Franthiesco Ballerini — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 13:29:30 +0000

Can the Nazi regime become a soft power asset for Germany?

It’s a tricky question since the Third Reich is probably the highest expression of hard power in human history. Hard power consists in financial or social coercion and, above all, military power. Soft power, on the other hand, is usually felt through diplomacy, science, sports and, most effectively, arts and entertainment.

Hollywood turned the Nazi regime into a soft power asset for the United States throughout movie history, showing the moral, intellectual and martial superiority of the Allies in films like Casablanca (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), From Here to Eternity (1953), Patton (1970), Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). All of these got took the most important Academy Awards; the Oscars, indeed, are the final coronation of Hollywood’s soft power.

The UK also used the victory against the Nazis as a soft power asset in films like in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The English Patient (1996). Russia, likewise, has its World War II films, such as Only “Old Men” Are Going Into Battle (1973), They Fought for Their Country (1975) and Stalingrad (2013). Coincidently or not, since Russia became the West’s political enemy during the Cold War, none of them got any significant awards in major festivals.

Turning other nation’s hard power into our own soft power is an old strategy of Hollywood, sometimes with direct help from the seat of hard power, Washington itself—like when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered movies to be made to engage citizens in the American cause, like Frank Capra’s Why We Fight (1942) and Walt Disney’s of characters like Zé Carioca for movies like Saludos Amigos (1942) as a conscious effort to keep Latin America close to the US during the war and supplying foods and commodities for the allied soldiers.

All Quiet on the Western Front

This year, however, a German movie made Oscar history and , including Best Picture, by showing World War I from Germany’s point of view. All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Edward Berger’s adaptation of the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, is a war spectacle that trails Paul Bäumer, played by Felix Kammerer.

Bäumer is a frightened soldier during most of its 150 minutes, as Germany and France negotiate a ceasefire. Ceaseless scenes of brutality, shot in a widened scope, and powerful images closely follow Bäumer, deepening his human character, an essential cinematic tool to keep the viewers intimate and close to the protagonist, even if not because of his cause. The adaptation’s greatest quality lies exactly here: its ability to avoid stereotyping, something that Hollywood done has many times with Nazi Germans, Viet Cong, Soviets and so on. In contrast, Paul Bäumer is shown with his fears, desires, human mercy and naivety, through which we instantly connect with him.

World War I, however, is not a big “cinematic taboo” for Germans like World War II—the greatest human tragedy of modern times or maybe of all times, responsible for the deaths of 35 to 60 million people or . With the help of Hollywood’s soft power, the Third Reich became solidly portrayed as the greatest enemy of human history. So, again, the question: can World War II, the Nazi regime, become a soft power asset through cinema for Germany?

Are we ready for a new look at WWII?

It’s probably impossible to imagine modern democratic societies accepting any German movies that simply show a sympathetic German point of view about World War II, no matter how good the movie is. It is hard to believe that any film could repeat the feat of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), which is considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made, studied in all film schools around the world because of the director’s use of techniques such as aerial photography, long-focus lenses, moving cameras, distorted perspective and music. Even despite its fame, none of the several awards the film won in Germany, France and Italy are today listed by major websites like IMDb, except for “Best Foreign Documentary” in the Venice Film Festival held during Mussolini’s dictatorship.

German filmmakers and production companies have long circumvented this taboo with the same strategy Berger used in All Quiet on the Western Front: a script that relies on character density and preferably puts the conflict as a half-distant background. The Tin Drum (1979), directed by Volker Schlöndorff, accompanies Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), who falls down the stairs at the age of three and stops growing up. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film by leaving the horror of the war distant and caricatural. Two years later, the German director Wolfgang Petersen got six Academy Awards nominations for his Das Boot (1981), an achievement only made possible because the movie portrays the horrors of the Nazi regime inside the claustrophobic submarine in the same way Hollywood had portrayed it for decades.

Recently, though, German movies that portray the Nazi regime with a closer and less stereotypical look from Germans themselves are getting recognition from relevant festivals around the world. Before the Fall (2004) directed by Dennis Gansel, takes a close look at the war while showing the boxing abilities of Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt), whose athletic skills take him to an elite Nazi high school in 1942. He applies, against his father’s wishes, to pursue a better future.

More recently, Robert Schwentke’s The Captain (2017) follows the last days of World War II with a young German soldier, fighting for survival, who finds a Nazi captain uniform and assumes his identity. To escape the Nazis’ monstrousness, he becomes, himself, a monster. The movie won 23 international awards in festivals like the European Film Awards and the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

The Academy Awards, considered the most important film festival in the world, still have not shared their soft power with German filmmakers who portray the Nazi regime with a less stereotypical look. But the success of All Quiet on the Western Front in the last iteration of the Academy Awards shows that even the most horrifying episodes of the human race may become a soft power asset to a nation that carried it out if filmmakers manage to depict human goodness, mercy and hope among evil and chaos.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Elon Musk’s Carefully Crafted Unscheduled Disaster

Peter Isackson — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 05:03:16 +0000

We are living in one of those rare transitional moments of history in which accelerating trends are redefining many of our major assumptions about the world. During times of paradigm shift, everything is related. Scientific, technological and geopolitical changes both accompany and induce transformative economic and cultural change. And because change always encounters resistance, what formerly appeared stable can rapidly degenerate and even disassemble. Two of the things that appear to be self-destructing before our very eyes are the use our society’s leaders and the media make of language and logic.

This past week, the world’s most prominent hyperreal hero, Elon Musk, provided a perfect demonstration of just how radically language and logic can be turned inside out. Musk has always thrived within an oxymoronic reality of his own invention. This time he literally took his art to dizzying heights when Starship, his newest and heaviest rocket, exploded in the upper atmosphere shortly after takeoff.

In its of the event, Reuters not only highlighted the oxymoron��of “a successful failure” but also drew a direct connection with Musk’s Silicon Valley business philosophy. “The spectacular explosion of SpaceX’s new Starship rocket minutes after it soared off its launch pad on a first flight test is the latest vivid illustration of a ‘successful failure’ business formula that serves Elon Musk’s company well.”

The usually dour The New York Times was impressed. The Gray Lady even allowed itself a moment of tepid irony as it the event. “Casual space watchers were further amused by the company describing the result of the mission on Twitter with cosmic levels of euphemism. SpaceX called it “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” — or, put another way, an explosion.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD):

A rare non-scatological euphemism invented by Elon Musk to describe a process specific to his aerospace experimentation that could equally, and perhaps more accurately, be applied to the entire drift of geopolitical and cultural reality of the United States in the first half of the 21^st century.

Contextual note

Elon Musk has never shied away from formulating utter nonsense. But, when you go beneath the veneer, the nonsense has its own discernible rationality. Who, after all, would name their firm the Boring Company unless there was a connection with the physical act of horizontal digging? Who would christen their newborn X Æ A-12 unless they believed that the future of the entire human race would unfold on Mars? Musk clearly believes that names one gives to things and people should always be a source of laughter.

The explanation SpaceX gave of their successful failure made a lot of sense. “Now this was a development test, this was the first test flight of Starship, and the goal is to gather the data and as we said, clear the pad and get ready to go again. So you never know exactly what’s going to happen, but as we promised, excitement is guaranteed! Starship gave us a rather spectacular end to what was truly an incredible test.”

This follows a basic law of the consumer economy and illustrates the increasingly obvious point that technology and science themselves, at least in Musk’s hands, have now become subordinated to the laws of consumerism. Until recently geopolitical and military strategy followed the more sober rules of industrial communication. Discretion trumped ostentatious boasting. In contrast, the laws of the consumer economy require generating excitement to achieve one’s goal. Because brands are built to be remembered, anything that makes them look exciting is deemed a winner.

Musk and SpaceX have profoundly changed the culture of space exploration. It’s no longer about redefining humanity’s position in the universe. The days of Neil Armstong’s “one small step” are over. That kind of humility is passé. It’s now about the exciting mission of conquering and dominating space.

As a public speaker, Musk, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, is awkward and unimpressive. But his erratic behavior in public and private, as well as the frequent bizarre statements he makes are uniformly provocative. Eccentricity – which includes producing exciting mishaps – has become the emblem of his genius.

The Daily Devil’s Dictionary: “Exciting” Times

Who doesn’t remember the moment when, after claiming that his Tesla Cybertruck was indestructible, Musk took a sledge hammer and shattered its shatterproof window? That was exciting. Three years later the man who, at the time, was worth only about $20 billion, became the richest person in the world, with his wealth measured in the hundreds of billions. You can’t have one (wealth) without the other (excitement).

The Starship’s explosion last week wasn’t just “exciting.” According to space.com, one resident who lives 10 km away from the launch site called the launch itself “.” The ensuing explosion in mid-air merely completed a well-choreographed display of technological terror. Others have reported on the visible damage the launch did to the environment, with “debris from Starship spread for miles over the Gulf of Mexico.” Only an enterprise eminently strategic can justify, in an exciting way, that kind of mistreatment of our common environment.

As soon as the explosion occurred, the team on the ground began cheering. In contrast, Musk, sitting at an observation post, appeared calm and even sullen, as if his hopes had been dashed. The members of the media team were already gloating at the spectacle. They couldn’t suppress a triumphant laugh when the chief commentator explained with authority that this was “a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

Had the launch succeeded the excitement would have been prolonged as a total victory. Musk would once again have been celebrated as a genius of both business and technology. But the explosion produced immediate excitement and enabled the media to celebrate Musk for more than simply achieving something. Achieving it through an “unscheduled” spectacular failure may be more impressive and convince more people of the value of his project than a scheduled success.

Now if Musk can find a way of having Twitter explode in the upper atmosphere, he might produce an even more resounding success.

Historical note

When the history of the first half of the 21^st century is written by 22^nd century historians, what we now think of as the great names in the world of politics – the Bidens, Putins, Obamas, Clintons, Xis, Kennedys, Zelenskys, Nulands and even Trumps – will be largely forgotten. At best, they will appear in random footnotes. Instead, historians are likely to focus on the most emblematic person of our times: Elon Musk. He alone wrote the narrative of the first phase of a new millennium.

Those future historians, whether living on earth or Mars, will likely identify the five great secrets of hypereal success of our epoch. Musk’s lifework illustrates each of them.

Unbridled, self-interested technological experimentation,
Post-imperial, hyper-colonial exploitation of the planet,
Narcissistic personality disorder linked to celebrity culture as the the means of identifying leadership,
Systematic subversion of the language,
The programmed marginalization of logical thinking, deemed irrelevant to the universal quest for success.

Let’s take them one by one.

With SpaceX, the native South African has perfected the art of unbridled, self-interested technological experimentation conducted at the expense of the American taxpayer.

In a famous celebrating the CIA-instigated that overturned the election of Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2019, Musk demonstrated his dolidarity with the long term commitment of the US to treat the planet’s resources as its own colonial reserve, destined to serve the needs of the US economy at the expense of the countries who possess those resources.

America’s True Hyperreal Heroes

As America’s most successful hyperreal hero, with one step up on Donald Trump, Musk has created his own brand of narcissistic personality disorder.

Musk has consistently demonstrated his taste for systematic linguistic subversion. Witness his naming of companies and children. RUD is his latest invention. His linguistic humor is often sophomoric, disrespectful and on occasion libelous, but it achieves a kind of legitimacy to the extent that it can appear to be a parody of the far more sinister trend of linguistic perversion used by governmental and corporate propagandists.

Finally, Musk has also demonstrated a penchant for pushing illogical, or at the very least, non-logical thinking to the fore. His uncritical insistence that Mars can become the self-sustaining home for humanity is simply the most spectacular. On paper, it looks as if it’s technically feasible – and of course, exciting – but he seems to be unaware of a very real experiment of people voluntarily living in a glass dome. It took place on earth 30 years ago, where there was no need of terraforming. Despite fewer environmental challenges, it produced a traumatizing that ended in what might be described as “rapid unscheduled mental disassembly.”

Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Struggles of Being a ‘Neither’ in the Entertainment Industry

Ajay Kothari — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:22:23 +0000

I have been a US citizen for more than 35 years. I emigrated from India to the US – legally – almost 50 years ago. I received an MS and a PhD from the University of Maryland, becoming a rocket scientist.

I also delved into acting as a hobby. So much so that I became the first Indian American to become a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) in the mid-Atlantic region section in 1993.

A call for representation

Acting roles in this area are cast first by announcements from the Washington or Baltimore region casting agencies. The announcements require you to be of a certain race, gender, and age range.

They may call you in for an audition if there’s a fit. They select a few and call them back for a “call-back.” Then they’ll choose the actor for the role. Most union roles are for day-players and comprise just a few lines. Major roles are cast in Hollywood or New York.

These audition calls from SAG and SAG/AFTRA (now) always had a race requirement for the roles – but called for African Americans or Caucasians. What about us who do not fit into either category, folks? Needless to say, I complained to the unions but to no avail.

Hollywood in Black and White

In theory, a union such as SAG/AFTRA should be the most open to all. In reality, it has been quite the opposite. How does that make sense? Having waited 30 years, the age range requirement, less than 50, has become the killer. But while I am out at this age, this piece is for the benefit of the younger generation of us “Neithers.”

The erasure of in-betweens

I still am made to feel that I am not part of this country despite the tremendous hard work I put in to become and be an American. Earlier, I was made to feel unwelcome by conservative Republicans when I came here in the 1970s. This persisted for a few decades.

Now, I am made to feel unwelcome by the so-called liberal Democrats, the Hollywood engine, and the media. Indian Americans and many such minorities are between a rock and a hard place. They do not fit into the dominant categories that define American politics and society. It is time that the media took this on.

Is this country made up of only blacks and whites? An alien coming here and watching TV or movies would think so. Almost percent of the commercials on TV have African American faces. Until a few months ago, 40-50% were white faces.

According to the last census, this is a slap in the face of Hispanics and Asian-Americans, who make up 20% and 7% of the population, about twice as much as African Americans who comprise 13%.

Hollywood Does it Again

Do the media executives and Hollywood head honchos think we do not exist and that we are thingamajigs who do not count? Or do they just want us to spend the money on their products and remain behind the scenes?

Do these bigshots wish to avoid seeing our faces on your TV and movie screens? Or is it that if they cover, pay attention to the two extremes in skin color, the black and white, that they feel they have done their duty to be fair and that they can now brush the equitable representation off their jacket sleeves? Should all others, the in-betweens, go to hell? Are media bigshots that thick-headed?

Time for Limelight

Decreasing the white actors from 60% to 50% affects them marginally as a group. Increasing African-American participation almost doubles or triples their participation. This development is welcome. It is positive. However, should this take place at the cost of us Neithers?

We just get squeezed out to zero. Can’t anyone see that? Our representation would make for a fairer representation of the country. Also, wouldn’t that make the media scene more interesting?

This lack of representation of Neithers is a clear case of open discrimination in employment by race. All actors’ jobs are paid, and no such discrimination is allowed by law. A small variance may be an accident, but this conspicuous absence of Neithers clearly indicates systemic discrimination in the media.

So, I call upon media bosses to open our living rooms to Native Americans, Hispanics and Asians, as you have done with African-Americans. Give these Neithers space and acceptance. No, Hollywood, you damn well have not solved the race problem yet. There was more acceptance, curiosity and admiration for Eastern and Latin cultures 40-50 years ago than there is now. Hollywood, you have regressed and left us Neithers in the shadows.

Are all people in this world Blacks and Whites? If you think so, you are an ignoramus and not at all a globalist as you want to pretend to be. Asians and Latin Americans comprise almost of the world’s population. Do not be obtuse. If you think so, your movies will not sell worldwide – with half the revenue coming from international showings.

How many do you know who can be counted as celebrities, as huge role models? And compare that to how many African-Americans or Whites. Then look at the percentages of the population in this country, let alone the world, and see if it makes any sense.

Yes, we can come here, and many even are born, but we have to remain in the background, by your surreptitious designs. Wake up and smell the tea; it is also quite popular worldwide!

[ edited this article.]

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Top Gun Maverick: Hollywood Sells Nationalism as Social Service

Vikram Zutshi — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 06:03:16 +0000

“Revvin’ up your engine

Listen to her howlin’ roar

Metal under tension

Beggin’ you to touch and go

Highway to the Danger Zone

Ride into the Danger Zone”

, the adrenalin-pumping title song of the original Top Gun film, spawned a whole generation of American patriots willing to do or die for their country. Perhaps no other film has done more for American patriotism than Top Gun. Those were heady days, before Iraq, before 9/11 and before COVID-19, when America was seen as invincible and immortal – the quasi-mythical “shining city upon a hill.” In those heady days, everyone wanted to be American. The duo of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer saw the future in Tom Cruise, a fresh-faced actor in his early 20s, and the rest as they say, is history.

Today, when America is at its nadir – in the wake of a devastating pandemic, hamstrung by a bumbling, senile president and benighted by two major powers waiting to take its place – along comes Hollywood to the rescue, with its most unabashedly nationalistic film to date: Top Gun Maverick. Audiences around the world have been tearing up at the big sweeping emotions and glorious old Hollywood spectacle unfolding on celluloid, and the box office is testimony to their enthusiasm. The film has become one of the highest grossing films of all time, earning over a billion dollars in revenues.

Patriotism on Steroids

The dream team of director Joseph Kosinski and Tom Cruise deliver the goods with a fiercely patriotic visual extravaganza. So immersive is the film and so persuasive its message – that America is the greatest country on earth – we cannot help but go along for the ride. The aerial combat choreography is mindblowing. The viscerally gripping action sequences propel you into the cockpit. You experience what the pilots are going through at high G-forces, like you’re actually in the aircraft with them- because you are – the actors had to go through rigorous flight training and flew real fighter jets during filming.

In an early scene, we see a rear admiral commenting on Maverick’s penchant for taking risks, saying, “Despite your best efforts you refuse to die.” He wonders why Maverick hasn’t been promoted: “You should at least be a two-star admiral by now. Yet here you are, captain. Why is that?” “It’s one of life’s mysteries, sir” comes Maverick’s deadpan reply.

Cruise was in his early 20s when he played Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the original Top Gun – a ballsy young navy pilot with the Kawasaki motorcycle and the need for speed. In his latest avatar, he’s 25 years older, but as cocky and irreverent as ever. In a nail-biting opening sequence, Maverick pushes a fifth generation fighter beyond Mach 10 (ten times the speed of sound), earning his laurels as ‘the fastest man alive’. The aircraft engines catch fire and it plummets to the ground, almost killing Maverick in the process. Partly as punishment, and in part because he is seen as the perfect candidate for the job, Maverick is ordered to return to Top Gun, the elite pilot-training school, to train a group of ace pilots for what seems like a suicide mission.

What follows is a dazzling spectacle of high octane patriotism: America’s best and brightest put everything on the line – while engaging in some of the most exhilarating aerial combat ever filmed – to take out an enemy base, and come back victorious after narrowly escaping the jaws of death.

Part of a Longstanding Pattern

Like other films and TV shows in the genre – American Sniper, Homeland, Patton, Charlie Wilson’s War, Argo, Hacksaw Ridge, Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day – Top Gun Maverick embellishes the idea of America as a keeper of the peace, a paragon of freedom and upholder of the “rules based order.” The truth, however, is very different. The US, through its national security apparatus – the Pentagon, CIA and NSA, and their media assets – will go to any lengths to maintain its cultural and political hegemony. This includes demonizing popular foreign leaders, imposing crushing sanctions on countries that step out of line, sponsoring coups and death squads, toppling elected leaders, installing puppet regimes and trafficking narcotics on an unprecedented scale as in the Iran-Contra affair.

Some commentators both in India and the West, habitually dub films like Top Gun Maverick as state propaganda” – which has a ring of truth – but these films can also be seen as a powerful means to unify fragmented populations and boost morale during uncertain times. They also polish the image of a brutal and deeply flawed civilization, giving it an imprimatur of greatness that belies its bloody past. No single entity has done as much to imprint the image of America as the “land of the free and home of the brave” upon billions of minds than Hollywood. Nationalism, in the context of Hollywood tent-pole cinema, is projected and perceived as social service of the highest order.

Lessons for India

If Hollywood can succeed in branding America as the greatest nation on earth, there’s no reason why the Indian film industry – with its world-class technical talent and increasingly huge budgets – cannot do the same.

Not only can Indian films expose the world to this ancient civilization’s mind-boggling mythological and historical wonders, they can also dispel obsolete colonial tropes about the nation. The world’s largest democracy can no longer be defined solely by its squalor, corruption and social inequities, just as America is not depicted exclusively as the land of endemic racism, slavery, genocide and nuclear Armageddon. As such, Bollywood must also make films keeping larger global audiences in mind – like the wildly successful Telugu film – rather than pandering to smaller demographic slices that are anyway turning to mainstream international fare in larger numbers than ever before. Otherwise, Bollywood risks completely irrelevance.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Can Cinema’s Soft Power Change Antigay Culture in Arab Countries?

Franthiesco Ballerini — Sun, 01 May 2022 10:34:42 +0000

The idea made sense commercially. After all, Paolo Genovese’s comedy-drama Perfetti Sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) grossed more than €16 million in Italy and has been remade 18 times in different countries, including Spain, Mexico, Turkey, South Korea, China and Russia, entering the Guinness Book of World Records. So why wouldn’t it be a hit in one or two more nations?

Netflix’s first original film in Arabic, Perfect Strangers, has become more of a controversy than a hit in regions like Egypt and the Middle East. This is due to its featuring a character that comes out as gay to his friends as they dine together. Although the movie doesn’t show any explicitly homosexual scenes, it has provoked strong reactions against the streaming giant, as some citizens said the movie homosexuality and immorality.

Released last January in 190 countries, Perfect Strangers, set in Beirut, is directed by Lebanese Wissam Smayra and stars actors such as Egypt’s Mona Zaki, Lebanon’s Nadine Labaki and Jordan’s Eyad Nassar. It’s the story of seven close friends who decide to play a game of “true or false” around the dinner table, exposing the intimate secrets that can be found on their cell phones. The friends agree to show every call, text and voice message to one another. The narrative reveals the occasional betrayal among some of the couples, and, at a critical point, one message has the effect of outing one of the friends as gay.

If it wasn’t for the Arabic language spoken by the actors and some Arab food served at dinner, ‘Perfect Strangers’ would look like a Hollywood movie. The plot, with its twists and turns and the dialogue, follows the classic model that the US studios have used for decades. The cinematography and art direction evoke the studio productions shot in L.A. in the 1950s. The characters are all good-looking and embrace modern western “values.” The women drink, are sexually nonchalant (one even takes off her underwear under the table) and are not shy about revealing their infidelity. While the men check for porn on the internet and talk about money and profit.

With all these Hollywood stereotypes, one might think that the film could harness some of the soft power of the American film industry and seduce Arab viewers with a piece of entertainment of the kind that has charmed audiences even in China and Russia, places where homosexuality is also a taboo. The soft power of Hollywood films, playing on its ability to seduce rather than coerce, has opened many doors for the United States in the world. For instance, in the 20^th century, served as a tool convincing neutral countries to support US foreign policy against the Soviet Union.

In the 21^st century, during a political and diplomatic crisis between Iran and the US, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose the then First Lady Michelle Obama to reveal the winner of Best Picture of 2013, Argo, Ben Affleck’s movie about six Americans who escape the 1979 Embassy takeover. Because the movie had an enormous appeal to Middle East audiences, theIranian military sought to congratulate Mrs. Obama for revealing the “real nature” of the award, based on political, not artistic criteria. In other words, Iranians realized how the most famous cinema award was used as a soft power tool by the US government.

Perfect Strangers may be less seductive and displays poorer production values than ‘Argo’. But in Arab countries, it’s far more controversial, if only because it evokes cultural taboos that may be too strong to break even by Hollywood’s tried and tested soft power prowess. When I watched the movie, I immediately questioned some gay friends living in countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Lebanon. Some of them have spent years in very secret homosexual relations with other men and women. What I’ve heard from them is that the Netflix production caused more pain than relief, since they had to act as if they were as ashamed and offended as their furious relatives with the availability of the movie in their culture. It’s a well-known fact that homosexuality is so strong a taboo that their families haven’t a clue about their son’s and daughter’s sexual orientation. This means they feel very comfortable freely attacking it and accusing the Western world of exporting cultural products that “stimulate those behaviors.”

For decades, Hollywood productions have been successful in Arab countries, but most of the time, the key to success was their ability to adapt the content and it into languages like Farsi, to insert local jokes and avoid cultural taboos. But Netflix’s strategy was risky and clever at the same time. Its first Arab movie was a co-production by Dubai-based Front Row Filmed Entertainment, Egypt’s Film Clinic and Lebanon’s Empire Entertainment. Shot in Lebanon with Arab actors, it didn’t go through local censors and was labeled as a non-family audience film only for the region.

Thanks to this strategy, it was screened in many countries in the region, unlike Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ and Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’, banned respectively for having the first gay superhero and, the second, for having a transgender character. And despite (or because of) the controversy, Perfect Strangers has ratings for number of views in the Middle East, with a famous Egyptian actress like Elham Shahin going public to defend the movie, saying “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it”, while, a member of Egypt’s House of Representatives, asserted that Netflix should be banned from Egypt. But the controversy itself might have paid handsome dividends, since the movie sat at the top of the region’s streaming chart for February. Here’s yet another consequence of Netflix’s strategy in the region. According to the Egyptian film critic and programmer,, no other entertainment conglomerate has ever shaken upsocial politics and posed such a threat to patriarchy, though it must be said that artistic freedom – another conquest attributable to Hollywood’s soft power – is still far from being a reality in the Arab world.

This isn’t the first time that cinema has been used in Egypt as a soft power to seduce the public to accept more liberal and modern values. With a more discreet and subtly artistic attempt, award-winning Egyptian director Youssef Chahine has in the past circumvented government censorship with films exploiting the themes of sex, homosexuality, drugs and political criticism. In movies like Return of the Prodigal Son (1978) and (1989), women with masculine traits and men with mortal hatred of their own repressed desires were ways the director found to evoke homosexuality. The filmmaker, who won awards in western festivals such as Cannes and Berlin with his art films designed for smaller audiences, attempted to undermine antigay culture in his country but proved unsuccessful. Perhaps this time, decades later and with a much bigger budget, Netflix can achieve a better result in the quest to make other people’s sexuality a perfectly acceptable characteristic among imperfect strangers.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Will Smith’s Gift to Racists — and Misogynists

Ellis Cashmore — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 18:55:34 +0000

At the 2003 Academy Awards , host Steve Martin, a white comic, made a not-so-funny gag aimed at Jennifer Lopez, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents.

Lopez was sitting with her beau of the time, Ben Affleck, a white Californian built like a light-heavyweight boxer (she may be back with him now). You’ll understand shortly why I’m being specific about their particulars.

You Can Take the Man Out of the Ghetto…

Watching the past weekend’s Oscars , I immediately wondered: What if Chris Rock, an African American comedian, had cracked a gag at the expense of JLo and not Jada Pinkett Smith? After Martin’s joke, Lopez grinned politely, while Affleck, seated next to her, was clearly unimpressed but forced a transparently false smile.

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But what if he had taken offense, like Will Smith, a black actor with a similar build to Affleck, did? If Affleck marched onto the stage and smacked Rock across the face, the situation would have taken on a completely different dynamic. The headlines would have read: White Actor Strikes Diminutive Black Host. Rock is 5 foot 7 inches and, in boxing terms, looks about a featherweight.

The media would have reacted differently, though how differently we’ll never know. One thing is for sure: The episode would have taken on a racial character.

Even as it was, Smith’s assault on Rock is loaded with racial implications, the most obvious one being that he supplied white racists with sustenance. There is an that “You can take the man out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.” Racists subscribe to this and often cite the examples of O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson, both African Americans who became conspicuously successful and had more money than they could count. Both, in their different ways, imploded.

Smith hasn’t committed an offense comparable with rape or any other kind of violent crime. And the LAPD has declared it will not seek prosecution. So, Smith’s contretemps is likely to remain that: an embarrassment rather than a crime.

But let’s face it: Had it occurred in a different context, the likelihood is that the perpetrator of the offense would be arrested and charged. There would be no trouble finding witnesses, either. Smith behaved like a perfect racial stereotype: hot-tempered, bull-headed, thuggish and, most importantly, incapable of controlling his emotions even in an environment where decorum prevailed. Even after Smith returned to his seat, he screamed obscenities at Rock, who lacked the wit to turn the episode into something worthy of laughter. His was an unedifying exhibition of uncontrolled aggression.

Surprisingly, Smith was not ejected and, indeed, later picked up an award for best actor.

Animating Masculinity

But pandering to stock racist types was not Smith’s only offense. His action was borderline misogynistic, perhaps even enhancing the racial stereotype he’d brought to life. Consider if it was a case of Will being taken over by his emotion, seeing the look on his wife’s face, probably under family stress with her condition and snapping. Or a black man animating an anachronistic form of masculinity, historically associated, though not exclusively, with black men. After all, the amusing line was aimed at his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that manifests in the partial or complete absence of hair from areas of the body where it normally grows; baldness, in other words.

Couldn’t she have responded to the insult herself? She may have felt a more dignified silence was the best policy. But she might also have answered back with an equally acerbic remark. Or, if she had been moved to act, Pinkett Smith could have administered the slap in the face herself. She’s about the same size as Rock, so it wouldn’t have been the mismatch that actually did take place. Since when do women need their husbands, partners or male friends to take care of their business? Jada looked slightly disgusted by Rock’s remark, but, so far, her views on her husband’s violent behavior aren’t known. Had she objected to it, we would have surely found out by now.

Since #MeToo gained momentum in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein case, the flagrant manipulation and abuse of women by men — especially powerful ones — has become visible through the testimonies of countless women. We probably suspected for years that men get away with mistreating women in more ways than one. But #MeToo has effectively put the brake on this egregious historical practice.

What about men’s abuse of other men? I know readers will think I am stretching this too far, but surely men have the right not to be coerced, harassed or intimidated too. Rock was only doing his job — the tradition at Oscar ceremonies is to “roast,” as Americans call it. That is, to subject guests to good-natured criticism. For many, he may have overstepped the mark by making fun of what is, after all, a medical condition. But the informal rules about what constitutes good or bad taste change year by year. Rock is at least entitled to expect the people he insults will be familiar enough with the custom that they take the ridicule in the spirit he intends.

Victims of Domestic Abuse

The LAPD’s intention not to pursue the case raises a final issue. Should it be necessary for a to press charges when an obvious assault has been committed? Rock is clearly embarrassed by the affair, and his failure to file a complaint presumably reflects his desire to have the incident quickly forgotten. Countless women and men, who have been victims of domestic abuse, do not press charges. But their motivations are usually very, very different. Often, they are pressured by their abuser or threatened with more violence should they pursue charges.

The LAPD’s approach to this seems head-in-the-sand. It will probably have no consequences for Chris Rock and leave no damage, professionally or physically (at least he didn’t seem too badly hurt). But victims of domestic abuse are never so fortunate: their circumstances dictate that they often imperil their own safety by giving evidence. The LAPD’s decision will not inspire them.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Real Message of Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up”

Peter Isackson — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 16:36:39 +0000

Released just before Christmas on Netflix, Adam McKay’s “” instantly became the most talked about movie of 2021. The professional film critics immediately weighed in, mostly with unfavorable reviews. By the following week, the reviews were being reviewed. “Don’t Look Up” had taken on the status of an event rather than a piece of entertainment or a work of art.

The reason for this curious phenomenon, similar to what occurred for the movie “Bonnie and Clyde” 55 years ago, lies in the fact that, while capturing the mood of an epoch focused on the very real possibility of the collapse of civilization, as a work of art, the movie is visibly flawed in a number of ways that no professional critic could ignore. Given McKay’s track record and the star power he brought together in the case, the critics felt that the film failed to live up to its advertised promise.

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When the viewership statistics began appearing, the disconnect between critical assessment and the public’s appreciation became flagrant. “Don’t Look Up” the record for Netflix viewership for a new release. The gap in judgment between the critics and the public itself became a topic for discussion in the media.

Some may see this as a demonstration of the inexorable loss of prestige of movie reviewers in the era of social media. Once respected pillars of popular journalism, most consumers now see cinema critics as irrelevant. This has something to do with the ambiguity of cinema itself. Traditionally consumed in a dark movie theater as a collective experience amid a responsive audience, most people now watch their movies at home on television. The distinction between movies and TV has become increasingly blurred.

Getting Talked About

No one doubts that audiences were drawn to the film principally through the appeal of the star-studded cast featuring, among others, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande and Cate Blanchett. But there may be another cultural factor that complements the roster of stars: the power of the traditional and non-traditional news media. That includes the uncountable bevy of pundits on social media. Commentary on the news has become another form of entertainment, thanks in part to its much lower production costs than Hollywood movies.

Once the critics had done their job, most outlets in the US treated the film’s release and reception as a news story in and of itself. The media began talking about the movie, no longer in terms of its artistic success or failure, but as a kind of psy-op designed to sensitize the public to the urgency of combating climate change. Anyone with access to Netflix felt obliged to watch it.

By becoming not only a much-viewed work of entertainment but more significantly an object of endless discussion in the media, the movie achieved the director’s real goal: getting talked about. The attention the media is still giving “Don’t Look Up,” weeks after its Netflix release, reveals more about the state of US culture than it does about the movie itself. It highlights the paradox, specifically targeted in the movie’s satire, of the public’s addiction to the media’s blather and its growing distrust of all institutions, including the very media to which the public is addicted.

Were the Critics Right?

In the case of “Bonnie and Clyde,” released in 1967, Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern “initially panned [the movie], only to come back and proclaim it (wisely) a great movie,” to David Ansen (a later Newsweek critic and a friend of mine). Morgenstern penned a second review celebrating Penn’s accomplishment. I’m not sure I agree with David about it being a great movie, but “Bonnie and Clyde” became such a popular success that Morgenstern had to sit down and rethink the cultural conditions that made it, if not a great movie, then at least a movie for its time. And what a time it was! 1967 is remembered as the year of the “summer of love,” a propitious moment for any cultural artifact that could be perceived as being “for its time.” More significantly, “Bonnie and Clyde” became a trend-setter for the next generation of filmmakers.

Can we compare our era with the ebullition of the sixties? Can “Don’t Look Up” pretend to be the “Bonnie and Clyde” of the 21^st century? Because of COVID-19 and Donald Trump, 2020 and 2021 may be remembered by future generations as two years as significant as 1967, 1968 (assassinations of MLK and RFK, “mai 68”) or 1969 (Woodstock). Then again, future generations may simply remember these two years as a period of gradual but certain decline marked by a debilitating indifference to the impending crisis that “Don’t Look Up” wants us to respond to.

McKay intended “Don’t Look Up” to be a satire. The mood of the movie is clearly satirical, but some critics noticed that the plot and characterization easily broke the mood, slipping dangerously at times into parody. True satire treats a serious subject seriously before introducing the elements of ironic perspective that subtly or unsubtly undermine the characters’ pretention of seriousness. For a director, this means controlling both the timing and the gap between the sober and the comic.

Hollywood satire, which always employs humor, has traditionally fallen into two broad categories: dramatic and comic. The Marx Brothers were specialized in comic satire. It achieved its effects through immediate exaggeration of recognizable social behaviors, almost always including the relationship between a woman from the American upper class (Margaret Dumont), an upstart male gold digger (Groucho) and a penniless southern European immigrant trying to make it in WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) America (Chico).

In this Marxian (rather than Marxist) world, the three brothers in real life represented three different types of cultural marginality. Chico’s character comprised both Italians and Jews; the mute Harpo represented an extreme form of marginality, combining the handicapped and the poet (and natural musician). He even had his place in the poor black community (Harpo’s “” in “A Day at the Races”). All three of the Marx Brothers embodied, in contrasting ways, characters bent on destabilizing a self-satisfied majority that could neither understand them nor integrate them into their putative order. The very existence of the three non-conformists challenged the legitimacy of the institutions they interacted with.

Comic vs. Dramatic Satire

The Marx Brothers may have produced raucous comedy intended to provoke non-stop laughter, but their humor was built on a foundation of social satire. Audiences didn’t necessarily think about it in that way. They didn’t exit the movie theater reflecting deeply on the presumption, injustice and cluelessness of the ruling class. But the worlds and situations the Marx Brothers interacted with skewered a range of institutional targets: political and military (“Duck Soup”), academic (“Horsefeathers”), the arts (“A Night at the Opera”) or even medical (“A Day at the Races”). In so doing, they subtly altered the audience’s perception of the class system in the US and some of its most prestigious institutions. All of these movies appeared during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Like Jonathan Swift in “Gulliver’s Travels,” the Marx Brothers created parallel worlds, clearly differentiated from our own, in which recognizable social and transactional behavior became exaggerated to the point of producing immediate comic effects that highlighted the illogic and even injustice of the real world. Like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy produced variants on the same principle of comic satire. Each created and gave life to distinctive marginal personalities, at odds with respectable society and usually defeated by it.

Dramatic satire has in common with comic satire the aim of making its points by producing laughter. But it follows a radically different set of rules. Instead of throwing absurdity straight in the face of the audience by staging wildly exaggerated behavior designed to challenge and upset the veneer of seriousness attributed to what is presented as “normal society,” dramatic satire first takes the time to create the audience’s belief in a realistic situation that will later be challenged by an unexpected event or external force. It turns around an anomaly that erupts to provoke reactions from a range of characters unprepared for the surprise.

In other words, dramatic satire gives deadpan seriousness a head start. It is the gap between the nature of the anomalous event and the quality of the characters’ reaction that produces what comes across not as the pretext for a joke, but as unintentional humor. In the history of cinema, the most perfect example of dramatic satire — and the most appropriate to compare with “Don’t Look Up” — is Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, “Dr. Strangelove” or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” the archetypal doomsday satire. McKay was acutely aware of that when he made “Don’t Look Up.”&�Բ��;

Kubrick’s drama literally turns around the plot device of a Soviet “doomsday machine” that, if triggered, will destroy human life on the surface of the earth. The plot begins in total seriousness, like any dramatic movie. The key to its brilliance as satire is the gradual pace at which the exaggerated behavior of some of the characters unfolds. Playing their designated roles to the hilt, the politicians and generals become overtly comic when they go one step (and sometimes two or three) beyond what is reasonable.

There are several points in the first third of the movie where it becomes apparent to the viewer that they are watching a comedy. But this happens gradually and only through significant, but credible details in the dialogue, such as Brigadier General Ripper’s obsession with “purity of essence.” As the plot develops, at key moments, the comedy can erupt at the highest level of absurdity, as when President Muffley : “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room.” Such absurdly comic moments emerge logically, without ever undermining the fundamentally dramatic plot structure as it builds toward a final crescendo that will be followed by an instantaneous release.

Adam McKay’s Compromise

McKay’s script attempts to respect the same principle of dramatic satire as “Dr. Strangelove.” The initial scenes reveal the introverted scientist (DiCaprio) and his research student (Lawrence) making the disquieting discovery of a comet certain to strike the earth within half a year. The impending catastrophe is fully confirmed before the audience can get a reasonable feeling for the characters. That is the movie’s first glaring flaw. The apparent tension seems unjustified. The audience doesn’t yet care enough about the characters to start seriously worrying about whether they or the earth they (and we) stand on will survive the comet’s assault.

A quick transition leads us to the corridors of the White House in Washington, DC. We spend some time with the troubled scientists who are kept waiting before meeting President Orlean (Meryl Streep). She turns out to be a clever composite of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There’s even a gratuitous hint of a link to Barack Obama, the secret smoker.

The characters in “Dr. Strangelove” are each given the time to appear as reasonable, conscientious, professionally competent human beings. Their irrationality and moral failure only appear as they attempt to deal with the impending threat. In contrast, “Don’t Look Up’s” president and colleagues are simply the embodiments of the algorithm that now dominates US politics, aimed at winning elections. This is where the mood of the movie moves from satire to parody.

We then move to New York where a serious news bureau modeled after The New York Times and a daytime TV interview show demonstrate the same algorithmic principle predicated this time essentially on optimizing ratings. At this point, the spectacle of increasingly trivial behavior by all the establishment parties definitively takes over.

What follows is a dynamically edited series of acts and scenes that riff on the gap between the serious intentions of the scientists and the endless venality and psychological triviality of politicians, entertainers and techno-capitalists. The specific critique of institutions and the media is usually on target. But it too often appears to be an exercise of making fun of what is visible every day in our media simply by duplicating its most consistent behaviors.

The Difficulty of Satirizing Hyperreality

In other words, McKay’s parody suffers from the already hyperreal nature of what it seeks to critique. The culture it puts on display, already accessible in today’s media, is too recognizable and predictable, in a certain sense, too true to (hyperreal) life. It may be a thankless task to try for comic effect by further exaggerating anything in the real world that is already so exaggerated in its triviality and cynical efficiency that on its own it tends to be laughable. McKay ends up faithfully reproducing a world that, through its media, endlessly parodies itself.

That may be what made the critics feel uncomfortable. The actors do their best to parody what it already a parody. The movie rarely achieves the sense of queasy discomfort satire normally seeks to inspire. “Dr. Strangelove” does so by slowly building that discomfort to a fever pitch. Kubrick shows his characters thinking, strategizing, trying to adapt to an unusual situation. McKay’s characters too often appear to be reading from a script. We never get the impression that they are grappling with anything. Instead, they are playing out their algorithmically determined roles.

Perhaps the real lesson, worth being talked about, from “Don’t Look Up” is that in a world so dominated by the hyperreality projected not just by our media but also by our politicians, technology gurus and even academics, true satire is no longer possible. When the media reaches the level of superficiality and sheer venality that it has achieved today, as revealed in every scene of “Don’t Look Up,” the link to reality in today’s culture is too tenuous for effective political satire to be produced.

Hollywood Satire and Contemporary History

Over the past century, Hollywood has produced many successful and indeed unforgettable satires. They fall into a variety of styles and with a wide range of comic techniques. “Duck Soup” (Marx Brothers), “Blazing Saddles” (Mel Brooks), “M*A*S*H”(Robert Altman), “Mulholland Drive” (David Lynch) and many others stand as great Hollywood satires that achieved their effect by creating largely unbelievable frameworks that become believable by virtue of the director’s control of exaggeration, coupled with the capacity to build a coherent intricacy of contrasts and conflicts in the plotting.

“Don’t Look Up” never quite makes up its mind about whether it wishes to embrace “Dr. Strangelove’s” focused drama or the liberated wackiness of Mel Brooks. That may be why the critics found it to be an unsatisfying hybrid. In its defense, however, we should recognize — and future generations should note — that it does stand as an effective parody of the most predictable behavior of public figures incapable of responding to an existential crisis because they have been programmed according to a different set of algorithmic rules. For that reason, the film should be considered a resounding success. It has raised in the public forum the most troubling question concerning the climate crisis: that even our awareness of it cannot serve to find a solution. The system we are trying to save is built to resist anyone’s saving it.

For all its cinematic quality, brilliant humor and critical success, “Dr. Strangelove” had no immediate impact on the arms race. Still, it is worth noting that when Ronald Reagan was elected president, sixteen years after the movie’s release, as he was making the rounds of the federal government’s , upon visiting the Pentagon he “asked the chief of staff to show him the war room of Dr. Strangelove.” The Hollywood actor, who had spent plenty of time in his earlier career in sound studios, believed Kubrick’s set was real.

Reagan’s public anti-communist philosophy was not radically different from Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper’s as detailed in “Dr. Strangelove.” The man who, before his election, “had argued that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in the nuclear competition” personally initiated the negotiations that led to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (), “the first treaty that required U.S. and Soviet/Russian reductions of strategic nuclear weapons.” Could it have been Reagan’s memory of the lessons of “Dr. Strangelove” that ultimately guided him towards that decision?

A Tale of Two Cold Wars

The original Cold War nuclear arms race Kubrick denounced in his movie is still going on to this day. Perhaps more than ever it can be triggered in a heartbeat. In contrast, climate change promises a slow agony, whose groans may already be discernible. America’s current president, Joe Biden, says he wants to rein it in but seems incapable of exercising any real leadership to achieve that goal.

At the time Kubrick was shooting “Dr. Strangelove,” John F. Kennedy was still president. In his first year of office, JFK called for the of nuclear weapons “before they abolish us.” In the summer of 1963, he initiated the first nuclear test ban . Four months later, he was successfully “abolished” himself in the streets of Dallas.

It appears clear now that, willingly or unwillingly, President Biden will accomplish little to limit the effects of climate change. Seeking to raise the stakes of the US rivalry with China and increasing the pressure on Russia over Ukraine in a spirit that sometimes resembles a new cold war, he has also made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of banishing nuclear weapons. In the first week of 2022, the White House affirmed the that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”

The first cold war ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. The lesson of “Dr. Strangelove” no longer lives in any president’s memory. But can we suppose or perhaps even hope that a future president who happened to watch “Don’t Look Up” at the end of 2021 will, like Reagan, remember its message and dare, even decades later, to take some kind of serious action to address it? That seems unlikely. As President Orlean pointed out, unless the end of the world is scheduled to take place before the next presidential or midterm election, there are more important things to attend to.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Actor Viggo Mortensen Uses a Word He Shouldn’t

Peter Isackson — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 13:06:34 +0000

What happens when concern about racism is focused on policing the words that antiracist people use, rather than the acts of actual racists?

Americans have a serious and complex problem with the notion of free speech. While everyone accepts the dogma that freedom of expression is an absolute right enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, more and more Americans appear to find some types of speech illicit, if not downright reprehensible. One approach to condemning other people’s speech — the one preferred by Donald Trump’s White House — consists of crying, “fake news.” Another, which most people associate with liberals, is political correctness (PC), which, in the minds of its practitioners, functions like a secondary legal system.

Though considerable overlap exists, most cultures make a clear distinction between speech and action. When talking about other people’s actions (not our own), we tend to speak of “behavior,” which though officially neutral always seems to carry a negative connotation. We tend to make a dubious distinction: we do something, we “act” while others “behave” (i.e., badly, incorrectly, poorly, inappropriately).

The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has already defined the word “behavior” as it was used in a specific context, by the US government accusing the Iranian government of “malign behavior” We come back to the same word today to analyze how it plays out in everyday US culture, and more particularly in PC culture.

The respected and accomplished actor Viggo Mortensen has provided the latest example of bad behavior in the eyes of his judges. While explaining the racist historical background of his most recent film situated in the South in 1962, he actually used an anagram of “ginger,” aka the n-word, in a sentence.

A right-thinking PC adjudicator, the largely unknown freelance director Dick Schultz — possibly seeking his first 15 minutes of fame — about this violation of decency and is quoted by as adding: “I have no idea why this isn’t a big news story. Viggo is wildly talented but that kind of behavior needs to be publicly checked.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Behavior:

1. As used by scientists: comportment, the way individuals act in specific situations

2. As used by ordinary people: Action by another person that reveals a fault in that person’s character

Contextual note��

As always with PC, Mortensen accepted to apologize. Deconstructing his full apology tells us a lot about US culture. Here is how it reads: “Although my intention was to speak strongly against racism, I have no right to even imagine the hurt that is caused by hearing that word in any context, especially from a white man. I do not use the word in private or in public. I am very sorry that I did use the full word last night, and will not utter it again.”

The first thing to notice is that if Mortensen was unambiguously speaking “strongly against racism,” his accusers consider that the speaker’s intentions, however obvious, are irrelevant. Mortensen states that he has “no right to even imagine the hurt … caused.” In other words, PC functions as the ultimate American “bill of rights,” defining not only what one can express, but what one can imagine. Dare we call this an attempt at mind control?

Mortensen adds a proviso: “especially from a white man.” We should thus understand that in a racist society, where white privilege continues to do untold damage to black lives on every level (economic, academic, law enforcement), the PC strictures applied to the n-word allow the white community to think that, if they refrain from pronouncing the “full word” (i.e., more than the first letter), they are not racist.

Historical note

Despite the US Supreme Court deciding in the case of that racism was no longer a serious issue in the US electoral system, a glance at the news demonstrates that racism is not only alive and well, it is still the defining, existential issue at the core of US culture. The issue of voter suppression targeting minorities in the recent midterm elections testifies to the persistence of institutional racism.

The weapons people used to combat racism in the 20th century were protests and sometimes riots, followed by the laws we associate with the heroic days of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson. Those laws included restrictions on states’ manipulation of voting rights (now permitted) and affirmative action, which racist politicians and pundits have successfully branded “” to perpetuate at least some of the traditional economic advantages reserved for the white majority.

In other words, racists have succeeded in undermining the law of the land as well as the spirit of that law by convincing those who officially oppose racism (some of whom may be racists themselves) that shaming people who pronounce a word with a history we should all know about constitutes an effective defense against the prevailing racism. Hypocrites always prefer repression to the hard work of resolution.

Anyone who feels reassured by Mortensen’s forced confession should spend the next few days reading up about the Spanish Inquisition and Joseph Stalin’s show trials. They should also think about whether racism has anything to do with vocabulary, a mere symptom, but not the disease. Mortensen is absolutely not a racist, but the word he used has branded him with a scarlet W. And like , and her scarlet letter, he has accepted it. However, one thing his speech was not is… behavior!

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Meryl Streep Defends the Big Three: Hollywood, Foreigners and the Press

51�Թ� — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:46:35 +0000

Donald Trump’s persistent divisive rhetoric provoked Meryl Streep to take a stance.

Sunday night saw the Hollywood elite honored at the 74th Golden Globes Awards, but the upheaval caused by the election of Donald Trump as US president remained center stage. While several actors made subtle hints toward their distaste for Trump at the ceremony, Meryl Streep confronted the president-elect directly with a passionate speech.

The awards were held by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose name includes the three things that Streep describes to be “the most vilified segments in American society.” She dedicated her acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille Award to those who are demonized for being a part of Hollywood, a foreigner or the press. For the many who have fallen victim to Trump’s threats of deportation, she expresses the beauty of Hollywood’s diversity as representative of the nation as a whole.

Streep expressed her disgust of witnessing Trump mock a disabled reporter during his campaign, ruminating about the people in power who have abused their authority by repressing those unable to fight back.

It did not take long for the president-elect to . Trump referred to Streep as “one of the most over-rated actresses” and a “Hillary flunky who lost big” in an attempt to denigrated the three-time Oscar-winning actress, reconfirming her dignified criticism that such is now the reality of the most respected office in America.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Hollywood in Black and White

Ajay Kothari — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 10:52:19 +0000

Hollywood has no place for ethnic minorities.��

As a “person of color”—and how I hate being identified this way—in the acting field, I couldn’t feel��any��sympathy for the protest. Forget about not being nominated for the Oscars; we, the people I talk about here, the other larger “visible” minorities, are not even welcome in your homes on TV or movie screens. Forget major roles, forget “roles with some meat.” We “neithers” (neither black nor white) get almost no roles. Period.

I still did my best. I joined the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) in 1993, the first Indian-American to do so in the Washington-Baltimore area.

The year was 1990. The response of a major casting agency here in Washington, DC was: “When we need an ‘Indian’ we will call you.”

A certain detriment to my desire to assimilate. I had become a US citizen just a few years prior to that, and this I found quite painful. This is precisely something I didn’t want. I was hoping to be called when they would need someone to play an “American” engineer (I am one by education and profession) or a doctor, lawyer or taxi driver—any one of these and not just an “Indian-looking” something. I didn’t want something just because of being or rather looking like an Indian-American, nor did I want to be denied the part for “looking” that way.

The Land of Taxi Drivers

But it hasn’t worked out that way at all. Far from it. One would think that Hollywood would be a bastion of acceptance, of breaking down the stereotypes, but it has turned out to be quite the opposite. Here, stereotyping ethnic looks has been the norm. It has gone to bat for African-Americans but has shown no propensity to do that for many other minorities. Yes, we look different. Anyone can tell. And almost two-thirds of the world population looks that way. If an alien were to visit Earth and watch Hollywood movies or TV shows, it��wouldn’t seem that was the case at all.

Does Hollywood think that if it covers the two ends of the “color spectrum”—black and white—it covers us all? And even more than that, if the differentiation is thus (implicitly) based only on skin color, isn’t that quite racist, if not obtuse?

The problem is��that this was not an isolated incident. On four occasions, calls came to audition for the TV series Homicide that was filmed in Baltimore—over a four-year period, few and far in between. Twice, the part was a clerk at a convenience store, and the other two times it was as an owner or manager of a sleazy motel. It would be fun to audition for one of those roles. The problem was that it was only for such roles.

When the fifth call to audition for such a role came, I had to decline just on principle.��The sixth time it was as a taxi driver—another example of stereotyping. I acquiesced, auditioned (with a thick Indian accent to boot), got the role and played a taxi driver on the show Law and Order.

There are probably 20 times more Indian-American doctors and maybe 50 times more engineers or scientists than there are Indian-American taxi drivers. Why the stereotyping—and a proclivity for an inaccurate one? Surely something wasn’t kosher.

The Other Americans

With the US Hispanic population at 48.9 million (16.1%) and the Asian-American at 15.3 million (5%) making them together almost one in five Americans according to the , one would think that about one in five characters on TV shows or commercials would be one of them, everything else being equal. After all, that was precisely the argument made by African-Americans and others who took up their cause to make a case for inclusion in Hollywood productions. Pick one hour on TV, any hour, and when you��do not find even one-fiftieth of airtime rationed to ethnic minorities, there is��a reason��to wonder.

And then there are Native Americans. This country used to belong to them, but now their presence on screen or in other media is near absolute zero, as if they have been wiped off clean and intentionally so for the second time.

What is happening to us is much larger and the media refuses to talk about it.

Was my experience in the acting arena more than merely a reflection of what Hollywood does to emulate what it perceives to be prevalent in society at large?��Or, more painfully, was it actually an interpolation from a more generalized sentiment?

Yes, you can come and work here but, about being part of society here, oh, we’re not too sure. More than half of revenue of a Hollywood movie��. Well, Hollywood, one in four people around the��world is and looks South Asian (1.75 billion out of 7.2) and one in three is and looks East Asian (2.3 billion out of 7.2). You cannot ignore us, nor is it fair. Wake up and smell the tea.

Demand Change

And when we have one Indian-American playing a major role, like Rajesh Koothrappali on the highly successful The Big Bang Theory, and more recently Priyanka Chopra on ABC’s Quantico,��Indian-Americans express supreme elation at being included.

Really? We have been on Earth just as long as anyone else and deserve the same share, even in the US. We are one of the oldest and most advanced civilizations of that age. Why then this squeamishness, this reticence about asking for a fair share? Come on Indian-Americans: Start asking for things, for the sake of your children who do have other aspirations than just be an engineer or a doctor.

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The funny and tragic thing is that some people, in the media and in Hollywood, are still making the same argument they made in the 1950s and 1960s: that white homes did not want to have black faces on their TV screens, hence a dearth of roles for African-Americans. That argument got superseded and overwhelmed by people with a conscience saying that was wrong. Many African-American-themed shows were and continue to be created, movies made, celebrities adored. We have Denzel Washingtons and Halle Berrys.

As an Indian-American actor-wannabe for the last three decades, I have seen this firsthand against all non-whites and non-blacks. Hollywood did start to change its attitude toward African-Americans over last 20 or so years, but it has shown no predilection to do so for other visible minorities. The main reason I heard was: “You guys—Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans—do not complain!” We hoped things would change based on cerebral arguments rather than through protest.

It is well-known that Indian-American kids have been doing fabulously well at the National Spelling Bee, which itself can be an interesting storyline for Hollywood. For several years now, the top three spelling bee have been Indian-American kids, as were the champions of 12 of last 16 years and all since 2008. But when Hollywood made a movie on this subject, called Akeelah and the Bee, it was about an African-American contestant.

We can spell but we do not count.

How would the country react if the roles were reversed?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Defining Casablanca’s Modern City Brand

Samantha North — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 10:45:48 +0000

The economic powerhouse of Morocco’s Casablanca is light years away from the image created in a Hollywood studio 70 years ago.

Our story starts in 1942 with Europe in the midst of war. We find ourselves in the dusty North African outpost of Casablanca, where a motley assortment of refugees, political agitators and men with secrets gather in a place known as Rick’s Cafe. Here, they exchange news, drink whiskey and juggle illegal paperwork to get them out of the country to a better life.

Casablanca was full of anxiety and uncertainty, a limbo full of those caught between their pre-war pasts and their uncertain futures. So begins the plot of what was to become one of the most popular classic films of all time: Casablanca.

But Rick’s Café never really existed. Casablanca was not shot in Morocco. None of its actors were Moroccan. In fact, the whole thing was constructed in a Hollywood studio, making Casablanca the film as far removed from Casablanca the city as could be imagined.

Nevertheless, the city became synonymous with the film and some of the latter’s glamour rubbed off on the image of Casablanca the city.

Rick’s Cafe comes to life

Six decades after the film was released, Casablanca finally got its own Rick’s Café. Kathy Kriger, an American ex-diplomat, opened her version of Rick’s in 2004, while the world was still reeling in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the emergence of the “war on terror.” Kriger left the Foreign Service to devote herself to building Rick’s Cafe as a business and a brand name. She even found a piano player called Sam—or Issam, to be precise.

“I wanted to use it as a way to show Americans how Morocco was different,” Kriger tells me. “I knew they would put all the [Middle East] countries into one basket. So I wanted to help them make the psychological leap and not be scared.”

Now, 12 years later, Rick’s Cafe attracts a regular flow of celebrities, royalty and political bigwigs to Casablanca, along with tourists from all around the world. Many come a long way to visit Rick’s. For some, the movie is the only image that links them with Casablanca at all. While it may be a false image in some ways, the iconic film provides brand awareness for the city, which it otherwise might have lacked. Recognition is a valuable asset for any place looking to make its mark globally.

“We’re known all over the world,” says Kriger. “The Japanese minister of economy is coming here for dinner tomorrow. J-Lo’s been here. Casablanca the movie is so famous that it brings people in from everywhere. They all know of it. Some people come from Europe just to have dinner, spend the night and go back.”

The film’s influence may have spread far and wide globally, but it was never much of a big deal within Morocco until Kriger opened Rick’s. Since then, Casablanca locals have become more aware of the impact that one film had on global perceptions of their city. Some of them have spotted its potential and tried to harness it. So far, Kriger’s restaurant is the only Rick’s in town and likely to remain so now that she owns the rights to its name.

Kriger says: “When I first tried to register the name Rick’s Cafe I found out that someone else already had it. He was from Casablanca and had studied in the US. He used to get embarrassed when people there asked if he hung out at Rick’s Cafe when he went home. So he registered the name when he came back after graduation, hoping to do something with it.”

The real Casablanca

Despite the popularity of the 21st-century Rick’s Café and the large numbers of tourists it attracts, the presence of the restaurant is not enough by itself to define a city with a vibrant culture and ancient history of its own.

�մǻ岹��’s Casablanca mingles strains of the colonial past with a thoroughly modern present. The buzzing medina area, somewhat shabby but always fascinating, is full of market stalls, street vendors and small antique shops. Just outside the medina the streets are lined with white art-deco buildings, relics from the days of the French. A tram line cuts through the area, connecting the wealthy centre with some of the outlying slums.

Toward the coast, the Anfa hills district is full of gated compounds and leafy streets, leading down to one of the city’s main malls, Place d’Anfa. Racine, another well-to-do section, has large shops, Western chains, and luxurious apartment buildings. En route to the airport, there are new developments that can be seen in progress, including a “.” The main highway is lit using solar powered street lamps.

Overall, Casablanca retains a cosmopolitan feel, with its many foreign restaurants, cafes and bars serving hordes of Moroccans and expats alike. The variety is impressive, including sushi bars, Turkish kebab joints, Lebanese cafes, Argentinian steakhouses, Chinese noodle shops and Irish pubs, along with traditional Moroccan seafood, tagines and couscous.

The city’s main local attraction has to be the striking Hassan II Mosque, standing large and imposing with its single minaret looming over the coastline. The DNA of the city is surely rooted in cosmopolitanism, which should be a key feature of any new branding effort. This is the “real” Casablanca, where past meets present and where all travellers are welcomed.

Fortunately, local authorities in the city have already recognized the benefits of city branding and have established a series of initiatives to devise and implement a new strategy.

Rather than focusing on an image rooted in a depiction of colonial wartime Casablanca, the new strategy is determinedly modern in its outlook. I��spoke to Khalid Baddou, president of the Moroccan Association for Marketing and Communications, about the city’s goals to promote a refreshed image.

“The problem [with the film] is that it represents Casablanca as a very old-fashioned city,” Baddou tells me. “People get this image of colonial days, with everyone wearing red hats and so on. Although from a brand awareness point of view it’s still positive, for knowing that there’s a city in Morocco called Casablanca.”

Casablanca is known within Morocco as the economic capital. It’s the center of business, and most foreign companies are headquartered there. Casablanca is also an important center for offshoring. Global companies such as IBM are mainly located at Casablanca Nearshore Park, where they outsource a variety of IT, call center and business processes.��It also has a new business area and an extensive marina under development.

“Since independence, Casablanca has always been positioned as the economic center of the country,” says Baddou. “But that’s no longer sufficient. Today Casablanca must mean something different. We want to reposition the city and make it more attractive, by reinforcing its identity above and beyond the economic one. We will soon have competing regions in the country, with every region having its own resources. When that happens, the game will change.”

Casablanca’s city authorities aim to base its future development on the Dubai model and become known as a hub for Africa. Companies wanting to expand to Africa can use Casablanca as a jumping off point, benefiting from the connections that Morocco has already established with other African countries. According to Jorgen Eriksson, place branding specialist and CEO of Bearing Consulting, the city seems to be on the right track.

Eriksson says: “Casablanca needs to clarify its brand as a vibrant yet classic location for both oriental culture and West African business, where visitors can come as an entry point to modern West Africa. To achieve this, Casablanca needs to overhaul both its infrastructure and how it presents its unique assets to new visitors. All the components are there, but new packaging is needed.”

Casablanca’s goal to become the “new Dubai” does not chime well with the particular aspects of its image promoted in either the Humphrey Bogart film or indeed the city’s wholly authentic medina area and its colonial-era art deco streets. In fact, they are almost polar opposites where one represents modernity while the other is rooted in the past.

The DNA of the city is found in its continuous status as a port city that has seen it used as a trading centre by the��Phoenicians and Romans more than 2,000 years ago, and later the Portuguese (who gave it its name), Spanish and French, who colonized it in the 19th century. This is the “real” Casablanca, where past��meets present and where all travellers are welcomed.

“The film promotes one image, but we want to promote an entirely different one. The name of Casablanca is known, but what the city is all about today is not so well known,” says Baddou.

Those in charge of Brand Casablanca do not plan to cast aside the city’s heritage for the sake of modernity. There are plans already in place to shape the new brand strategy into an extension of the Casablanca that the world already knows.

“Our personal branding recommendation includes the historical heritage,” says Baddou. “We need to build on this image that people have of the city of Casa, but then add to it all the modernity that has happened in the last 60 or 70 years.”

He continues: “Cities need to build their brands based on their real DNA, whether that’s environment, business, industry, tourism or local icons. It has to be recent and fit in with reality. Casablanca the movie is good for awareness, but people also need to have the new image of the city, which is the reality now.”

Unlike the film, which was born in a Hollywood studio, Casablanca’s rebranding strategy will start from the grassroots, by discovering how the people of Casablanca actually view their own city. An important aspect of any city branding initiative, including this step can spell the difference between failure and success.

Baddou says: “We want to find out how local people view and talk about their city. For us white-collar workers, Casablanca could be very different from what the vast majority think. Everyone sees the city from a different angle. So the strategy can’t be top down. It must be built from the bottom, by first listening to the people and seeing what they say.”

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Pioneering Fashions of Lady Duff Gordon

James Blake Wiener — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 23:40:30 +0000

In this guest edition of The Interview, James Blake Wiener talks to author Randy Bryan Bigham.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, one woman broke multiple social barriers to become the leading designer of haute couture: Lucy Duff Gordon (1863-1935). While her name is virtually unknown today, Duff Gordon’s was the first international couture brand, and she was responsible for many innovations in the fashion world that are still recognizable in 2016: the fashion catwalk, low and revealing necklines, and playfully sexy lingerie.

In this guest edition of , James Blake Wiener speaks to Randy Bryan Bigham, author of��Lucile, Her Life by Design: Sex, Style and the Fusion of Theatre and Couture, about the life and legacy of history’s forgotten pioneer in fashion.��

James Blake Wiener: Why isn’t Lady Duff Gordon better known aside from her survival of the��Titanic��disaster in 1912?

Randy Bryan Bigham:��Because the��Titanic��is such a tangible subject, I guess. Anything and everyone connected with it is somehow more appealing. Don’t get me wrong—I’m interested in the��Titanic, and it sparked my own fascination with Lucile and the history of that era.

Her impact on culture and fashion was very crucial, however, and not just as a woman who ran a global, million-dollar business. Lucile actually redefined the fashion industry through some extraordinary presentation and marketing feats—like the runway or catwalk show—and by extending the appeal of her exclusive couture brand to prêt-à-porter merchandising and endorsement deals. Luxury labels now are almost entirely sustained by mass-market diffusion lines of clothing, perfume and accessories, as well as through the commercial licensing of various “lifestyle” products. Lucile was doing that before anybody else.

Lucile was the designer most responsible for legitimizing the expression of sexuality in sheer lingerie and through other items of intimate, see-through apparel. Filmy tea-gowns are a case in point: They were made to be worn without corsets, making men’s tea-time seduction of their mistresses a lot more convenient. That’s where Lucile’s naughty reputation came in. We’ve all heard the saying “love in the afternoon.” Well, in Edwardian England, Lucile tea-gowns played an elegant role in facilitating that!

Wiener:��In learning more about Lucile’s life, one cannot help but be impressed by her recognition of the importance of public relations. A master of self-promotion, she was a businesswoman during a time in which many women didn’t have a bank account in their own name. What was her recipe for success in the organization and presentation of her designs?

Bigham:��I’d say Lucile’s instinct for publicity stemmed from her high-energy personality, and her understanding of how to present or “package” herself as well as her fashion house. Her whole business was an expression of her personality. Being a lady of title, she knew how the upper crust lived and behaved, so her magnificent salons in London, Paris and New York replicated the manor houses her clients were equally familiar with. Her love of dancing and of performing in society tableaux taught her gracefulness, which she imparted to the statuesque models she trained to display her gowns.

Although related to nobility (the Duke of Sutherland was a cousin), Lucile had a middle-class background. She was raised on a Canadian farm and was a contented tomboy until around the age of 10 when she bloomed into a girly-girl, sewing dresses for her collection of dolls. In the��Titanic��films that have cameoed Lucile, she’s often portrayed as a snob. It’s true she could be haughty and temperamental, but she was also a charmer. She was a flirt, loved to chit chat and enjoyed teasing people. Friends and family members recalled her wit and outspokenness, and the media stressed this, too, in the colorful interviews she used to grant reporters over tea or lunch.

Her own clothes were dashing, and what she wore to this party or that were commented on in the daily papers. Lucile was petite, with a pale complexion, and had red hair. She was considered a beautiful woman in her day, and she played up her flamboyance by wearing Russian boots, carrying a tall Bo-Peep walking stick and choosing hats with streaming veils that made her look like she was on safari. Her sense of the dramatic may also have come from her childhood adoration of the glamorous Lillie Langtry whom she later befriended and dressed on stage and off.

Wiener:��Would it be fair to say that Lucile was the first fashion media celebrity in her own right?

Bigham:��Probably. Lucile was certainly the designer with the highest profile in the United States, where she spent a number of years building up her New York branch. In America during World War I, she was constantly in the public eye, throwing charity balls and dressing Broadway extravaganzas like the��Ziegfeld Follies. She also wrote a weekly dress advice column for the Hearst newspapers and a monthly one for��Harper’s Bazaar. And she made a huge mark on the early film industry, styling silent stars Mary Pickford and Pearl White, among others. Lucile even appeared in her own fashion newsreel and toured vaudeville with a benefit style show, accompanied by her regal Chow.

In London, where the court dressmaking community was comparatively discreet, there was no one to rival Lucile as a couturier-personality. But her celebrity may have hurt her in England. For instance, it likely prevented her from being appointed dressmaker to Queen Mary. As princess of Wales, the queen had frequently bought frocks from Lucile, but she chose the more conservative Reville and Rossiter as her official couturier when she came to the throne in 1911. But I’ve found that Queen Mary still occasionally ordered gowns from Lucile, and at least once dropped by the shop in disguise.

Only in Paris were there other top designers who were also media personalities. Certainly Paul Poiret was a tremendous rival there, as were, to a slightly lesser extent, Jeanne Paquin and Louise Chéruit. Yet none of these designers maintained the same forceful presence in London or New York as they did in Paris, whereas Lucile regularly traveled between her international salons and participated in the social round in each of those cities. Most of the leading Paris designers never visited England or America.

Wiener:��What was it about Lucile that attracted such a diverse group to her atelier and mannequin parades? Was it her unusual background and innate talent as designer and woman? She seems to have cast a veritable spell wherever she went.

Bigham:��It was her vivacity and a refreshing directness that endeared her, especially to the racy bohemian set she was a part of. Lucile knew all the fashionables in London because they were her clients, but she didn’t usually socialize with them. She thought the royals and other society types were bores—and some were cheap, expecting their dress bills to be reduced if she accepted invitations to their parties. But there were exceptions. She was close friends with the queen of Spain (the former English Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg) and when she and King Alfonso visited London, they sometimes lodged with Lucile and Sir Cosmo at their home in Lennox Gardens, instead of staying at Buckingham Palace.

But Lucile mainly liked artists, musicians, actors, writers. A favorite was Isadora Duncan. Isadora once danced naked in the garden of Lucile’s villa at Versailles. Other good friends were Cecile Sorel of the Comedie Francaise and decorator Elsie de Wolfe. Lucile knew the painters Roger Fry and William Orpen, art critic Bernard Berenson, and she openly embraced the emerging gay community. Several of her assistant designers were gay—Edward Molyneux, Howard Greer—as was a hanger-on named Maury Paul, the later gossip writer “Cholly Knickerbocker.” Still, another gay protégé was actor Clifton Webb who, oddly enough, would later mention her in a scene in the 1953 film��Titanic, in which he starred with Barbara Stanwyk.

Wiener:��Fashions changed in the 1920s when flappers in North America and Europe saw the excess that characterized the Gilded Age as passé and lacking modern��é��. Unwisely, Lucile ignored the revolutionary trends emanating from Paris, including the sleek designs and��garçonne��look of Gabrielle Chanel. Why was she so resistant to the changes in fashion attitudes during the Jazz Age?

Bigham:��She resisted the boyish look because, to her mind, it had no subtlety or grace. But Lucile never strictly followed fashion. She adhered to the general line only, though she sometimes opposed the prevailing mode outright. Her own look was delicate and faery-like, using pastel colors, layered chiffon and ribbon trimming that set her apart from the brightly-hued eastern styles of Poiret and his imitators. That’s not to say she wasn’t inspired by Orientalism; every designer then was affected by it. But Lucile’s overall style was young and light, exuding a dainty sexuality, a sort of cross between ingénue and coquette.

Lanvin exploited a youthful mood, but her girlish gowns were never sexy. Lucile dresses, on the other hand, had a flirtatious, boudoir air—a fluffy, transparent skirt revealing legs to the calves, a slinky dress with a side slit, exposing an ankle as the wearer moved.

It wasn’t until the early 1920s, when simpler-cut clothes became more general, that Lucile’s ultra-femininity and the exotica of Poiret began to lose their appeal.

But Lucile didn’t disappear. An ill-advised merger with a wholesale house and a string of disagreements led to her withdrawal from the company in 1922. Yet there was still a market for her snaky tea-gowns and peekaboo undies, and over the next decade she was involved in a series of couture and retail enterprises in London and New York.

Wiener:��It’s worth noting that Lucile’s younger sister, Elinor Glyn, lived a life full of creativity and excitement too. A novelist and scriptwriter, she exerted a profound influence on Hollywood filmmakers and budding stars like Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow. In the 1920s, Elinor’s career in Hollywood blossomed just as Lucile’s fortunes in the fashion world waned. Could you compare and contrast these two sisters, describing their rivalry?

Bigham:��Lucile and Elinor never really got on, at least not during the years of their great successes. The notoriety they received created a gulf between them. They jockeyed for press attention and resented each other’s fame. There was a lot of fussing between them in private, and their competitiveness sometimes spilled over in public. The only known photo of them during their respective careers was taken on the terrace of the Ritz in Paris in 1921. It’s a group snapshot, and not surprisingly the women are posed at opposite ends—Lucile smiling at the camera, Elinor eyeing her sister.

Lucile’s influence on the film industry preceded Elinor’s. She was the designer of choice for Lillian Gish and Marion Davies, and her floaty dresses were really the first Hollywood look. She worked with all the big directors—Cecil B. de Mille, D.W. Griffith—supplying costumes for major films like��The Perils of Pauline��and��Way Down East. All this, and Lucile never stepped foot in Hollywood! Moviemaking was centered on the East Coast until the late 1910s, but even then, stars like Mary Pickford or Norma Talmadge would travel by train from Los Angeles to New York to consult Lucile for their screen wardrobes.

Lady Duff Gordon

Later, when Elinor went to Hollywood to write scripts for Paramount, Lucile was hardly withering away in London. She had her own natural color newsreel spot, wrote columns for The��Daily Express, once hosted a charity show with Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, held modeling contests and gave lectures attended by hundreds at a time. At one department store appearance she made in 1924, Lucile was mobbed by women trying to get her autograph, and at a 1930 press conference, to discuss what the new skirt length was going to be, she jumped up on a table to model it herself. So she stayed extremely active into her 70s and kept an optimistic attitude until the end.

Wiener:��In your own words, how should we characterize Lucile’s imprint on fashion and her role within fashion history? What is her enduring legacy?

Bigham:��Lucile brought theatricality to the marketing of fashion—that’s her greatest legacy. The crazy catwalk spectacles of today grew out of the refined tea-time style shows she staged over 110 years ago in London’s Hanover Square, a place still associated with fashion through Vogue House, headquarters for British��Vogue. And the beautiful models we take for granted today, stomping down runways all over the world? They owe their careers to Lucile, who trained the first professional “mannequins,” sending them parading around her salon, balancing books on their heads.

Lucile’s legacy is also felt in the sexuality inherent in modern fashion, whether through the lingerie line her great-great granddaughter Camilla Blois has revived, or in the slit skirts and chiffon gowns that seem a perennial statement of femininity and liberation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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China’s Film Industry: A Blockbuster in the Making

Knowledge@Wharton — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 23:45:51 +0000

Amid China’s economic slowdown, one industry is doing well: filmmaking. China is ambitiously expanding its reach to moviegoers at home and boosting its Hollywood holdings.

While stories about ’s economy centers on a slowdown, the country’s passion for movies—at home and abroad—follows a much more optimistic plotline. Its growth has been phenomenal, outperforming China’s traditional industries, such as manufacturing. Many experts believe China is on track to have the largest film audience in the world—and by one estimate as early as 2020.

“The entertainment industry is a sunrise industry in China, while the steel industry is a sunset industry. The growth potential for the entertainment industry is still huge, despite a high growth rate of 17% [per year] in the past five years,” says Z. John Zhang, Wharton marketing professor. Already, the media and entertainment industry is worth $180 billion in China, he adds, and the number is only expected to get larger.

“Many sectors of the Chinese entertainment industry are growing well into double digits on an annualized basis, despite the slowdown in the overall economy. China’s steel industry by contrast is operating at only 70% utilization, with roughly 400 million tons of excess capacity. Neither domestic nor international demand will fill that gap,” says Gordon Orr, senior advisor to McKinsey and Co who is projecting that China’s film audience size will exceed that of the US in four years.

Currently, China’s movie ticket sales are second only to the US. In 2015, box office revenue hit a record $6.8 billion, up 49% from the previous year, according to China’s regulator, State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. That’s up from $1.51 billion a mere five years ago. North America also saw a record in 2015, hitting an estimated $11 billion for the first time even though it grew at a much slower rate of 7% year-over-year, reported media measurement and research firm Rentrak.

Moreover, China is expected to see a movie cross the $500 million threshold domestically in 2016, according to a McKinsey report. Some Chinese movies have already come close:��Monster Hunt��grossed $380 million to date, while��Lost in Hong Kong��garnered more than $250 million. The record for an American film,��Avatar, was $760 million on US screens.

It wasn’t always this way. From 1979 to the early 1990s, Chinese movies were mainly propaganda films approved by the communist government, according to an October 2015 report by the US-China Economic Security Review Commission. As a result, the film market dwindled, with attendance falling by 79% from 1982 to 1991. To revive its movie business, China brought in its first foreign film in 1994—Warner Bros’��The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The Chinese began importing more American films and, today, allows an annual quota of 34 a year.

Catalysts for Box Office Growth

At four times the size of the US, China’s population makes it the golden goose of the film industry. “China’s audience will one day be bigger than the US,” predicts Qiaowei Shen, Wharton marketing professor. Moreover, the average Chinese citizen goes to the movies less than once a year, while the average American goes almost four times a year. “There’s huge potential [for growth] if the average Chinese person [just] goes to the movies two times a year, then box office receipts will increase by two times,” she notes.

Movies also are underpenetrated in China. Extending movie runs to second-, third- and fourth-tier cities should further propel box office receipts. “Big cities are very mature already, says Shen. “Now those smaller cities are becoming very important. [Studios are increasingly] marketing in those small cities. A few years ago, they would concentrate in Shanghai and Beijing,” Shen adds. Now they bring the movie stars to do promotional appearances in more than 20 cities, not just in major urban centers.

The infrastructure for movie-going is also on the rise. Adding movie screens and building cinemas, especially in the smaller cities, will spur growth of the entertainment industry in China, adds Shen. When a new shopping mall is built in China, it’s usually anchored by a theater.

China is building at a rapid rate of 15 new movie screens daily in new and existing cinemas, up from more than three screens a day in 2012, according to the US commission’s report. China currently has 31,627 screens, while North America has approximately 39,000 screens, according to��The Hollywood Reporter. Orr predicts that the addition of screens will lead to growth of more than 20% in China’s box office in 2016. Bloomberg reports that China is expected to have 53,000 screens by 2017.

Rising disposable incomes among the growing ranks of the Chinese middle class also boosts the entertainment industry. According to EY, the disposable income per person jumped nearly five-fold to $3,440 from 2000 to 2011. Orr further adds: “The close to 50% year-on-year growth in the Chinese movie box office in 2015, continuing in 2016, indicates how, if you provide a higher quality service, the Chinese middle class will buy more of the service.”

As such, Hollywood studios with an eye to global box office gold know they cannot ignore the Chinese market—and have devised ways to get around the annual quotas set by the government. “There is not a big movie studio in the world that is not thinking about how to crack the China market from the start of making its movies,” says Zhang.

China Eyes Hollywood

China is also eyeing Hollywood to bolster its entertainment holdings and forge creative collaborations. “Many Chinese entertainment companies have a lot of capital; they may feel short of opportunities to deploy this capital in China and see easier opportunities to do so internationally,” notes Orr.

Hollywood can enter the Chinese market in three ways: through revenue-sharing films, flat-fee movies and co-producing a movie with a Chinese company.

But China looks beyond financial reasons in inking deals. “There’s a concerted effort in China to move into the global entertainment and media industry to build China’s soft power,” adds Zhang. The cultural sector is one of the pillars of China’s Five-Year Plan, meaning the government makes an effort to support Chinese investment in entertainment. “Aside from being good business, it is a way to protect China’s influence in the world.”

In February, China’s Perfect World Pictures completed a $500 million debt-and-equity deal��with Comcast’s Universal Pictures that will last five years or cover the co-financing of 50 films, according to��Variety. Perfect World is expected to receive a 25% share of most films released by Universal. It is the first time that a Chinese company invests in a multi-year slate deal.

Recently, the Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate led by China’s richest man Wang Jianlan, paid $3.5 billion for Legendary Entertainment, a major Hollywood studio responsible for the��Batman��and��Jurassic World franchises. It is the first Chinese company to buy a big US studio; it is also Wanda’s largest foreign acquisition. According to Variety, Wang hasn’t ruled out more forays into entertainment, saying “we want to have a bigger position in the global movie industry.”

Wanda, the largest commercial real-estate developer in China, has become the largest movie theater operator in the world after acquiring AMC Entertainment Holdings in 2012 for $2.6 billion. Orr adds: “Chinese business leaders recognize that many elements of the entertainment business are fully global and if they are to maximize their revenues they need to be able to seamlessly access global markets. Making international acquisitions can accelerate their ability to do so.”

Wang is also developing one of the world’s largest movie-production facilities in Qingdao, China, which includes 30 soundstages, a permanent set featuring a New York City street, as well as a theme park and resort hotel to accommodate families and staff of cast and crew. The public announcement of the studio included appearances from actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman as well as movie studio executive Harvey Weinstein.

Zhang believes more deals will come. Orr concurs: “Early Chinese moves into investing in foreign entertainment are seen to be successful in China, encouraging more to follow.”

Getting Around the Film Quota

Hollywood can enter the Chinese market in three ways: through revenue-sharing films, flat-fee movies and co-producing a movie with a Chinese company. The quota of 34 films applies to revenue-sharing films, which lets foreign studios take 25% of the box office receipts or about half the norm for other parts of the world. Flat-fee films, which have a different quota, are not a popular vehicle because Hollywood sells movies for a fraction of their worth, according to the US commission’s report. With co-productions, Hollywood can bypass quotas and receive about half of ticket sales.

Once the Chinese government gains more confidence that Chinese films can compete with Hollywood imports, the 34-film quota might increase, Shen says. “Competition doesn’t kill local movies,” she asserts. “They don’t need protection.” In 2015, most of the top ten films in China were local ones. Hollywood movies grossed 38% of box office receipts in China, a decrease from 46% the previous year.

Meanwhile, Hollywood is actively co-producing movies to get around the restrictions. Legendary is already producing��The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon and Andy Lau fending off aliens bent on invading China. Zhang Yimou is directing the $150 million English-language project, the largest co-production between the US and China, due out in late 2016.

Another big deal involves Lionsgate, makers of the��Hunger Games��franchise, partnering with Hunan TV, the second-biggest broadcaster in China. The $1.5 billion deal with will see the Chinese firm paying 25% of production costs of at least 50 Lionsgate films in the next three years in exchange for 25% of all returns.

Even Jack Ma, executive chairman and founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is getting into the game. He was an investor in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. He also poured $4.8 million into a video platform since online movies are also seeing massive growth, according to a McKinsey report.

Meanwhile, Huayi Bothers Media will co-produce 18 films with STX Entertainment, founded in 2014 by Hollywood veteran Robert Simonds. Disney has a deal with the Shanghai Media Group, and Warner Bros is working with China Media Capital, a private equity firm. China Film Group, a state-run production company that works with imported films, has invested in Hollywood films like��Furious 7, which broke box-office records in China.

DreamWorks believed in the co-production strategy early on. In 2012, CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg saw the Chinese market’s potential and partnered with Chinese state-owned businesses to open Oriental DreamWorks in Shanghai. This co-owned studio is behind the third sequel to the hit��Kung Fu Panda animated film. With��Kung Fu Panda 3��considered a local Chinese film, it was allowed to be screened during the popular Chinese New Year holiday period. To qualify as a local film, one-third of the production must be shot in China and one-third of the lead actors must be Chinese.

In a first, the movie’s English and Mandarin Chinese versions were released simultaneously in the US and China. American actor Jack Black played the English-speaking panda and Chinese actor Jackie Chan played his Chinese counterpart. It was a winning strategy. In January,��Kung Fu Panda 3��opened to a smashing $57 million first box office weekend in China—a record for an animation there—beating the US opening by $16 million. “Certainly, I believe we will see a considerable number of animated movies released in this fashion,” says Orr.

Zhang notes: “Hollywood looks for [opportunities to make] money and China looks for influence and soft power.” But whatever intentions the government has, the Chinese studio’s priority is the box office. “Almost all the outbound investment by China’s entertainment industry has been made by very successful private-sector entrepreneurs. While they are very aware of the ambitions of the Chinese government, they are absolutely looking to make investments that will earn an attractive return for them,” Orr adds

Interestingly, American movies are sometimes made with the Chinese audience mind, knowing they’ll be subject to Chinese government censors. That leads to strategic creative picks. “You will not see a Chinese communist as a villain in a Hollywood big budget movie anytime soon,” says Zhang.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner institution of .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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May the Forced Be With You

Tahir Abbas — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 15:56:00 +0000

For Hollywood cinema, sequels and prequels, reboots and remakes are the order of the day.

In 1977, as an excited 7-year old, I queued up outside the Gaumont Cinema in Birmingham, England, with my father and a cousin. We were waiting to see Star Wars, a film that had taken both audiences and critics by storm. Little did I realize that it would have the impact that it did on me as a young boy, mesmerized by a story of good and evil, set in a distant past with incredible technology, and with its sense of an expansive universe full of discovery. Fantasy, science fiction and sheer adventure film genres were never to be out of theaters again.

For the Hollywood film industry, Star Wars was a global success. From 1977 to 1983 two sequels came, respectively episodes five and six of the saga science-fiction. Episodes one to three were released by Lucasfilm from 1999-2005.

Fast forward 38 years later from the original, I find myself squeezed into a relatively small Bow-Tie Cinema in Chelsea, New York. My eyes glued firmly on the screen to watch yet another Star Wars installment, episode seven of the tale, set 30 years after Return of the Jedi. With all the marketing build up and the immense anticipation after a less successful response by fans to George Lucas’ recent foray into the Star Wars university, episode seven was the one everyone was waiting for,

After Lucas sold off the rights to Star Wars to Disney for $4 billion a few years ago, the latest instalment is in the hands of J.J. Abrams, the architect of the recent Star Trek reboot, considered an outright success, popular among Trekkies and critics alike. Yet Abrams could not recreate that allure with Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Hyped to the nth degree, Starwarians the world over could, at least, hope for a repeat of Abrams’ efforts with Star Trek, but initial responses have been mixed. A significant many have erred on the side of major disappointment and almost wholesale disdain. I watched the film unfold before me with lightning speed, hardly able to understand the significance of characters or their roles.

The new stars on the screen seem unable to contain their joy at being in a Star Wars film, which is not to be dismissed, but Abrams does not allow them to shine. The old guard for the movies made three decades ago found their way into the script, arguably because Disney felt them important to helping to connect two generations of viewers, but their roles and lines lacked persuasion.

A great deal of what has emerged reflects the trends in Hollywood cinema in recent periods. Sequels and prequels, reboots and remakes—this is the order of the day. The Star Wars concept has gone the way of Marvel, with plans to generate films with heroes who save the planet (or the Galaxy) every two years for the conceivable future. These films make a great deal of profit given existing sunk costs. The toys, games and other paraphernalia provide an endless cash stream. The franchises are a license to print money.

There is a palpable feeling that this is a Star Wars film, made in the character and design of the original three releases, and this was good to see, but there are too many plot holes and goofy lines that provide quick fixes and light-touch humor for the post-Scary Movie generation. I wanted to be taken on an adventure of light and hope, not to be reminded that Hollywood wants me to suck it all up. The Star Wars concept was made in 1977—and it can never be unmade for so many. The Hollywood hype machine will get me back to theaters no matter what.

Calculated to click with a multigenerational audience, the film satisfies no one in reality. In the final analysis, episode seven could well be a case of, “May the forced be with you.”

*[A version of this article was also featured on Tahir Abbas’ .]

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It’s Back to the Future Day, So What Are the Next Future Predictions?

Michael Cowling — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 00:07:06 +0000

The movie got some predictions right on what Doc and Marty would find when they arrive in the “future” today. But what could they find if they took another 30 year leap into the future?

When Doc and Marty traveled forward in time from 1985 and landed the��DeLorean��on October 21, 2015, they found a world of flying cars, hover boards and 3D holographic technology.

Some of the technologies predicted are��, but the world of��Back to the Future II��is not quite��us today. The moviemakers didn’t envisage the abundance of smartphones and other technologies that dominate our lives today.

But Hollywood is always a little hit or miss when it comes to future predictions. So let’s see if the tech experts of today are any better.��A number of analysts��were asked what they would predict for the technologies in use 30 years from now, on October 21, 2045.

Michael Cowling

Back to the Future II envisioned a connected future that is��, but it didn’t go far enough.

By the year 2045, the word “computer” will be a relic of the past, because computers as we know them will be built so seamlessly into every facet of our lives that we won’t even notice them anymore.

Every device around us will become a possible input and output device for us to access a seamless computing experience customized to our own particular needs, and fed from our own personal repository of information stored privately and securely in what we today call the “cloud,” but in the world of 2045 might simply be our digital essence.

It’s hard for us to imagine it now, surrounded by individual devices like our phone, tablet and laptop that each require separate configuration, but by 2045 those devices will be much less important, and we will be able to move away from these individual “personal” devices toward a much more ubiquitous digital existence.

The world of 2045 will be a world of��,��, with the personal smartphone and tablet as much of a novelty as the paper sports almanac was to Marty in 2015.

Philip Branch

The video conference where Needles goads Marty Snr into participating in a scheme that gets him fired got things about right; although Marty would be more likely to use Skype or something similar today. So, what might telecommunications look like in another 30 years?

Perhaps Doc Brown’s��will be perfected, making telepathy a feasible network interface. This technology is surprisingly advanced. It has been possible for some time to control machines through��.

Perhaps we will have those��that transmit everything the wearer sees. There have been��that might make them possible.

But perhaps change will continue at a much slower pace than the past few decades. Maybe we will see a return to evolutionary rather than revolutionary change and the technologies we have now will still be around—much faster, more sophisticated and ubiquitous of course, but still recognizable. Or maybe some combination of economic, social and environmental apocalypse will cause the collapse of existing infrastructure and telecommunications will be back to pencil and paper or something even more primitive.

As many people have pointed out, it is hard to make predictions,��.

Hamza Bendemra

Flight vehicles are mostly represented in the form of flying cars—as opposed to commercial aircraft—in Back to the Future II. Looking forward to 2045, commercial aviation is likely to have seen significant changes between now and then thanks to breakthroughs in several industries, including electronics, software engineering, materials research, jet propulsion and automated manufacturing.

Cutting-edge technology being researched today—in many cases with Australian researchers involved—will have matured by 2045. Advances in��and computer software will likely have made pilots obsolete in 2045. Flying will become a hobby as opposed to a profession, the same way that today we ride horses for fun rather than transport.

Airplanes will be lighter with structures consisting of�� and embedded with sensors that will allow “smart” aircraft structures to monitor their structural integrity and��in the case of damage. The use of petroleum-based gasoline will be considered primitive, if not illegal, and sustainable��will have emerged as a widely used clean alternative.

Jet engines will reach new heights in efficiency, making flying cheaper and more accessible to the masses. The mega-rich of 2045 may have��airplanes that can break the sound barrier multiple times over and result in a London-Sydney flight��.

The price of oil may also increase to record levels and result in the collapse of the aviation industry as we know it. The price of crude oil has a significant impact on airlines’ bottom line as fuel costs typically makes up about 30% of an airline’s operating costs. Hence, the major driver of reduced profitability for airlines is the rising price of oil. Finding alternative fuel sources will be key for a greener and safer future for the commercial aviation industry.

Thas Nirmalathas

Our world in 2045 will be fully connected: constantly and autonomously keeping us in sync with the people in our lives, the places where we live and work, and the things we control. These connections enable people to concurrently engage with a multitude of different people, places and things, with people becoming digitally ever-present.

Each individual will have a unique global digital identity containing dynamically adjustable privacy-transparency settings. These settings can be adjusted depending upon the level of trust within the environment. Individual lives will be captured digitally and security platforms will actively protect against unauthorized digital access.

Data will be owned by the individual who creates it. There will be a property right within data allowing individuals to trade, share and volunteer their data for personal gain—such as providing data to receive targeted advertising and product discounts or, in aggregate, providing demographic information to assist in policy development.

Digital ever-presence will disturb existing political systems, enabling individuals to transcend territorial boundaries and wield digital influence outside of the nation state. Ever-present personas will disrupt domestic political orders transforming the Earth.

Justin Zobel

Interfaces will have become seamless by 2045 and are accessed continuously through familiar, unconscious actions.

During your morning run, body radar triggers a gentle vibration against your skin; someone is approaching around a blind corner.

In the kitchen, active contact lenses create the illusion that your friend is with you, by generating an image and overlaying it on the room. The image is stable, no matter how your head and eyes move. In conversation, she is present but also thousands of kilometers away.

At your desk, the contact lenses create the illusion of a screen in front of you. Its actions are controlled by finger gestures, while your rapid, subtle muscle movements are interpreted as a stream of text to be captured in an email.

Through your neural implants, you are aware of activity in your networks. These are not sounds, images or touch, but some mingling of them into a new form of sensation. You try to contact your mother, but she is offline, perhaps sleeping. No matter, her house can sense her and assures you that she is well.

You decide to go offline yourself for a while, and your sensors fall quiet. As always, it feels like a kind of blindness—like closing one’s eyes for sleep, but so much more acute. You are surrounded by just the peaceful emptiness of reality.

Robert Merkel

Where we’re going, we won’t need roads—at least, not all of the time.

By 2045, the much-mocked flying car (or, more accurately, a flying taxi) is likely to be widely available. Furthermore, my own discipline of software engineering is key—perhaps even��the��key—to making it happen.

Even today, we could mass-produce personal helicopters at an affordable financial cost, but at a terrible human one. Helicopters are extremely difficult to learn to fly, and even with extensive pilot training are arguably the riskiest form of transport we use.

The science of a solution is already to hand. We don’t walk the family dog with a drone mini-helicopter, as depicted in the 2015 of Back to the Future II, but drones are a widely available commercial product.

Developing the software that controls these miniature flying cars to the point where it is both reliable and robust enough to control much larger vehicles in real-world conditions—including handling hardware failures—will take years of testing and revision. Convincing conservative air safety regulators will probably take years more.

But my educated guess is that these problems will be overcome by 2045. The result won’t look like a hot-rodded DeLorean, and it certainly won’t double as a time machine. But, finally, humanity just might have the freedom of the skies.

Toby Walsh

My background is in artificial intelligence (AI), so I’ll stick to predicting where AI might be in 2045.

In 2030, Apple releases the latest version of its platform wide operating system, iOS 20, which delivers true artificial intelligence in all the major languages of the world to our phones, tablets and computers. Google responds with its latest version of Android, which offers similar capabilities but has a cheekier sense of humour.

You want to go out for dinner? You simply tell your smartphone: “Book me a table for 8pm at that restaurant I read reviewed in the paper last weekend and let my wife know.” Problem solved.

And by 2045, Apple and Google’s AI operating systems are competing to control seamlessly our cars, homes, phones and offices.

In the morning, you walk to your car, which is already nice and cool as the front door said you were on the way. The car then drives you to work autonomously. But due to heavy traffic en route, your calendar pushes back your first appointment 15 minutes. The technology is pro-active, anticipating requests, and smoothing your life.

But then some robot digger repairing the road digs up the NBN cable by mistake and the cloud goes down.

So, you walk home and kiss your wife on the cheek. “Shall I see if we can still fire up the barbecue?”

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Terminator Genisys and the Mind-Bending World of Alternative History

Alasdair Richmond — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 13:51:06 +0000

The latest Terminator film marks a recovery from its predecessors, but its treatment of time travel is still implausible.

Franchise reboots using alternative timelines are currently all the rage, blurring the lines between sequels and prequels on screens across the globe. J.J. Abrams’ 2009��Star Trek��is both an alternative timeline prequel to the original and a sequel to 2002’s��Nemesis. Meanwhile,��X-Men: Days of Future Past��is something of a reboot of 2000’s��X-Men, and a sequel to 2011’s��X-Men: First Class��prequel.

This can get confusing. Lacking a catchy term for alternative reality sequels and prequels, let’s call them “alterequels.”

��takes the alterequel to a whole new level. Having your alterequel deliberately contradict its original source is one thing, but Terminator Genisys lands slap-bang in the middle of its source—and blows it all away.

After a prologue set in 2029, Genisys revisits the original T-800 Terminator’s nude landing in 1984. But this time around, another T-800 (played by an older and fully-clothed Arnold) shows up and biffs its past self. Rather than Kyle Reese rescue Sarah Connor—as in the original��Terminator��film—this time Sarah rescues Kyle. Not the original Sarah, either, but an alternative Sarah who was orphaned by one Terminator and raised by another.

Much alterequel hullabaloo ensues. Skynet—humanity’s artificially-intelligent nemesis—now seeks birth in 2017 via the oddly-spelled (and vaguely-described) “Genisys” app. The usually formless antagonist even has its own body in 2029. A liquid-metal T-1000—originally sent back to 1995 in��Terminator 2: Judgment Day—turns up in 1984, while 2017 boasts a nanomachine-Terminator, which changes into fog when roused. Adding to the chaos, each of the settings—2029, 1984 and 2017—has its own time machine.

Time laws

Time travel fiction offers you three options: Either you can have one constrained history, many histories or one contradictory history.

In the first option, you can go back in time, but you’ll find that there are some things you cannot do there. For instance, you won’t be able to kill your grandfather, because that causes a logical paradox. The second option will allow you to travel to a time that is different to your own, but not necessarily back in time. So, instead of landing earlier in your own history, you’ll end up in an alternative reality.

Both of these options are logically consistent; one and the same world never contains anyone who is both alive and dead at the same time.

In contrast, the third option allows you to travel back in your own history, overwrite events and laugh at logic as you go. Inconsistent though it may be, this option seems to fit Terminator Genisys best. But fiction notwithstanding, it’s worth examining if any of this has a factual basis.

Of course, ultimately, Genisys is fantasy with a light dusting of references to “quantum fields.” But physicists have actually speculated that later events can not only affect past events (consistently help make them what they were), but can even overwrite them (inconsistently make them different from what they were). Unfortunately for Genisys, though, scientists overwhelmingly favor the “one constrained history” or “many histories” options.

The former received a big boost of support, following some�� results��in��“post-selection” quantum tunneling , which eliminates problems like the grandfather paradox. And no less a than��John S. Bell��(of “Bell’s Inequality” fame)�� that if we accept the ��that there are many worlds with different histories, then “there is no association of the particular present with any particular past.” If this is the case, then perhaps no event is final or safe—in theory, it may all be flux.

Aspirant history changers beware though: There may be no way to control or predict what shape any revised history takes. Human or cyborg, physics will likely treat you as just one more object in the flux.

Unsurprisingly, time travel stories usually make their point-of-view characters the people who make changes to history, rather than those who suffer them. Try picturing what historical deletion might feel like for the deleted: It’s difficult to imagine what, if anything, it’s like to be made such that you never were.

But once inconsistency gets in, it’s difficult to correct. Maybe revisions to events never end, and everything is provisional. If you are (even partly) what befalls you, and what befalls you is fluid, maybe you’re fluid too.

I devoutly hope that reality follows consistent rules, but perhaps history, identity and consistency are just local. A classic Zen parable suggests that when we see a flag blowing in the wind, neither wind moves nor flag moves—rather mind moves. Maybe we should conclude that neither human moves nor T-800 moves, but rather mind moves: from Terminator to Zen via quantum physics.

Overall, this new incarnation improves markedly on the third and fourth Terminator films, which wobbled between graveyard slapstick and Christian Bale’s grumpy stubble. But alterequels threaten diminishing returns—as a��shaky first ��at the box office can testify. Genisys’ Skynet taunts its enemies that its existence is inevitable, and it may be right—at least, fictionally speaking.

A slightly perfunctory mid-credit sequence ensures that Terminator Genisys well and truly clears the way for any future films. While cinema can remold fictional histories ad infinitum, audience patience may be finite. The worry is that history-changing franchises will start to seem (forgive me) interminable.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Omar Sharif Didn’t Have to Play a Terrorist

Juan Cole — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 10:26:05 +0000

Egyptian actor Omar Sharif was a citizen of the world, someone who crossed cultural boundaries with apparent ease.

Omar Sharif has died at 83. Born as Michel Chalhoub in Alexandria to Christian parents in 1932, he changed his name and converted to Islam in 1955 in order to marry his co-star, Faten Hamama.

The two were a power couple in the Cairo film world of the 1950s, a time of Egyptian nationalism and a growing experiment with socialism under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was a more secular time, when few urban Egyptian women veiled, and the feminist movement had successes.

Sharif was catapulted into world-wide fame because, in 1962, director David Lean cast him in the role of Sharif Ali in��Lawrence of Arabia.

He later worked again with Lean in the 1965��Doctor Zhivago, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak. In 1968, having already played a range of characters from Genghis Khan to a German military officer, Sharif was cast as Nicky Arnstein opposite Barbra Streisand in��Funny Girl.

The Egyptian government banned the film and was allegedly angry about his playing a Jewish character (the film came out a year after the 1967 war). For his part, he fell in love with Streisand.

Barbra Streisand is said to have quipped that if you thought the Egyptian government was upset, you should have seen the letter she got from her Aunt Rose.

(Faten Hamama and he became estranged after he became a global star and pursued other conquests, something he later regretted; she was the only woman he ever married. She died in January 2015, but by that time, Sharif’s Alzheimer’s was so advanced that when he was informed, he no longer recognized her name.)

Sharif later played Che Guevara (1969), but in the 1970s, the quality of the roles he was offered declined steeply and he later gave up acting, save for a turn in the 2003 French film Monsieur Ibrahim, about a Parisian Muslim shopkeeper who adopts a Jewish boy. That role won him a Caesar, the French counterpart of Hollywood’s Oscar.

Sharif was a citizen of the world, someone who crossed cultural boundaries with apparent ease. Born Christian, he embraced Islam. Born Egyptian, he was comfortable in Los Angeles and Paris. Having become Muslim, he fell in love with a Jewish co-star.

But what now seems remarkable is the acceptance he gained and the range of roles he was offered by Hollywood in his era of fame.

In the zeroes of this century,��Arab-American actors could not get past being stereotyped as terrorists. Even Lebanese-American Tony Shalhoub, who shares a patronym with Sharif, and who gained fame in the role of the neurotic detective��Monk��on the USA Cable Network, had to play a terrorist at the beginning of his career. Once, he said, was enough.

It is a little difficult to imagine a major director recruiting a star from Cairo nowadays, or such a star being offered a mainstream lead such as Zhivago. It is not as if the geopolitical tensions are worse now than before. In fact, they have in some ways lessened. Egypt was more or less viewed as an enemy in the mid- to late-1960s by the US government, whereas nowadays it is seen as an ally.

What has changed? I think there is just more general, public prejudice against Arabs and Muslims in the US and Britain today. In the 1960s, people seemed to be able to make a distinction between individuals and nations. Otherwise, the Sharif-Streisand epic romance could never have happened. I don’t think the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda explain the sea change. Perhaps it is the long Iraq War, where Arabs were the military enemy every day all day for eight years (and now again with the rise of the “Islamic State”).

What I can say is that in this regard, the 1960s were healthier. They gave us an Arab, Muslim leading man and movie star whom we could adore, no matter who we were. I wish we could get back to that.

*[This article was originally published on Juan Cole’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Watching American Sniper With Iraqis

Landon Shroder — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:27:19 +0000

How would Americans react to occupation by a foreign army?

The controversy surrounding the film American Sniper should come as no surprise. We live in an age that is desperately complex, yet we continue to reduce every issue to the simplest of characterizations — most of which are almost always taken out of context. The entrenchment of opinion on either side of this movie has become all too typical of our cultural myopia, which seeks to pass judgment on things we do not truly understand. We continue to grasp at the starkest illustrations of what we perceive to be right or wrong, without ever thinking critically about the ambiguity that accompanies things such as war or (PTSD) —everything this film seemingly does so well.

Nonetheless, I thought it was only appropriate to watch American Sniper with my Iraqi colleagues while in Baghdad. They are, after all, the true beneficiaries of ’s liberation war and the one’s most directly impacted by the occupation. Their commentary is worth more than any perspective opined by pundits, politicians and celebrities sitting safely in the US.

There has never really been a national retrospection on what happened in or what the war really cost us in human terms. And our refusal to acknowledge certain truths has locked us into a perpetual cycle of shared PTSD. The visceral reaction to this film, from any perspective, only reinforces this point further. Because the truth is that the was a horrible experience for everyone involved: soldier, civilian and contractor, along with the entire Iraqi population who had to endure our failed policies and protracted occupation.

American Sniper is emotive because it has triggered all of these extreme feelings within our national consciousness, and we lack the perspective to adequately process what this film has attempted to portray. The sheer chaos and brutality of urban warfare, the unique propensity for violence given the right set of circumstances, and the inability to achieve any real results left us traumatized as a nation. It is a trauma we might acknowledge on an individual basis but never collectively.

There was a level of trepidation in asking my colleagues to watch this film with me. Obviously, this was not a war film dealing with some esoteric battlefield, but a film about Americans killing Iraqis, only 40 miles from Baghdad. Fortunately, my discomfort was somewhat assuaged when one of my colleagues commented on how much he liked Bradley Cooper. American movies sometimes have a way of transcending things like politics, war and cultural differences.

Chris Kyle was, indeed, a complex man and like most soldiers lived larger than life. Yet the discrepancies in his character are somehow being presented in a way that underscores our entire failure in Iraq. This is unfortunate and diminishes the very real struggle with PTSD and other symptoms associated with long-term deployments. It also moves us further away from reconciling what really happened during the war, as does idealizing him as something he clearly wasn’t. The failures in Iraq are well known, look no further than the , but they can stand on their own merit and do not need to be projected through any third party. And until we can have an honest dialogue about the war, this kind of counter-productive controversy will continue to manifest each time a piece of art about Iraq is made.

I must confess that my perceptions of the film, up until this point, were predicated on the controversy, commentary and articles I had been reading while in Iraq. So much so, that I was expecting a traditional American war film replete with brave US soldiers battling throngs of evil , who clearly hated the freedom we were so desperate to spread. But as the movie progressed, so too did my perspectives on the film. Perhaps this was connected to my own experiences in Iraq and how the film was forcing me to confront them, but more intuitively, it was connected to my Iraqi colleagues who were enjoying the film immensely.

For them, the most striking observations originated with the usual clichés that all war films are inevitably prone to. As the family back-story was unfolding, one of my colleagues casually asked me: “Is this how all Americans are raised, like that?” They had seen this scene before in countless films, and I responded with a casual shrug. The cinematic trope that usually accompanies stout middle-class American families was too much for me to explain at that moment.

Around 30 minutes into the film, once Kyle passed SEAL training, got married and was deployed to Iraq, someone blurted out: “… wait, is this based on a true story?” We both looked at each other and laughed out loud. If there was ever a moment of cultural dissociation between friends from different countries, this was surely it. He then pointed out: “Somehow this is true for most Americans.”

This was an astute observation, and he was all too correct. We are led to believe that the events in American Sniper were somehow sequential, linear and entirely simplistic. , followed by the invasion of Iraq, followed by the Battle for . This is where American Sniper fails as a movie, because everything that was wrong about the invasion of Iraq — the lack of strategies, the conduct of the war and the false pretense for invasion — all preceded the assault on Fallujah and the deployment of Kyle. The movie lacks all but the thinnest veneer of context and, as a result, the usual stereotypes are allowed to form, especially the ones American audiences are so desperate to believe.

One of the biggest complaints throughout the entire film was the way in which Iraqis were portrayed, not necessarily their conduct, but their dress, cars, locations and accents (Egyptian). At one point someone chimed in: “No one would wear those kinds of clothes, well maybe a thousand years ago.” Iraq is a cosmopolitan place and the people are proud of this sophistication, even through the many years of occupation, terrorism and insurgency. This could be a general laziness with regard to the film, but it could also be the established caricature of Arabs and Muslims we have become so accustomed to, or maybe it is a combination of both.

Not long after this, as they were deploying to Fallujah for the first time, one of the soldiers in the film comments: “Any military aged man that is here, is here to kill you.” I looked over and asked if this was true, and I was given a dull look as he shook his head “no.” Military aged males can roughly be defined as anyone between 18-35, but based on a body count which is almost incalculable, that criteria was clearly flexible for the US military.

The casual indifference displayed to the scenes of Americans killing Iraqis was one of the more revelatory experiences of watching this film with a group of Iraqis. The only awkwardness was coming from me, as I constantly glanced in their direction every time someone was killed or a home was invaded by US soldiers. Someone commented: “So much violence, on both sides.” As the battle scene reached a crescendo, the same person said: “After all these battles, nothing has changed, and now we have ISIS [Islamic State].” We all laughed. The irony is ridiculous.

Those that came of age under American occupation also came of age in an era of unprecedented national terrorism, which developed after the removal of . While the two are obviously linked, US soldiers, for them, were not necessarily worse than the terrorists they were fighting, such was the level of hyper-violence in Iraq. The scene of “The Butcher” power drilling a young boy was entirely accurate, but not isolated to that one place in time. Incidents like this were pervasive throughout the occupation.

There has always been an understanding that the occupation was bad but not responsible for the kinds of extreme violence, which was endemic between the different sects or factions.

This kind of actualization can only prevail in a place where the concepts of right and wrong exist outside the pragmatism of daily life. In Iraq, things just are and people adjust their lives accordingly. Part of our inability to make peace with what happened in Iraq continues to stem from a dissonance that they should have somehow acted more like us. It does not conform to the American expectation that good can always triumph over evil.

I often wonder how Americans would react to occupation by a foreign army. Would we just get on with our lives, or would we resort to the same kind of ferocity portrayed in this film?

Much emphasis has been placed on Kyle referring to Iraqis as “savages,” in both the book and movie. While some are keen to make this a racist statement and others are quick to agree to support their own prejudices, the reality is much more nuanced. The Iraq War was a savage conflict, regardless of the politics, which did not always apply on the battlefield. Everyone who has spent time in Iraq or in any hostile environment is prone to these nomenclatures, myself included. More than once, my colleagues watching the film expressed the exact same sentiments.

As the movie concluded, everyone looked at each other and nodded. Someone finally said, “That was an excellent movie,” and I cannot help but agree. There could have been much more, obviously. The lack of Iraqi perspective was irksome, but not entirely unexpected. What this film achieved was to show an American point of view without the familiar righteousness that usually accompanies these kinds of modern war films. Kyle’s experience in Iraq might have been extra-ordinary, but there was nothing sensational about the war. Regardless of how much we want to believe in the mythos behind Navy SEALs and the US Military.

Hopefully one day soon we can come to grips with our time in Iraq, and maybe then we can have a film about what it was like to live under American occupation. Until then, the entrenchment of insufferable opinions will continue.

51�Թ� is a nonprofit organization dedicated to informing and educating global citizens about the critical issues of our time. Please to keep us going.

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The Growth of Crowdfunding: Risks and Rewards

Knowledge@Wharton — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:14:28 +0000

The success of the “Veronica Mars” Kickstarter campaign has illustrated that crowdfunding is a reliable source of capital for both start-up businesses and established firms.

The campaign to front a movie based on the cult television show “Veronica Mars” through crowdfunding broke records for the fastest project ever to raise $1 million on Kickstarter. It was the website’s biggest film project so far, and it has the most backers of any project to date.

What it probably didn’t do, Wharton experts say, is throw open the doors of crowdfunding to major motion pictures. But that’s OK: Crowdfunding is successfully helping entrepreneurs raise capital without the need for them to go Hollywood.

What the “Veronica Mars” case does illustrate, however, is that Kickstarter and its crowdfunding brethren have proven their mettle as mainstream, reliable avenues of funding for both start-up businesses and established firms. Not only do crowdfunding websites provide a cheap, easy way for individuals to seek start-up funding, but would-be investors are also doing an excellent job of picking winners out of the crowd, according to Wharton management professor .

Similar Cues of Success

According to Mollick’s recent paper, “,” a draft of which was published in March, entrepreneurial quality is being examined in similar ways by donors on Kickstarter, one of the largest and most well-known crowdfunding websites, and also by venture capital firms, which for decades have been the go-to source for start-up funding.

“They are looking for similar signs of quality,” Mollick notes. “There are things that increase the chance of being [crowd]funded if your backers don’t know whether you’re going to be successful yet.” These factors include: “Does the project creator have experience in the field? Do they have a prototype? Do they have an endorsement from a prominent organization or individual? Those factors increase the chance [that] a company is going to be successful, and they’re things a venture capitalist looks for as a signal of success. They seem to be the things crowdfunders look for, too.”

In an earlier paper, “,” Mollick writes that while most projects that were funded delivered their goods with a mean delay of more than one month, “very few projects did not appear to be making a good effort to fulfill their obligations.” In other words, the crowdfunding community was fairly adept at picking initiatives with a high probability of success.

What crowdfunders aren’t looking for — or at least, aren’t concerned with — is the gender or location of the entrepreneurs seeking funding. By analyzing 3,200 technology projects from Kickstarter in the fields of hardware, software, video games and product design — areas that traditionally attract venture capital investment — Mollick found that crowdfunding “is more democratically distributed than VC funding,” and that “the proportion of crowdfunded start-ups with female founders was larger by an order of magnitude than that of VC-backed firms.

“You either believe that we have an existing system that makes sure the best computer science people work at Google and the best entrée funding is given by venture capitalists…or you believe that talent and opportunity are more widely distributed and that because of differences in opportunity, geography and background, people don’t have similar chances,” Mollick states. “What makes crowdfunding so interesting is that this puts the possibility of creating things in the hands of more people.”

That’s especially important as the availability of small business loans has dried up, adds William Cunningham, CEO of Creative Investment Research, an economic analysis firm based in Washington DC. “Large financial institutions have abandoned this field. It’s easier for them to invest in derivatives than to invest in small business loans,” he says. The technology to crowdfund new ventures “makes all the difference in the world. It’s a force multiplier; it’s a cheapener.”

Small Audiences, Big Dollars

The “Veronica Mars” Kickstarter campaign was probably unique, but it still caused rumblings through the entertainment industry.

Launched March 13, series creator Rob Thomas set a $2 million goal for the movie, with the franchise’s owner, Warner Bros, pledging to kick in marketing and distribution support for a limited theatrical run. At that price, Thomas said in a Kickstarter message, a small cast could pull off a modest film that would continue the story of the high school student sleuth. Any more than that would allow Thomas and company to make a more ambitious film, but $2 million was the bare minimum needed.

Eleven hours after Thomas announced the campaign via Twitter, the initial funding goal had been reached. When the 30-day fundraising window closed last week, the “Veronica Mars” campaign had raised more than of $5.7 million with 91,585 backers, a site record. Not bad for a show that went off the air in 2007 and only averaged 2.5 million viewers during its three seasons (two on the WB network and a third on the CW network.)

“The ‘Veronica Mars’ case is a little bit weird,” Mollick points out. “It may or may not be an embrace [by movie studios] of crowdfunding. By far, it’s the exception to the rule. I’m not sure that method is going to work outside of a particular set of circumstances.”

Although other passionate fan bases of beloved but defunct television properties started expressing hopes that their favorite show could follow the lead of “Veronica Mars,” even Thomas expressed doubts that he had stumbled on a way to short-circuit the traditional Hollywood funding channels.

“I don’t know that I would bet that a Kickstarter model starts to work across the board and that everyone who wants to make a $3 million, $4 million, $5 million movie can expect to go to Kickstarter and get financed,” he told the Associated Press. “When there is a brand-name product that people have responded to and want to see, and there’s already a built-in following for it, people can be very successful. I hope that, in that respect, we are pioneers and we see more of them.”

Crowdfunding movies is hardly new; about 10% of this year’s entrants at the Sundance Film Festival received money through that method, according to Kickstarter. But for a studio like Warner Bros, who could find $4 million for a movie using the change in its figurative couch cushions, the real value of a Kickstarter-funded film is “much stronger, much more powerful data than you’d get from a survey saying, ‘Yes, I’d like to see ‘Veronica Mars’ made into a movie,'” says Wharton marketing professor .

“From Warner Bros’ point of view, this is very valuable marketing research,” he adds. “I don’t think we’re looking at an innovative financial arrangement in getting consumers involved in funding movies. But I do think studios will have to get used to the idea that consumers will have greater and greater demands for what movies we want to see get made, and how they get made.”

It’s Equity Time

Crowdfunding has also found approval from the federal government, opening up the fundraising field to more potential risk and reward for investors and entrepreneurs.

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, or JOBS Act, was signed into law by President Barack Obama in April 2012 as an effort to ease funding restrictions for start-ups and small businesses. Among the act’s provisions was opening up equity-based crowdfunding to United States investors. Unlike a Kickstarter-type project, where backers are either making a pure donation or essentially pre-ordering a product, equity crowdfunding would allow potential backers to buy a share of a nascent company, thus opening the door to a financial return.

Although the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to issue regulations on the JOBS Act promises, equity crowdfunding has been happening in the United Kingdom and European Union for several years. Jeff Lynn, CEO of equity crowdfunding firm Seedrs, says that about 15 similar companies now exist in the United Kingdom and the European Union, and that the funding method has proved to be a game-changer for the angel investment field, which he describes as the step before a venture capital round of funding.

“Instead of it being very rich and clubby, where you have to be at the right place at the right time, we’re trying to democratize it,” he notes. “You’ve now got it open to everyone, everywhere. I see many others coming into this space; I see a world where we have 100 million angel investors.”

The European Model

Seedrs does more due diligence on its hosted projects than a traditional crowdfunding site would, Lynn says, including verifying that the firm is a new business and that it is UK-registered. “We only let them on the platform if we’re happy with that,” Lynn notes. “We’re not trying to impose our business judgment, but in practice, only about 25% of businesses that come to us end up getting on our platform.”

Of those start-ups that make it through the company’s oversight process, only about 12% get funded. An average goal is £50,000 (about $75,000), and the company facilitates about £1 million ($1.5 million) of funding a year. After companies participate in one or more rounds of funding at Seedrs or a similar site, Lynn says the firms are more likely to then seek out venture capital and the additional support that comes with it.

Allowing direct investment by investors brings democracy to angel funding, but with it comes the potential for losses, too. At Seedrs, Lynn says that investors have to click on several clearly worded warnings about their potential loss (which, he notes, are more transparent than the long-winded user agreements that accompany most web and software services) and pass a quiz about the policies before they can fork over their money. “We don’t want people thinking this is a safe asset and putting their life savings in it. Most people certainly should not do that.”

With equity crowdfunding coming to the United States as soon as the SEC issues its regulations, and more entrepreneurs likely to seek financial success through its backing, Mollick says many twists could still come to both the crowdfunding field and the establishments it disrupts.

“Something’s happening: There’s a lot of money flowing, there’s policy and there’s promise. It’s the culmination of a bunch of things we care about,” Mollick notes. “Trends like this have been coming together for a long time now. Is it more democratic? Yes. But quality seems to matter, and that’s important and interesting. There are still a whole bunch of interesting questions that we don’t have answers to.”

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Growth of Crowdfunding: Risks and Rewards appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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Getting Talked About

Were the Critics Right?

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

Comic vs. Dramatic Satire

Adam McKay’s Compromise

The Difficulty of Satirizing Hyperreality

Hollywood Satire and Contemporary History

A Tale of Two Cold Wars

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

Actor Viggo Mortensen Uses a Word He Shouldn’t

Contextual note��

Historical note

Meryl Streep Defends the Big Three: Hollywood, Foreigners and the Press

Hollywood in Black and White

The Land of Taxi Drivers

The Other Americans

Demand Change

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Defining Casablanca’s Modern City Brand

Rick’s Cafe comes to life

The real Casablanca

The Pioneering Fashions of Lady Duff Gordon

China’s Film Industry: A Blockbuster in the Making

Catalysts for Box Office Growth

China Eyes Hollywood

Hollywood can enter the Chinese market in three ways: through revenue-sharing films, flat-fee movies and co-producing a movie with a Chinese company.

Getting Around the Film Quota

May the Forced Be With You

It’s Back to the Future Day, So What Are the Next Future Predictions?

Michael Cowling

Philip Branch

Hamza Bendemra

Thas Nirmalathas

Justin Zobel

Robert Merkel

Toby Walsh

Terminator Genisys and the Mind-Bending World of Alternative History

Time laws