Cinema’s Contribution in Fighting Terrorism: Analysis of Kurdish Cinema

Introduction

Cinema had always impressed us with both simplicity in the term of understanding them and its complex effect on the audience psyche and we are doing this research to know the effect that these movies have on the public mind and to which extend does these movies contribute in the fight against terrorism and in which way the Kurdish cinema contribute in fighting them as well and we couldn’t so in the future and when other works are done it would give a full contribution rather than a slight one whether that is from financial aspect or the phycological effect that it has on the viewers. The research question is probably going to be “what is the difference between Hollywood cinema and Kurdish cinema in their contribution in fighting terrorism”? and this research doesn’t study the question of how does cinema effect negatively on the masses and maybe that one will be a subject to be viewed and analyzed later on another futuristic research. Human beings had always dreamt of a way to increase their life spam away to live for longer periods and in art they found what they have been looking for. First in painting where it grew at its best value during the Renaissance when the art of painting began to flourish before that artists drew what was there or what they see in front of them, but during the Renaissance they started to go beyond that, painting the many aspects of life or how they would look at it from their own perspectives and there were 2 endgames behind paining of which were one primarily aesthetic for the beauty of it looks [1] second the psychological aspect which is duplicating reality in those paintings, then another invention came to existence in 1888 and that was the photographic image for every although it was a more advance version of art but a static image may show moving objects as blurry and not very clear or even hard to understand cu it needs someone with some vision to understand a photographic image, then later on another invention came into existence which was the video camera and after the Lumière brothers started making their films that time in 1895 that was the birth of modern psychiatry and that was brought up by Freud and Joseph Breuer’s and the birth of psychoanalyses was established by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud trusted that individuals could be relieved by making cognizant their oblivious musings and inspirations, in this way picking up 'understanding'. The point of analysis treatment is to discharge subdued feelings and encounters, for example make the unconscious conscious. In his early on literature his thought Back in the late 19th century Freud's conviction was that it was difficult to 'graphically speak” to the dynamic nature of our reasoning in a good structure”. Of course, the reader would have some questions on their minds like what is the relationship between cinema (movies) in general and the psychology and the audience well in the late writings in this particular research we are going to go through all these stages one by one starting with our hypothesis which is going to be “Kurdish cinema has lower contribution in fighting terrorism than Hollywood does”.

Literature review

Here we are going to have that subject viewed in not just an esthetic but also analyze some of the Kurdish movies that regard terrorism in its contents and some of Hollywood movies from 1970’s to 1990’s for the many changes that occurred in cinema during these time frames. Then later on we are going to review some of the Hollywood movies after 9/11 incident.

To better understand cinema’s and terrorism history we were better off choosing to review some of Hollywood’s oldies that are related to our subject and as the great cinema theorist Siegfried Kracauer said that “cinema is the mirror of the prevailing society” like how Hollywood cinema in the 1970s had little things to do with reality an escapist one we should refer to it as, villains in the story lines has almost absurd reasons of why they commit their attacks for example there was a movie back in (1974) with the name of (the talking Pelham 1-2-3) is one of the biggest examples on movies that the villain in it was motivated financially the gang is led by a British mercenary threatening peace in new York city by kidnapping a subway train to perform some sort of a million dollars ransom with the government. The same pattern has been duplicated in these two movies also Two Minute Warning (1976) and Rollercoaster (1977) when a bunch of criminals threaten to hit public places (black mailing the government specifically in terrifying plans to put a mass of population in danger. In 1980s that pattern was changes from escapist to somewhat like less escapist and more directed towards real terrorism especially when America witnessed the 444 days long hostage crisis (1979), and after the American involvement of the Lebanese civil war (1983), for example like in Delta Force (1986) in this movie the terrorist were shown in ugly manners which of course they are shown without there head gear bandages and are viewed from a low angle showing there unarranged hair style and looks that send only the message of fear into the hearts of whomever watches, The movie draws a picture of some gang members highjack a civilian airplane take all the way to Lebanon to an urban jungle in Beirut specifically, here a team was made to defeat them terrorists had gotten ready to get to where the hijackers, when they get there they kill bunch of them and get the people who were kidnapped into there homes safely, so in the 1980s movies were meant to be eye opening for a matter that is as significant as terrorism and there threat to the public, movies in the 1990s was just like the 1970s style movies when the jihadist or villains have an certain ideology but the ideology is just a mare mask behind their real motives which is always financial and not ideological, and most of them were like a group of terrorists come and take on a bank, park or skyscraper basically (public places) and take hostages defeat all attempts of government to rescue the hostages and then a hero comes alone and defeat a bunch of them single handedly just like in Die Hard II (1992), Red Alert (1992), Passenger 57 (1992), Speed (1995), Sudden Death (1995), Die Hard III (1995), The Rock (1996), Operation Broken Arrow (1997), or Air Force One (1997) in all these movies villains had won for a short amount of time then after the hero showed up there luck would change for the worse facing there own defeat, one by one till the hero of the movie alone faces the last one of them and strikes him down to make it the end of all evil, only for these movies for they had shown the real face of terrorism like in True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), and The Siege (1999), for they had shown the jihadists true capacity and hunger for bloodshed and how far they would go to make the most damage possible to achieve there vile means, for example if we so to speak review the role of the jihadist or how they were viewed in true lies (1994) which mainly talks about a group of jihadists (Crimson Jihad) they call themselves they tended to has managed to deliver some nuclear weapons out of one of the soviet unions, trying to blackmail the government of the united states, and to prove that they had those weapons they actually detonated one of them on an inhabitable islands of the Florida keys, threatening all countries alike, then Spymaster Trilby (Charlton Heston) asks his troops to find the group leader Aziz and his men before getting a nuclear bomb in front of the white house in the back of a car, the role of the hero here is played by (Arnold Schwarzenegger) the character name is Harry Tasker from “Omega Sector”, a Unit that was meant be a covert unit work in counter-expansion of terrorism .

Findings

When was a time when a trauma happens to someone in a movie in the movie theater and we go clinch our hands and react to it even though it doesn’t happen to us because it’s getting projected rather than happening in reality, well that’s when William James “described the tendency of visual images to evoke motor actions more than a hundred years ago, using the term ideomotor actions: “Wherever movement follows unhesitatingly and immediately the notion of it in the mind, we have ideo-motor action”. The term had originally been coined to describe involuntary actions during hypnosis and séances, but James pointed out that seeing something and responding automatically with an appropriate movement is one of most common ways movements are caused, “the normal process stripped of disguise.” and William James himself had separated the reason behind committing such acts is a methodology called the mirror rules and the success rule the mirror rule basically is like the saying “monkey say, monkey do” but that one is not only available for monkeys in fact all animals has that kind of instinct birds mammals do have it even insects have it and of course human beings have that trait to like all other animals and the second rule the success rule and it was called this way because human beings repeat what had worked earlier in a certain situation like what we call simulation and that’s when human beings learn like wile playing chess or something has an effect on our subconscious and we actually had learned from it. The success rule shows up not simply in basic engine aptitudes, yet in addition in increasingly inconspicuous, complex social communications. Assume you stop at a similar bistro while in transit to work every morning, and it has two lines at the counter, staffed by two customary servers, A great biologist Richard Dawkins once said something like human brains work by simulation in his book the selfish gene so we mostly simulate what we see in mass media like books movies tv and reflect it In our brains into something most related to us, Van Gogh didn't live to see May sixth discharged. In August 2004, van Gogh's short film submission activated hubbub in Muslim circles when it was appeared Dutch open TV. submission demonstrated a semi-exposed Muslim lady, inked with Koranic sections, describing how she had been forced into an organized marriage, mishandled by her better half, sexually assaulted by her uncle and after that severely rebuffed for adultery. On the morning of 2 November 2004, a Dutch Moroccan Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri, shot van Gogh off his bike on a bustling Amsterdam Road, cold bloodedly cut the producer's throat with a bended blade and stuck a letter to his chest with another blade. Bouyeri's letter railed against the 'unbeliever fundamentalists' who were 'threatening Islam' through films like submission. The demise of Theo van Gogh must be the most stunning representation of the ways in which movie producers have turned out to be involved in the present purported Worldwide Period of Dread. The Dutchman's butcher not just shows the dangers that producers what's more, writers keep running in facing the subjects of psychological oppression and religion amid a time of outrageous political polarization.

Hollywood in the 21st century

As we argued before we’re going to review some of Hollywood movies In the 2000s though Hollywood cinema has changed radically from just like in 70s and 90s of little bit of in accuracy in describing terrorism and of course very far away from the movies in the 80s and their most honest version of describing terrorism, it rather went from framing the terrorists it focuses on non-reality (escapism) or even if it mansions terrorism it would mention it in a unrealistic irrelative patterns far away from anything real especially after 9/11 dangers were delineated as extraterrestrial (War of the Worlds, 2005) or people dying from infection as in (I am Legend, 2007) or then again because of fast environmental change like in (The Day after Tomorrow, 2005), if there is an example of movies that did address terrorism was The War Within (2005) it mainly focuses on a Pakistani prisoner who was actually captured for a crime he didn’t commit and tortured badly after he got out of prison his ideology had changed into a more radical one then he finds some terrorist organization that already put in mind The vicious experience changes Hassan into an extreme who looks for vengeance for the bad form done to him. He interfaces with a fear monger cell that is highly involved with arranging an assault on the Amazing Focal Station in New York. Be that as it may, his rationale is put under extreme weight by logical inconsistencies and clashing feelings: the war, in which he sees himself, is battled 'inside' – in his very own mind. Finally, The Kingdom (2007) can be perused as an elective situation to the genuine War on Dread in its delineation of effective counterterrorism as the consequence of collaboration among Western and Center Eastern police powers. A group of FBI examiners works intimately with the Saudi police Colonel Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom) to chase down Abu Hamza, a mid-level al-Qaeda usable, who is in charge of a besieging assault on an American compound in Saudi-Arabia. Generally speaking, the film offers an 'idealistic scene of injured Americans heading home, mission achieved,' as Jim Hoberman commented.

Kurdish Films

As we reviewed some of Hollywood movies that regards terrorism as a matter to be fought here, we reviewed some Kurdish movies and decided to evaluate them according to heroes’ villains’ circumstances so we start with:

Brear 2015 (decision):

In this movie a mother has to choose between getting her child beheaded or blowing up the holey roshnbery which means (hall of enlightenment), showing two sides of cruelty that these terrorist groups has, one is not only to make a hard decision and chose to save her daughter and kill innocent lives or she can save the innocent teenagers and not kill them on behalf of her daughter’s life.

In an interview with the director and screen play writer of the movie wahid kfri he said about the origin of that story:

“in the beginning of the story a 30 or so years old women get ready to perform a musical play and then she practice her beautiful music then a group of terrorists hear her out in a distance, they come before 1 hour of the musical play and kidnap her, make the women chose between her daughter and the teenagers who in the eyes of those terrorists are sinners because of 2 sins celebrating the valentine’s day and waiting for the musical play (which is haram) and must be irradiated.”

In the beginning of the movie there will be a scene of a terrorist group car coming by and then stops at a point and it appears that they have a hostage which is the hero of our story, and then take her inside a home which seems to be the base of operation for that terrorist group, then the leader of that terrorist group appears in a scene and tells one of his assistance to remove the hdband and saw the leader of that group, looks of horror seems to appear on the mother’s face as she looks to her right and sees a tortured man next to her, the tortured man looked horrible tired and blood was coming out of his head, then the terrorist group gives an objective to the mother of which to blow the hall of roshnbery, the mother looks confused as if she had refused the offer just from the looks on her face, then the terrorist group seems to have the trump card which was her daughter, a second option was given to the mother and that was beheading her precious daughter in front of her, she takes the guitar that has a bombe sticking to it and seem to not have any other option, the terrorist group take her to the place of which they want it to be destroyed, the mother get down of the terrorist’s car heading towards the location and there she sees a sight of all these teenagers gathered and celebrating the valentine’s day and she stops thinking of all these innocent lives that she is about to take, remembering she has only a single choice to make between two bitter options either she chose to do nothing and lose her daughter which is really sad and the other of bombing the building which has all these poor teenagers in it which is also something horrible.

Bashtren Xalat:

A tragic story of a 12 years old boy who travels with his mother encountering a terrorist group that ends them up being dead accept for the boy,

The movie starts with a scene of a director in a car heading from Baghdad to Sulaymani, the next scene is of him winning an award of best movie on loving once nation in Baghdad, flashbacking through his memories of that day wile staring at his phone that plays a video of that day, a child next to him with his mother (Baran Omer the hero of our story here) looks at the director’s phone and asks to see the glassy award, the director gives it to him, the mother talks to the boy telling him to return the award to the director and apologize for the director the then the child hides the award in his mother’s hand bag a couple are in the back of the car seemingly they were husband and wife, no that much time had passed had passed since they got married, flirting and talking in the back of the car, then a terrorist group will come in, make the passengers step out of the car, the terrorist group starts searching the passengers, one of them finds the award in the mothers hand bag they take it then the who seems to be the leader of the terrorist group yells “ don’t you know that acting is haram” hen break the award in front of the director, he director seems to be upset of what happened to his award after that the leader of that terrorist group says to his group kill them all, the director comes forth telling the terrorists to stop and claim that the award is his not the mothers trying to change their closed minds, seemingly nothing worked, they took the wife that was setting in the back seat from her husband, then started shooting at every one of the passengers until all are dead or at least what they think they have killed every one until the last of them, after a while they leave, then the young boy wakes up, go to his mother trying to check if she wakes up, no answers from the mother, the little boy then goes to where the award had been broken first by the terrorists leader and pics up a peace of the award and goes along the way.

After talking to the director of the movie about what did inspire him to create that movie exactly and what was the image, he wanted to show terrorists to the audience, the answers were:

“I was on my way home from Basra after winning an award for the best short movie that time and went to see if there were any fly tickets, and there were none so had to go back by car, so we did and on our way while the sun was yet to rise and had the award in my hand, that time was the beginning of the war against ISIS (the Islamic state) and people who would pass these roads without encountering ISIS checkpoints were lucky, the car driver asked me of what do I have in my back and I told him that it contain an award, he said be a good man and throw it away its an enough reason to get your head off by these Islamic state members don’t you know that that is haram acting and directing, and I said to him that even if they cut my head off I wouldn’t throw that award away, because it means a lot to me, and it didn’t happen that was the amazing part of it all, if it happened I wouldn’t be here and make that scenario from the first place”

And said specifically “first point in the movie was the director who purposely went to an Arabic city Baghdad claiming the award of best director there while knowing that the road ahead of him is full of dangers and might lose his life on his way home, the second point was the child who saw the award and wanted it for himself then meeting the terrorist group that ended up killing all the passengers accept for the little boy and although every one died and the terrorists might think that they have won but in the end he boy survived carrying out the hopes and dreams of the director who gave him his award kindly.

Margy ruzhnamanus (the death of a journalist):

A tragic story of a journalist with his wife and two children in a journey that will cost him his life searching and investigating a bombing of a car in Kirkuk.

In the beginning of the story there are two different scenes one of a journalist which investigate an explosion that happened in Kirkuk called al-hasera explosion and another group which were the planners and the conductors of that attack which killed an innocent child and others, the hero of our story in the beginning gets a phone call from his friend, then he talk about how much he is concerned about that attack because a child was killed inn that action, then comes another scene of this man’s daughter playing with her dolls innocently, the journalist at that time is investigating still on that vile explosion and his daughter comes in asks her father the journalist to bring her a new doll and cloth for her current doll, then the journalist prepares for going out while the children are playing and the mother is busy by housekeeping, the father goes out asking weather the family want something else other than his daughters doll, his wife answers with no only come back to us safely and as fast as possible then the journalist go out with a friend of his own saying that the government should focus on making not just a mare journal but a whole tv channel on hidden vile acts that happen in Kurdistan, then the journalist said to his friend “lets go buy the doll for my little girl” his friend answered isn’t it a bit late can’t we delay that to later on finally the journalist answered with “I can’t my kids are everything I’ve got in my life I can’t delay it for later”. Then it appears that the terrorists responsible of the explosion are after the journalist and are actually stalking on him somehow, the journalist had picked his daughter’s doll and headed towards the Kurdistan journalist syndicate there they find a group of people they seem to be rehearsing for a play, one of them (which seems to be in charge of that group) says that “friends, do you know why I’m telling you to work hard on this show? because a very close friend of mine is coming by he is a journalist and a specialist in theatrical plays to see us practicing and give us some tips, that’s why we have to work hard so that we won’t embarrass ourselves in front of him”, then the journalist kids asks their mother of why their father has been late because he said he wouldn’t be late on them and now everybody is worried, the mother says “ok I’ll be calling him few minutes later”. The journalist reaches for the syndicate where his friend is waiting for him to give him tips in his play, after when he was done, he headed to drink some tea and the terrorist gang seems to be following him and finally find him and shoot him dead and run away, the mother calls her husband the journalist, the children stare at there mother waiting for answers but no answers from the journalist, they try to call him over and over and the phone rings next to the dead body of the journalist laying dead on the floor, a group of police officers follow the trace of the terrorist group prosecute them and finally captures them.

In an interview with the director of this movie I asked what did inspire him to make this movie and his answer was about the fact that a friend of his own an tv anchor with the name of Saman a very famous anchor used to work with him in GK Tv channel and “have actually been killed by terrorist just because he was working with a PUK channel he was being stalked until he got into a car selling area and they have shot him dead.

Criticism

In the Hollywood movies we see most villains has almost all has no depth of character because that seems to be more likeable by the audience which is something that is shared by both sides both jihadists in Hollywood or Kurdistan films commit atrocities but the only difference is when in Hollywood movies jihadists are fought hardly and then gotten beaten up by the heroes and the Kurdish ones all had almost sad stories with almost the hero loses everything he/she got and why we are criticizing that? And that’s because as we talked about earlier the mirror rule and success rule (simulation) comes in the rule of rewards that and in one side it shoes you no matter how malicious jihadists seems to be there is always someone to stop them and bring justice to them that’s in Hollywood movies, while Kurdish movies were skeptical for when it came to the mirror rule and the success rule for when it comes to the mirror rule how would the public see jihadists? Probably as scary beings that spread chaos into the lands with nobody telling them to stop, and that’s according too the success rule is going to take the reward away making audience scared and would give the exact opposite reaction needed to be taken from the masses and that is not being scared and even so they’ve got a fighting chance.

Conclusion

Cinema had always impressed us with both simplicity in the term of understanding them and its complex effect on the audience psyche and we are doing this research to know the effect that these movies have on the public mind and to which extend does these movies contribute in the fight against terrorism and in which way the Kurdish cinema contribute in fighting them as well and we couldn’t so in the future and when other works are done it would give a full contribution rather than a slight one whether that is from financial aspect or the phycological effect that it has on the viewers.

The term had originally been coined to describe involuntary actions during hypnosis and séances, but James pointed out that seeing something and responding automatically with an appropriate movement is one of most common ways movements are caused, 'the normal process stripped of disguise.' and William James himself had separated the reason behind committing such acts is a methodology called the mirror rules and the success rule the mirror rule basically is like the saying 'monkey say, monkey do' but that one is not only available for monkeys in fact all animals has that kind of instinct birds mammals do have it even insects have it and of course human beings have that trait to like all other animals and the second rule the success rule and it was called this way because human beings repeat what had worked earlier in a certain situation like what we call simulation and that’s when human beings learn like wile playing chess or something has an effect on our subconscious and we actually had learned from it. The success rule shows up not simply in basic engine aptitudes, yet in addition in increasingly inconspicuous, complex social communications.

References

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