Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Remember in The Dark Knight when we all applauded the Joker for heroically blowing up a hospital?
Or remember when we watched Star Wars and cheered for the protagonist Darth Vader as he destroyed a planet to punish the rebel scum for daring to resist him?
How about when we watched Schindler’s List anxiously hoping the Nazis would be able to thwart the diabolical scheming of the villain Oskar Schindler to prevent them from committing genocide?
Or when we watched Avatar and cheered for the interstellar megacorporation and its army of mercenaries to displace the indigenous people of Pandora to steal their land?
Or when we watched The Pelican Brief hoping the heroes would find some way to kill Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington to stop them from reporting the truth about their crimes?
Or when we watched The Pianist and wept at the evil Jews attacking innocent Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?
Or when we watched The Lord of the Rings and booed the villainous men, elves and dwarves fighting to survive a siege by Saruman’s heroic army of orcs?
Or when we watched V for Vendetta on the edge of our seats worried that the government would fail to stomp out the rebellion, suppress the truth from coming out, and impose more authoritarian measures on the people?
Or when we watched Revenge of the Sith and cheered for the hero Anakin Skywalker mass murdering children in order to wipe the Jedi out of existence?
Yeah, I don’t remember that either.
Nobody seems to have trouble figuring out who the real villains are when it’s happening in the movies. The narrative managers and spinmeisters make it a lot harder to sort out the villains from the victims in real life.
Normally it’s misguided to view any conflict as simply evil villains murdering innocent victims, but not with Israel and Gaza. It’s an apartheid state that’s backed by a globe-spanning empire, raining bombs onto a giant concentration camp packed full of children because they’re the wrong ethnicity.
It’s pretty black and white, actually.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
