Zero Dark Thirty: A Woman’s Film
Posted by Michelle Moquin on January 27th, 2013
Do you agree?
Good morning!
With all the controversy surrounding this film, Michael Moore gives us his two. If you want to see the video of Moore, giving kudos to all the women in this film, which unfortunately I can’t seem to post, click here.
In Defense of Zero Dark Thirty
There comes a point about two-thirds of the way through Zero Dark Thirty where it is clear something, or someone, on high has changed. The mood at the CIA has shifted, become subdued. It appears that the torture-approving guy who’s been president for the past eight years seems to be, well, gone. And, just as a fish rots from the head down, the stench also seems to be gone. Word then comes down that — get this! — we can’t torture any more! The CIA agents seem a bit disgruntled and dumbfounded. I mean, torture has worked soooo well these past eight years! Why can’t we torture any more???
The answer is provided on a TV screen in the background where you see a black man (who apparently is the new president) and he’s saying, in plain English, that America’s torturing days are over, done, finished. There’s an “aw, shit” look on their faces and then some new boss comes into the meeting room, slams his fist on the table and says, essentially, you’ve had eight years to find bin Laden — and all you’ve got to show for it are a bunch of photos of naked Arab men peeing on themselves and wearing dog collars and black hoods. Well, he shouts, those days are over! There’s no secret group up on the top floor looking for bin Laden, you’re it, and goddammit do your job and find him.
He is there to put the fear of God in them, probably because his boss, the new president, has (as we can presume) on his first day in office, ordered that bin Laden be found and killed. Unlike his frat boy predecessor who had little interest in finding bin Laden (even to the point of joking that “I really just don’t spend that much time on him”), this new president was not an imbecile and all about business. Go find bin Laden — and don’t use torture. Torture is morally wrong. Torture is the coward’s way. C’mon — we’re smart, we’re the USA, and you’re telling me we can’t find a six-and-a-half-foot tall Saudi who’s got a $25 million bounty on his head? Use your brains (like I do) and, goddammit, get to work!
And then, as the movie shows, the CIA abruptly shifts from torture porn to — are you sitting down? — detective work. Like cops do to find killers. Bin Laden was a killer — a mass killer — not a general of an army of soldiers, or the head of a country call Terrorstan. He was a crazed religious fanatic, a multi-millionaire, and a punk who was part of the anti-Soviet mujahideen whom we trained, armed and funded in Afghanistan back in the ’80s. But he was a godsend and a very useful tool to the Dick Cheneys and Don Rumsfields of the world. They could hold him up to a frightened American public and scare the bejesus out of everyone — and everyone (well, most everyone) would then get behind the effort to declare war on, um … well … Who exactly do we declare war against? Oh, right — terrorism! The War on Terrorism! So skilled were the men from Halliburton, et al. that they convinced the Congress and the public to go to war against a noun. Terrorism. People fell for it, and these rich men and their friends made billions of dollars from “contracting” and armaments and a Burger King on every Iraqi base. Billions more were made creating a massive internal spying apparatus called “Homeland Security.” Business was very, very good, and as long as the bogeyman (Osama) was alive, the citizenry would not complain one bit.
I think you know what happens next. In the final third of Zero Dark Thirty, the agents switch from torture to detective work — and guess what happens? We find bin Laden! Eight years of torture — no bin Laden. Two years of detective work — boom! Bin Laden!
And that really should be the main takeaway from Zero Dark Thirty: That good detective work can bring fruitful results — and that torture is wrong.
Much of the discussion and controversy around the film has centered on the belief that the movie shows, or is trying to say, that torture works. They torture a guy for years and finally, while having a friendly lunch with him one day, they ask him if he would tell them the name of bin Laden’s courier. Either that, or go back and be tortured some more. He says he doesn’t know the guy but he knows his fake name and he gives them that name. The name turns out to be correct. Torture works!
But then we learn a piece of news: The CIA has had the name of this guy all along! For ten years! And how did they get this name ten years ago? From “a tip.” A random tip! No torture involved. But, as was the rule during those years of incompetency and no desire to find bin Laden, the tip was filed away somewhere in some room — and not discovered until 2010. So, instead of torturing hundreds for eight years to find this important morsel of intelligence, they could have found it in their own CIA file cabinet in about eight minutes. Yeah, torture works.
In the movie, after they have the name of the courier, they then believe if they find him, they find bin Laden. So how do they find him? They bribe a Kuwaiti informant with a new car. That’s right, they find the number of the courier’s family by giving the guy a Lamborghini. And what do they do when they find the courier’s mother? Do they kidnap and torture her to find out where her son is? Nope, they just listen in on his weekly call home to Mom, and through that, they trace him to Pakistan and then hire a bunch of undercover Pakistani Joe Fridays to follow this guy’s every move — which, then, leads them to the infamous compound in Abbottabad where the Saudi punk has holed up.
Nice police work, boys!
Oh — and girl. ‘Zero Dark Thirty – a movie made by a woman (Kathryn Bigelow), produced by a woman (Megan Ellison), distributed by a woman (Amy Pascal, the co-chairman of Sony Pictures), and starring a woman (Jessica Chastain) is really about how an agency of mostly men are dismissive of a woman who is on the right path to finding bin Laden. Yes, guys, this is a movie about how we don’t listen to women, how hard it is for them to have their voice heard even in these enlightened times. You could say this is a 21st century chick flick — and it would do you well to see it.
But back to the controversy and the torture. I guess where I part with most of my friends who are upset at this film is that they are allowing the wrong debate to take place. You should NEVER engage in a debate where the other side defines the terms of the debate — namely, in this case, to debate “whether torture works.” You should refuse to participate in that discussion because the real question should be, simply, “is torture wrong?” And, after watching the brutal behavior of CIA agents for the first 45 minutes of the film, I can’t believe anyone of conscience would conclude anything other than that this is morally NOT right. You will be repulsed by these torture scenes because, make no mistake about it, this has been done in your name and mine and with our tax dollars. We funded this.
If you allow the question to be “did torture work?” then you’ll lose because yes, if you torture someone who actually has the information, they will eventually give it to you. The problem is, the other 99 who don’t know anything will also tell you anything to get you to stop torturing – but their information is wrong. How do you know which one of the 100 is the man with the goods? You don’t.
But let’s grant the other side that maybe, occasionally, torture “works.” Here’s what else will work: castrating pedophiles. Why don’t we do that? Probably because we think it’s morally wrong. The death penalty sure works. Put a murderer in a gas chamber and I can guarantee you he’ll never murder again. But is it right? Do we accomplish the ends we seek by becoming the murderers ourselves? That should be our only question.
After I saw Zero Dark Thirty, a friend asked me, “During the torture scenes, who did you feel empathy for the most — the American torturer or the Arab suspect?” That was easy to answer. “Oh, God, the poor guy being waterboarded. The torturer was a sadist.”
“Yes, that’s the answer everyone gives me afterward. The movie actually makes you care for the tortured guys who may have, in fact, been part of 9/11. Like rooting for the Germans on the submarine to make it back to port in Das Boot, that’s the sign of some great filmmaking when the writer and director are able to get you to empathize with the person you’ve been told everywhere else to hate.”
Zero Dark Thirty is a disturbing, fantastically-made movie. It will make you hate torture. And it will make you happy you voted for a man who stopped all that barbarity — and who asked that the people over at Langley, like him, use their brains.
And that’s what worked.
P.S. One final thought. I’ve heard fellow lefties say that even if the filmmakers didn’t intend to endorse torture (Bigelow called torture “reprehensible” on Colbert the other night), the average person watching the movie is going to take it the wrong way. I believe it is the responsibility of the filmmaker attempting to communicate something that they do so clearly and skillfully (and you can decide for yourself if Bigelow and Boal did so. For me, they did.). But I never blame the artist for failing to dumb down their work so that the lesser minds among us “get it.” Should Springsteen not have named his album Born in the USA because some took it to be as a salute to patriotism (Reagan wanted to use it in his 1984 reelection campaign but Bruce said no)?
********
Readers: What’s your two? Blog me.
Ahou: Thanks for making the effort to be here.
Elena: Aww…thank you. Peace to you wherever you are.
Gretta: Like you and many others are saying, this is so hypocritical. Beliefs change depending on what side the money resides. Thanks for enlightening me and my readers to this appalling news.
Ym: No matter how much a lady knows it, she never gets tired of hearing it. Your heart is full with love, I HOPE your arms get filled today too.
Robert, RT: How sweet of you to remember – thank you. I HOPE all is good with you.
I am posting early this morning because I have a big day planned, and I am anxious to begin.
Peace & Love…♥
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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January 27th, 2013 at 8:23 am
Happy Birthday Beautiful!
/SB
January 27th, 2013 at 9:03 am
Michelle, you’re right. A woman can never hear it enough. Happy Birthday to you!
Ym, I’m free this evening if you can make time for me, these arms and legs are wide open. Call me.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:38 am
Michell:
Another year has come and gone. They seem to go so fast.
You are a years wiser and your Posts show it’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE
Luv, Howie
January 27th, 2013 at 10:06 am
Happy Birthday Michelle:
I did not remember, but I don’t even remember my own birthdays anymore. You’re looking real good for 29, I did the math.
Oh, and of course I know you would never Blog Ban me, you don’t do that. If you had, I would have been exiled a long time ago, LOL………..
Have some fun today.
LUV,
Al
January 27th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
Happy birthday, Mischa!
January 27th, 2013 at 1:29 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle. This is my first post to your blog I have been a reader for 3 years.
Love you.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle, I wanted to ask you if you saw fans from other countries when they come to America. I live in Athens, but the family is coming to Los Angeles in july of this year.
I would do anything to meet you.
Abbelina
January 27th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Everybody here wishes you the best on this special day. Looking forward to the time when you will be spending them with us.
Love
Ruth
January 27th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Happy Birthday, beautiful. You are my dream girl.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:44 pm
The Girlz of Iran love you Michelle. We wish you the most happiness on this day.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle, I’m coming to San Francisco to teach a taiko class. It would be splendid to meet you. I’m 36 never been married and am interested in knowing if you are into Japanese men.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
You are so fine. I cut out your picture had it copied laminated and put it on my shower door.
You take a hot shower.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
January 27th, 2013 at 1:57 pm
The Russian Girlz wish you a very Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:00 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle. Israel Girlzs read your blog and wish you would come to Jerusalem so we can show you or love.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
If only you could speak Russian. You look like a beautiful Tsarina.
Happy Birthday BEAUTIFUL.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
You are our treasure Michelle, a truly American of the world.
I have been reading your blog since the beginning. I can honestly say, I have enjoyed every write.
Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:05 pm
This is one time I don’t mine the line. I don’t mine getting in line to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to such a deserving person.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:07 pm
I seldom get to do more than a quick check of your blog on Sundays. But I couldn’t miss wishing you a Happy Birthday Michelle.
You have put together a wonderful conversational blog.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:10 pm
My english has gotten better because I study to your picture. You are very nice to talk to with that gorgeous smile.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:13 pm
I wish you the very best girl. You make the world better simply by being in it.
Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Looking at that picture, I can’t help but say you are one sexy lady.
I want to meet you so badly. But I live in Delaware. When I graduate, I will be looking for a job in San Francisco. I will settle for nothing less.
Happy Birthday Gorgeous.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Your birthday is special for all your fans Michelle. Without it we wouldn’t have such a great blog to meet at.
Hope this day is all you expect it to be.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle,
January 27th, 2013 at 2:27 pm
You are certainly a woman with a strong opinion about your positions. I like the impact you had on the election. I wish I could meet you when I find my way to the Bay Area.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
January 27th, 2013 at 2:27 pm
I’d become a Girlz to get next to you. Happy Birthday
January 27th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle, You are a force in the blogasphere.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:29 pm
I just started reading your blog about a year ago. Now, I can’t start my day without a peep.
Happy Birthday
January 27th, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Hello sweet thing. If only I could find a way to get to SF. I would eat you up.
Happy Birthday
January 27th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
My birthday advice, don’t mess with any of those other dudes until you meet this dapper young man.
I can make you happy in ways others could only dream about. I just moved to Berkeley. I am a professor at UC.
I have been reading you blog for almost three years. Maybe we could meet and collaborate on a book I have in mind.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
January 27th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
Actually, to be honest, I have been hired as an assistant professor at the UC-Berkeley.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:38 pm
The Girlz of Kenya wish you a very happy day also Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:38 pm
Hafa Adai and Happy Birthday to you Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:40 pm
I couldn’t get in, but as soon as I sent the brats off to Mass, I sat down again to wish you the very best on this momentous day.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle, I borrowed my sister’s time here so I could get on this computer. I want you to know that the non-Arab indigenous people of Darfur owe you a lot.
Warmweru
January 27th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
I won the greet here in the Netherlands so Happy Birthday Michelle. You have made some of the ladies I acquaint myself with much more difficult to have a conversation with but so much more aware of their surroundings that their new conversation made me a better person.
So America has something more to offer the world other that Obama, and liberty for all, It has a Beautiful siren for justice in you.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
The Girlzs of the Apache Nation wish you a very happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Aloha and Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Happy Birthday from the Girlz of France.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
The Girlz of Greece wish its american goddess the very best.
Happy Birthday
January 27th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
The girlz of Portugal wish you a Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle, I like Ruth, SM wish you would come to Guam so we could show you our love.
Hafa Adai
January 27th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
We Dutch Girlz want to extend out best wishes on your special day too Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
The Native American Girlz wish you a very Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
I will be making a seminar in China town in LA in March. I would accept an offer to speak at the SF Chinese Center of Commerce if you would agree to have dinner with me.
Happy Birthday and think about having dinner with a handsome 38 year old once married bachelor in March.
Then, you can think about visiting the wonder of China, I am an official in Jiangsu.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:04 pm
This proud native American thanks you and wishes you a very happy birthday.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Thank you for thinking of Indian women. Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 3:07 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Iran says Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 3:09 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2013 at 3:10 pm
The Girlz of Deutschland wish you a Happy Birthday Michelle. We can’t wait to don kick-ass suits.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle, You know I have a great time planned for you when you get here. So what are you waiting on.
We haven’t heard from you in a while now. What are your plans?
Love that sexy outfit. I can’t wait to take you shopping. I know all the great places american girls love to frequent. Come on over, let’s storm the gates.
January 27th, 2013 at 6:25 pm
Happy Birthday Michelle!!
January 28th, 2013 at 6:50 am
I am sorry I missed the big day, but let me wish you a sincere belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY Michelle.
January 28th, 2013 at 6:53 am
Wow, what are the odds? I tuned in to wish the lovely Lady a Happy Birthday and there you were. Great Loves can certainly think alike.
Happy Birthday Michelle, Your blog has probably brought together more loves but I doubt a greater one than the one I have found with my Sweet Darling.
Hope you day was all you wished.