A Vantage Point on the Art of War and Terror

Mar 31, 2008 - 23:25 PM PST

This post is incredibly overdue. I saw Vantage Point (VP) a long time ago now, and at that time it got me thinking about this which I have been meaning to write down ever since.

First off, it is a great movie! The sound effects are very well done. The first two times the sniper's bullet strikes the President, I felt the thud in my chest as if I had been shot. I've never felt that level of realism in the sound effects from a movie before. Not even the Bourne series. VP gets my vote for the sound effects technical Oscar in 2009.

In addition to the quality of the sound effects, the story is told in a unique, almost irritating manner. Since the story is about one event from multiple vantage points, the beginning of the movie is retold four times, each time revealing new information about who the shooter might be. It makes for an interesting, suspenseful movie, but by the start of the third retelling I started to wonder how many times the beginning was going to be repeated.

Alright. Now for the whole point of this post.

Vantage Point is a piece of art about a fictitious act of terrorism at a gathering of world leaders at an anti-terrorism summit in Spain. You can imagine what the ending of the movie is considering it was made by Hollywood, but the movie left me asking this one question: How does a terrorist define success? For the cost of the lives of a few people willing to pay that price, a group of terrorists gets to show the world that the U.S. may emerge victorious but the cost is high and America and her allies are not invincible. The terrorists in this movie were successful. America got a black eye. And not only did the U.S. get a black eye, but many foreign citizens got killed in the process. And what does that say about the U.S.? Was it on our watch? Does it show the war on terror is really being won?

Now to the heart of the matter. Terrorists succeed when their bloody work kills, injures, shocks, disgusts and infuriates as many people as possible. And these groups use various channels to disseminate their devastating deeds-including cheap videos, and the unwitting newspapers who report such occurrences as "news." Whose side is Hollywood and the media on? That of peace and order loving denizens of the world? Or are Hollywood and the Fourth Estate terrorist stooges, "unwittingly" doing the terrorists own public relations. What a deal! Terror gets FREE public relations when good, progressive, positive work has to pay dearly for column inches.

I've never read it, but that book that came out recently The Secret seems to echo the sentiment I've heard from other quarters that one gets what he focuses on. Thus, the people of the world should focus on the positive they want out of life and the solutions to problems and not worry about the negatives in the world.

Hollywood and the media are both in the entertainment business. That is why they make movies and print newspapers. There is a fine line between making people aware of terrorism and commemorating lives lost and giving terrorists around the world exactly what they want-attention. Thus, instead of patting our collective backs on always winning in the end and "inadvertently" commemorating lives lost to terror and perhaps the terrorists, the media, Hollywood and humanity at large should focus on building a war without terror and violence by focusing on the good news and the positive progress toward shared goals.