Remedial Critique
The War on Terrorism
ABC, owned by Disney, the home of the nauseating show Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People, is now airing a "reality" show that follows the actions and stories of soldiers in Afghanistan and the Northern Arabian Sea. Profiles from the Front Line oozes with potentially misguided patriotism and is filled with CNN-worthy sound bites. Most alarmingly, the show exists in a gray area between documentary and entertainment.
For example, in the premiere episode's opening credits, a commander readying the troops lectures on Iraq's leader: "Saddam Hussein is a criminal and a thug." Not many people would argue with this commander's assessment of the Iraqi dictator, but this statement is given right after an image showing troops in Afghanistan, implying that there is an inherent connection between the terrorist attacks of September 11 and Saddam Hussein.
Many of the soldiers seem to echo Bush's cowboy-style rhetoric towards the "war on terrorism." The same commander who described Saddam Hussein as "a thug" said, while speaking to a group of soldiers being deployed to the Arabian Sea, "How dare they fly the aircraft into the World Trade Towers? How dare they fly the aircraft into the Pentagon?" However, just exactly who "they" are remains unclear. As in Bush's recent press conference and State of the Union address, a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda is implied but, of course, never proven or substantiated with any evidence.
This implied link is very dangerous considering that the U.S. started a war that will jeopardize the stability of the Middle East and relationships with many of the U.S.' closest allies. After all, a New York Times/CBS survey revealed that 42 percent of the American public believe that Saddam Hussein was personally behind the September 11 terrorist attacks, a claim that even Bush's hawkish administration has never said outright.
This link was also incorrectly made by an American soldier searching a foreign ship attempting to unload in Iraq. He said, "I don't feel funny going through anyone's personal stuff. They wiped out how many people's stuff at the World Trade Center?"
Another problem with the show is that the Department of Defense gave producer Jerry Bruckheimer greater access to the U.S. military in Afghanistan than it did to the news media. Reuters reports, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 'signed off' on the project without reservation, said Bertram van Munster, who will serve as an executive producer of the series with Bruckheimer."
Reuters added, "Robert Thompson of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television said a military conflict 'needs to be covered by journalists, not by entertainers.'"
Although co-executive producer Bertram van Munster described his work as "in-your face, good, tough documentary cinema verite work," the show seems more like a Pentagon infomercial than an independent documentary.
Profiles is far from cinema verite. The show definitely has a Hollywood feel to it. But this should come as no surprise considering the producers' past projects. As Reuters reports, "Bruckheimer produced such military movie hits as Top Gun, Pearl Harbor, and Black Hawk Down. Van Munster was a producer and cameraman for eight years on the Fox series Cops."
One can only imagine the celebration Rumsfeld and his cohorts had during the premiere episode of this military press release-cum-reality show. At times the show really does feel like an army recruitment commercial, or an episode of Cops; special operations agents are shown interrogating Afghanis and discovering a cache of small arms, accompanied by dramatic, suspenseful music.
As Howard Rosenberg of the L.A. Times writes, "Note the manipulative music deployed in Profiles From the Front Line, from pulsating up-tempo stuff -- inserted to ramp up suspense when a suspected al Qaeda sympathizer is located and bundled off in the premiere -- to great melodic swells meant to juice patriotism. They're similar to what you hear in the intros of provocatively headlined stories on cable's all-news channels, as if world mayhem were a Hollywood production."
The film editing is just as manipulative. Corporal Peter Sarvis, stationed at a refueling station in Afghanistan, makes a brief phone call home to his wife. The viewers are then treated to his wedding footage with images of the crumbling World Trade Towers superimposed at the end.
Although Bruckheimer asserts that the project was devised before the proposed war on Iraq, it certainly seems opportunistic. The soldiers do get their 15 minutes of fame and glory, but the real profiteers of the show, which profits off the war on terrorism, are the Department of Defense and its producers. This is yet another instance of pockets being lined due to the exploitation of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Illustration by Trev Kelderman