Cinema, Technology and the Manipulation of our Perceptions

Dehumanization of the Palestinians

Technological Barbarism

We should rightly be suspicious of big budget Hollywood films produced in alignment with the US military-entertainment complex and sanctioned by those same propagandist powers, to be broadcast to the willing masses in the most commercialized of public spheres – the mainstream cinema.

I mentioned in a recent article, the “counter-view” on Superman, and I repeat, that these types of films, that have such a longstanding tradition of American cultural imagery behind their symbolism and iconography, must be viewed with a dash of extreme caution – especially in such dangerous times as our own.

It is a time where the only possible deterrent to a cabal of imperialistic governments and their skewed policies, their clampdown on free speech whilst they brutalize the inhabitants of other countries like never before – is the power of the people. United, we do have the power.

So the tools of these governments become strategies such as sowing discord, false flag operations, creating factions to infight – and disseminating propaganda. We live in unique times of the greatest technical sophistication and the most uncivilized and barbaric behaviours, an alarming co-existence that spells great trouble ahead.

The densely populated Gaza Strip is used essentially as a hi-tech weapons testing ground, using the most advanced technology with the sure predatory instinct of the brutal hunter. Censorship spreads it tentacles over us as the brutality reaches ever greater proportions, with propagandist “slurs” such as “anti-semitic” being used to shut people down.

Zooming Out and the “Meta” Frame

When Superman initially hit the big screens, many pro-Palestinians were jubilant at its apparent message against the imperialist war machine and its supposed sympathy towards marginalized ethnic populations who struggled against a powerful and unjust, white, oppressor. We were told that “Israel” boycotted the film, supposedly sour at its obvious depiction of the “Israel”-Palestine situation.

But if we “zoom out” of the cinematic screen, further out until we are watching the audience as if on a screen, we can see them duly paying their cinema tickets, consuming the images on the screen as they consume the snacks they buy at extortionate prices - and their placation as they return home feeling that they have “acted” in some way.

The wash of images, sounds and vivid technicolour experience almost mutes critical thinking; like a dream played on full sound and colour volume, the images hijack the critical faculty and switch on our pleasure circuits so that we “live” the emotional experience in full blaze.

But we are not really living. We are numbing ourselves, disengaging from the actual truth – which is far less glamorous and cinematically vivid – and falling into a kind of cinematic coma, as we willingly give up our hard-earned money to the Hollywood Machine that is so closely aligned with the enemy – the US government, who will have approved the mechanistics of this film for public consumption.

I urge you to always “zoom out” – because the ultra-sophistication of modern technology and cinematic values, the manipulation of our psychology that results from the expert analysis that goes into making these cultural productions – puts us into a “frame” of its own; and we need to always question that frame in order to break free of it. This is the opposite of mindless consumption.

Neural Cinema and Hijacking your Brain

Movie images are one of the cleverest ways to propagandize and drug entire populations into psychological submission; the pleasure experience of the cinema bypasses our usual judgement and seeps more easily into our psyche. This is the basis of therapies like hypnotherapy – a few hours of this can reach places in our psyche that years of talking therapy cannot.

These “subliminal” (below the threshold of consciousness) messages sink into our psyches at a primitive level, engaging our brain’s “limbic system” where our most fundamental sense of memories and emotions are stored and processed. Your brain is being co-opted on multiple levels, so deeply and extensively that you may as well be a zombie, offering up your brain to be willingly manipulated.

When you are in the cinema, ensconced in your seat, happily allowing the images and sound to wash over you – you are in the grip of the great Wizard, your brain a mere piece of putty.

The Spectre of Dehumanization and “Othering”

So that when you see those poor, helpless ethnic people being brutalized by this evil empire, you see them as fictional characters in some faraway exotic land – separate and removed from you and your own life; rescuable only by some mythical superhero, but it is okay because you have done your bit by watching it all play out on the screen.

Our brain becomes unable to differentiate between the characters onscreen, who are created to the cinematic specification, and the Palestinians that we see suffering on social media – it heightens the sense of “unreality” of their plight, melding fiction and reality in a swathe of manipulated imagery.

None of those oppressed characters have any particular name or identity I believe – I haven’t seen the film, but that is my impression. They’re not larger than life or heroic, they’re not vivid and powerful like the white all-American hero – they lack distinct identity.

They are helpless and there to be rescued by characters that have larger than life virtues and are more powerful then them. In fact, for one Superman to rescue a “people”, he must be equal to them as a whole. That is – his worth set against them is that of an individual with identity, character, heroism and complexity; versus a faceless group of helpless brown people waiting for their hero to rescue them. And he does – so we go home feeling happy.

Meanwhile, Palestinians have been “othered” below the threshold of our consciousness and we have been fully co-opted in this process.

“Surreal” Images of Palestinians being Brutalized

And what this does is ensure that when we do see those social media images of Palestinians starving to death, or running towards aid whilst being shot, or herded into effective cages – they adopt a cinematic sense of unreality that we feel distanced from. So grotesquely cruel is the treatment of the Palestinians, that it is like something from a dystopian movie.

Palestinians have been starved to the point of desperation, and then lured with aid trucks of flour, which when they run towards, they are pepper sprayed, shot, run over. We see them running with sacks of flour sometimes bursting over them during their flight. We have never seen anything like this before – the “Israel”-US alliance is a real life monster, worse than anything Hollywood could conjure up.

There have been social media clips where the US contractors waiting to shoot the Palestinians refer to them as “zombies” and other dehumanizing language. As they casually shoot them, insinuating that they are like animals – we miss the fact that this desperation has been manufactured.

These men – they are human.

They are fathers, trying to get food for their starving families; they are sons, trying to feed their parents that they see dying before their eyes; they are men who have had everything stolen from them, been sealed into a concentration camp for three months with a meagre lifeline of basic food and supplies – and then told where to come for food.

They have walked in the blazing heat for miles without water, on empty stomachs, after month upon month of being bombed, traumatised, seeing their homes reduced to rubble, displaced multiple times, digging through rubble with their bare hands, watching small children bleed to death on floors. These are real men; the men who shoot at them are the monsters.

Palestinian Dignity, US-“Israeli” Brutality and Stripping a People Bare

The “Israeli’s” hate the Palestinian spirit, its endurance, its resilience, its dignity. They have always been bitterly jealous of the authenticity and humanity of the Palestinians.

Like any malignant narcissist, they revel in trying to reduce their enemy to the lowest common denominator, to their most animalistic impulses that we all have – those of self-preservation, hunger and basic survival needs. Then they can point to them and call then dehumanizing names like “zombies” and “animals”. This makes them feel as if they have won, and that they are better.

But let us be clear: the people who have been bombed and starved, brutalized over almost two years, and reduced to their basic needs of hunger and survival, are acting normally under the cruellest circumstances; it is the “men” who have had all of their needs met – who have access to every resource and are not in a state of depletion, need or trauma – and who are shooting at the Palestinians – who are the real animals.

It is the “Israeli” spokespeople who scream “amalek” and insist on starving a civilian population, sniping children and bombing kindergartens – it is they who are the real animals.

It is creatures like Tzipi Hotovely, “Netanyahu”, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir; Trump, Starmer, Lammy, Von der Leyen – they are animals of the lowest order, who live in splendour, preach so-called “civilized” values from their pulpits all whilst providing the billions, the arms, the F-35 jet components – who are the true animals. Never forget this.