I watched the movie Red Dawn a few days ago…It was made in the late 80s and stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and a few others…
I wasn’t able to watch it completely as it came late and I was drifting off into sleep but do plan on watching it completely…It is a great lesson into the universal concept of resistance from occupiers and the power of propaganda…
The plot of the movie revolves around the future in which the USA has been invaded by a coalition of various countries and have taken over the running of the country…
However, a bunch of kids from school escape from their towns into the surrounding hills and wage a war of liberation from there…
They have been portrayed as freedom fighters fighting for freedom in a noble cause without a fear for their lives including daring raids on the enemy and everything that you’d associate with freedom fighting…
But here’s the twist…In the movie, these same kids deploy IEDs, kill their friends for suspicion of treachery, booby trap dead bodies of their comrades to blow up e.t.c., in fact everything that you’d associate with the Iraqi resistance was done by these kids…Yet, in the movie, in the end, after America has been liberated by these kinds of freedom fighters, a mural is erected in their honour in memory of their efforts to liberating America…
Keeping the notion of resistance as envisaged in the movie, this movie was a propaganda about how dedicated Americans are to their country that they sacrifice their lives for it at any price which, as portrayed in the movie, is a great deed…
However, the same tactics when employed by the resistance of Iraq is concerned, they are depicted as ‘insurgents’ and ‘terrorists’…
The same propaganda being used in Afghanistan was, that when the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, the western media was rife with the daring, courageous and exemplary exploits of the ‘Mujhaideen’…(The term Mujahideen in western news was meant to portray an image of greatness)
And many Muslims, myself included, would feel proud at how these underequipped, undermanned, and undersupplied Mujahideen can stand in the face of the Soviet army…
But now, the very same people who are fighting a different force can be made to look like ‘insurgents’ and ‘terrorists’ and how the term Mujahideen is no more used for them…
And even more astonishing, about the power of propaganda, is the fact that how many Muslims now look upon these same ‘Mujahideen’ as ‘terrorists’ and ‘insurgents’…All at the behest of a few select words worded in a certain way…
So, my question is, as I asked before, how susceptible are you to propaganda?
If a person comes to you backbiting about another person whom you both know on a personal basis, how susceptible are you to believe those rumors?
And how strong are you of nature that words and lies do not move you to believe on the mere power of suggestion?
I never underestimate the power of suggestion…How was it that a nation of hard working, honest and creative people as the Germans could be instilled with the will to kill and subjugate others in the name of nationalism?
It’s just something that made me think after I watched the movie…No doubt Hollywood is an awesome influence upon the minds of the people with full potency to twist and bend the will of simple minds…
The Americans in Red Dawn were heroes for doing exactly what makes the resistance in Iraq the villains…
It’s all about how well you can read between the lines and how well you can differentiate between what is truly right and what is truly wrong and then to stick to those principles…
he is not summarising the movie but bringing depth to interpretation;)