Title : "Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?"
link : "Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?"
"Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?"
Writes Will Bunch (Philadelphia Inquirer), expressing intense aversion to the new Clint Eastwood movie, "Richard Jewell."At some point during those two hours in the dark — maybe the attack on the FBI as a rogue outfit using trickery to frame innocent people, or the depiction of journalists as amoral enemies of the people, or the swelling agitprop of applause lines about common folks under attack “from our two most powerful forces — the United States government and the media” — that I’d began to wonder if I’d made a wrong turn....He's so afraid people will see this movie and be influenced. Whatever you do, don't look there! Does that even work?
Rarely have I seen a film that was so “of the moment” — but in the worst possible way.
In the time of a reality-TV president, Eastwood seamlessly blends facts with outright fiction to create a narrative that transcends truth. To get viewers riled up about “fake news," it fabricates a story. Yet, in the end, in making this movie intended to crush any remaining public faith in the news media, Eastwood has unintentionally reminded us of why democracy requires a functioning free press....How does Bunch know what was in Eastwood's head? I haven't seen the movie, but if it makes us anguish over fake news, why wouldn't that mean that Eastwood longs for sound, professional journalism? Hey... is Bunch doing fake news? So much of the anti-Trump news these days is assertion about what Trump intended. And here's Bunch, making assertions about what Eastwood intended.
[T]he film was green-lighted in 2014 when the notion of a President Trump would have been a crazy script no studio would touch....So... the film became more timely... and if only that had been predicted, it would never have been made. A left-leaning movie that synchs up with current events is praised as visionary. You've got to go see it, because it's more relevant now, an import warning, a valuable opportunity to heighten awareness. But to synch up by chance with current events is just horrible when the viewpoint seems right wing. (Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?)
Now, there is a huge problem about this movie that has nothing to do with left and right wing politics. A real-life reporter — Kathy Scruggs — is portrayed as sleeping with a source in order to get a story. I'm reading that this is not something she actually did. This isn't just a character who seems to be based on Kathy Scruggs, but a character actually called "Kathy Scruggs" in the movie. How could that happen?! The movie is supposedly a warning against fake news, but it engages in fake news. Everyone wants to spice up the story. Throwing sex into it is the oldest, lamest tactic.
Scruggs died in 2001, so maybe the filmmaker is counting on that as protection from a defamation lawsuit. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Scruggs's employer at the time) is asking for a written disclaimer to appear on this film and is threatening a lawsuit if that's not done.
Here's an article by Benjamin Lee in The Guardian that goes into more detail on the problem of sexualizing Scruggs:
In reviews of the film, Wilde’s portrayal of Scruggs has been referred to as an “aggressive, unethical” reporter possessing a “sultry greediness” who was “ruthless, manipulative” and who “all but looks at the camera and says, ‘I am the bad guy in this movie’”. It’s a raucous, vampish, overtly sexual performance that sees Scruggs complain about covering the Olympics, calling it a “fucking nightmare” while complaining that it doesn’t get her “hard” without any crime occurring....The filmmaker embodies the nefarious FBI in a fictional character played by the actor central casting would send over for the role of fuckable male. Meanwhile, the main character in the movie is challengingly unattractive.
The offending scene sees Scruggs slithering up to [Jon] Hamm’s fictional FBI agent in a garishly lit bar, seeking a scoop. After being stonewalled, she claims she already knows the bureau is looking into somebody via sources. “Well Kathy, if you couldn’t fuck it out of them then what makes you think you can fuck it out of me?” he says.
... After he reveals that the FBI is looking into Jewell, she calls him a “fat fuck who lives with his mother.”...
The film is based on both a 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner and The Suspect, a recently released book written by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen. Alexander was the US attorney for Georgia at the time of the bombing while Salwen was covering the event for the Wall Street Journal and they conducted over 180 interviews for their research. The pair acted as consultants for the film, drawing on their vast knowledge of what really happened.Oh! There were rumors... and she was a public figure. It's less a question of tort law than filmmaker ethics, hypocrisy, and the usual Hollywood sexuality that can be decried as sexism.
In the book [The Suspect... co-written by Kent Alexander who was US attorney for Georgia at the time of the incident] Scruggs is described as “a delightful throwback to the 1930s newspaper wars” who could be seen as rude, bombastic and wild but also authentic and hard-working. “Kathy never quietly entered a room, she exploded into it”.... One of her tactics was using her sexuality to flirt with cops at a local bar after hours but rumours that she would sleep with sources were just that.
Scruggs would wear short skirts and low-cut blouses in a male-dominated office but any reputation that arose as a result was based on a regressive assumption....
After the bombing, Scruggs worked tirelessly to secure a lead, eventually finding an APD source who revealed that Jewell had become the new focus, a shift based both on inevitability (even in the film, Hamm’s fed barks that “You always look at the guy who found the bomb just like you look at the guy who found the body”) and a mounting collection of concerning yet ultimately circumstantial evidence (Jewell had found himself in hot water for impersonating a police officer in the past and lost a security job for alleged threatening behaviour while he was reportedly a user of a site that featured the notorious bomb recipe-containing Anarchist Cookbook)....Authors of the book the movie was based on put out this statement:
“Scruggs secured her Jewell scoop from a law enforcement source. We have been asked repeatedly whether we found evidence that Scruggs traded sex for the story. We did not. Though this exchange may be depicted differently in the movie, Richard Jewell, we urge everyone to see this excellent film which conveys the story of Jewell, the unsung hero, in a compelling, dramatic and entertaining manner.”And here's what the actress, Olivia Wilde, said:
“I think it’s a shame that she has been reduced to one inferred moment in the film,” Wilde said. “It’s a basic misunderstanding of feminism as pious sexlessness. It happens a lot to women; we’re expected to be one-dimensional if we are to be considered feminists. There’s a complexity to Kathy, as there is to all of us, and I really admired her.”
She also criticised people for condemning a project that allows “for a woman to be impure” without addressing the factual issues at hand.
Thus articles "Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?"
that is all articles "Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?" This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
You now read the article "Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?" with the link address https://usainnew.blogspot.com/2019/12/was-i-really-in-philadelphia-multiplex.html
0 Response to ""Was I really in a Philadelphia multiplex, or had I wound up at President Trump’s lie-larded Hershey rally taking place at exactly the same time?""
Post a Comment