The Hollywood Left is from Venus?

David Koepp, the screenwriter behind the current blockbuster movie
War of the Worlds has said:
“the Martians in our movie represent American military forces invading
the Iraqis.”

As InstaPundit observed, you just can’t make this stuff up. It’s
hard to lampoon the Hollywood left any more, because they keep
uttering inanities that venture beyond far, far beyond parody —
yea and verily, into the Land of the Barking Moonbats. Nevertheless,
here at Armed and Dangerous we’re not afraid to
try…

OK, Mr, Koepp, let’s see if I have this straight. The Americans in
the movie aren’t Americans. they’re Iraqis. The Martians aren’t
Martians, they’re Americans. Fine, I follow you so far. Is there a
scene where the Martians collect toys from the Red Planet to give to
American children? Do they build schools and powerplants for the
Earthlings who are blowing them up with IEDs? Is there a scene where
the Martians depose the brutal American dicator George Bush —
you know, the one who fought a pointless war with Mexico and
nerve-gassed the population of the upper Midwest? Do we get to see his
twin daughters amusing themselves by feeding dissidents feet-first
into industrial shredders?

Koepp would have it that War of the Worlds is a fable
about the perils of military adventurism. As an anarchist who
believes that war is the health of the State and an overly healthy
State is a damnably bad thing, I daresay I’m more dead set against
“military adventurism” than he is; I’ll bet he thought it wasn’t so
bad when, say, Soviet tanks were rolling into Prague in 1968, if he
was alive then.

But “adventurism” is a peculiar word to use in this context. Not
the movie, but what he claims it refers to. Um. Just checking,
now…four years before the movie began, did the two tallest buildings
on Mars get flying saucers crashed into them by terrorists operating
from Guatemala? Did every intelligence service on Mars believe, and
tell their leaders, that the terrorists had been getting training and
logistical support from the CIA? Did the Martian press repeatedly
publish investigative stories about the terrorist/American connection
and urging Mars to do something about it — stories that were
believed clean across the political spectrum before a campaign for
Supreme Xyglfrntz made it convenient for one faction of Martians to
forget that?

Probably not. But that’s the movie I want to see. You know,
the one where John Kerry does a cameo as a failed candidate for Supreme
Xyglfrntz who voted for the invasion before he voted against it.

23 comments

  1. I’m confused: “Did every intelligence service on Mars believe, and tell their leaders, that the terrorists had been getting training and logistical support from the CIA?” What exactly does this mean?

  2. I would pay the $17 to see that, and I’d even get the $9 Popcorn and the $6 coke. Well, maybe not. I guess the guy was tired of Tom Cruise being seen as the biggest lunatic in the movie.

  3. Dang! Where’s Mel Brooks? Imagine “Springtime for Hitler” with Saddam or Osama substituted for Hitler. The thing is practically already written.

  4. That’s a quite interesting take, since you seem to forget one salient point. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I know that’s the story the White House wants you to believe, but it’s simply not the case. Atta never met with anyone in Prague. There were never any connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. All these things were discredited long before the invasion. That’s why there was a large segment of society that opposed the war. Lest you forget the mass protests in New York and Washington, the ads, the Dean and Clark campaigns… Did the press publish stories touting the White House line? Yeah. We’re they “investigative”? Unly if you consider asking Chalabi and Scooter Libby what write investigating. All those stories of WMD, the unmaned drones that could gas NYC, the aluminum tubes, and the yellow cake were discredited at the time, let alone after two years.

    stories that were believed clean across the political spectrum before a campaign for Supreme Xyglfrntz made it convenient for one faction of Martians to forget that?

    Apparently, you never saw the irony of Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten?”. No. Some of us haven’t forgotten that the man behind the attack was allowed to slip through our fingers, not once, but twice (Kandahar and Tora Bora) because the administration was too busy gearing up for the invasion that fantasized about since 1997. So much for “Wanted Dead or Alive”.

  5. For some reason I don’t believe what Koepp is saying about his own script; I agree with Jason Apuzzo’s analysis. I think Koepp wrote the screenplay Spielberg wanted him to write, in which the Martians represent Martians and the Americans represent Americans. He’s just saying that stuff about Iraq to look cool in front of the cool people.

  6. War of the worlds turned the tables on the British Empire to show us what it’s like to be invaded. It’s fully in keeping with the spirit of the book to give the same message to todays biggest empire builder.

  7. Atta never met with anyone in Prague.

    And you know this because his mobile was used in the USA while he was supposedly in Europe, right? Because mobiles have fignerprint-testing locks like those things some people want to put on guns, and will only operate for their owners.

    Or do you have some other reason for your certainty that this meeting never happened?

  8. Jonathan-

    There were never any connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. All these things were discredited long before the invasion.

    Actually, it’s the “no connections” dogma that has been discredited:
    http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110006953

    CLAUDIA ROSETT has more on connections between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. I know it’s an article of faith — in the most literal sense — of the antiwar crowd that no such connections exist, but assertions to that effect mostly serve as a time-saver, by making clear who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. –Instapundit, in providing the above link.

  9. I think Rob Fisher (“look cool for the cool people”) may have the right idea. I’m trying to think of any plot changes or additions that would specifically shadow Iraq. At first I thought this explained the bizarre and plot-hole-creating “they’re already buried” change. But it doesn’t; US military forces weren’t already hidden in Iraq, waiting for the war to start, were they? Anyways, I can’t think of anything that would be analogous to Iraq specifically and not to occupied nations in general.

    I just reread the book, and the most obvious ‘moral of the story’ is to be nice to the lesser animals. Wells seemed to be attempting to put mankind in its place and deflate our idea of having dominion over nature and separation from other species. This theme is present in many of his other works, including those that have nothing to do with colonizing. But, though the analogy to colonizing is weaker, it could still be made.

  10. Gah, your credit with me for being informed was just reset. Let the Kerry joke die. He voted for a loan and against a grant. Two different things. AKA not a contradiction. AKA not funny anymore.

  11. bkw: <sarcasm>Oh, but everybody that America trades with is a colony of the US. There’s no such thing as a free market, because everybody knows that America will invade your country if you don’t accept the deal that’s offered. It’s called economic colonialism.</sarcasm>

  12. Jonathan–

    You said,

    There were never any connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. All these things were discredited long before the invasion.

    In point of fact, it’s the “no connections” dogma which has been discredited:

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/804yqqnr.asp

    http://instapundit.com/archives/024232.php

    http://www.rightwingnews.com/special/xyz.php (point #7)

    I know it’s an article of faith — in the most literal sense — of the antiwar crowd that no such connections exist, but assertions to that effect mostly serve as a time-saver, by making clear who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
    –Instapundit, in linking to one of the above.

  13. A bit overboard, don’t you think? One can draw a parallel without using a mirror image. Similies and metaphors are well-known devices in the English language.

  14. Murkan de facto hegemony has been so brutally effective that de jure hegemony is unnecessary. Recognizing the instrumentality of the hegemonic project has always been tricky for those to whom its continued operation gives comfort and succor.

  15. bkw: the fact that the American colonies are doing badly doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

  16. “instrumentality of the hegemonic project”

    Cant of this kind is one of the most reliable ways to recognize fools. It’s the signature of a mind so wrapped up in ideology that it can’t abide or use plain language.

  17. There are also connections between a terrorist and his family – does that give you the right to kill his family? I don’t think so. “Connections” is one of those words, like “circumstances” and “strong evidence”, that basically allows politicians to justify everything without having to prove anything.

    Feels like your supposed “anarchist beliefs” don’t go too far beyond self-recreation topics.

  18. Like a diamond tipped drill, an ESR dis is both powerful and surgically precise! If I sound that much like a crazed leftie, perhaps I should use this newfound talent to seduce young, comely female sociology and English lit majors at college-town coffee klatches? “Ladies and gentlemen, the mating call of the North American Barking Moonbat.”

    As to what I was referring to above, I’ll just come out and say it. Recently I’ve been led to question the “just so stories” surrounding the purpose for the establishment of the USA, and have been encouraged to instead consider the American system to be a form of governance intended for the sole benefit of a wealthy aristocratic, white European upper class. According to this model, the turning point in this nation’s history did not occur in 1776 (which was simply the Murkan aristocratic elite’s repudiation of arbitrary rule by the British crown, no more, no less) but a century earlier, in 1676, during Bacon’s Rebellion. You see, Nathaniel Bacon managed to lead a successful insurrection against Governor William Berkeley by playing into the disgruntlements of bond laborers of African and European descent (who were at the time social equals), coalescing them into one effective fighting force which laid siege to the House of Burgesses and effectively stopped tobacco production. After Bacon’s death, future governors were faced with the problem of how to prevent such insurrections from happening again. The solution was machiavellian and effective: they separated the bond laborers into two groups: “white” and “black”. Because the European descended “whites” more closely resembled their bourgeois masters, they were declared “free”, encouraged to identify with the bourgeoisie, and encouraged to enforce the non-freedom of the other “black” African group. With the two groups of lower-class workers at odds with one another, they could not achieve the awareness and organization necessary to repeat Bacon’s Rebellion, so the rulership of the landed aristocracy was secure. As an extra bonus, the labor of the “blacks” could be extracted by force at nominal cost to work the fields of the burgeoning tobacco economy.

    http://www.blackcommentator.com/129/129_guest_pbs_slavery.html

    Thus was born black slavery, and with it the absurd concept of “race” — a cultural milestone as American as mom or apple pie, if not more so. Some see the same pattern of cultivating fear and hatred of the Other in order to gain support or at least non resistance to the establishment in American politics to this very day, particularly in the Republican party:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

    That overt racism towards blacks is on the decline in terms of social acceptability does not reduce the effectiveness of the method: all you need to do is pick a new Other group, declare them “terrorists” let us say, and use the fear that label generates as an excuse to go in and forcibly extract their resources (petroleum, in this case, instead of labor) while simultaneously scuppering any remotely effective opposition to power. That is the “instrumentality of the hegemonic project” and I’ve been wondering lately whether that, and not glorious revenge, nor national defense, nor desire for freedom in the middle east, is the primary motivator for war in Iraq. In which case the comparison with Hollywood alien invaders is justified — though the specific movie would be Independence Day, whose bug-eyed aliens invaded specifically for resource-extraction purposes.

    As I said, I have been forced to consider whether this is the actual ugly truth underlying the American project up to and including the War on Terror. Being neither black nor a racist, firsthand knowledge of how racism works has always eluded me, and having been educated in primarily-white public schools where that sort of thing isn’t taught I was blissfully unaware of the ramifications of Bacon’s Rebellion throughout three centuries of American history; so once exposed to the pattern, I began to see its like everywhere, though this could be a conceptual “all you have is a hammer” thing.

  19. KK:

    “Connections” is one of those words, like “circumstances” and “strong evidence”, that basically allows politicians to justify everything without having to prove anything.

    I feel the word “connections” in this context refers to the connection between one murderer and another, who coordinate resources for the purpose of murder. I feel that meaning is pretty clear. I feel the available proof is overwhelming and well documented.

    I feel any argument about other meanings or use of the word “connections” becomes some kind of abstract philosophical discussion about linguistics, and is not related to the context of the original argument.

Leave a Reply to George Potter Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *