Argo far from the truth

Rating: 3/10 (21 November 2013)

In order to achieve better understanding of Argo, it's needed to know more about the Iran Hostage Crises and at the first step we should know about the effect of this event on both American politics and public opinion. It wouldn't be far-fetched to claim that Argo is the most political production of Holly Wood in recent years, although it claims to tell the true story of the secretive CIA operation to rescue Six fugitive U.S. diplomats who received refuge from the Canadian ambassador, hiding and fearing their possible discovery and execution, but obviously it is a device to show off American Champion Husbandry hat rooted in American exceptional-ism and the belief that America's Success is due to its special genius. So Argo tries to replace the American bitter experience in the Iran hostage crises with the sense of honor and success, by trying to depict a prominent CIA operation in a heroic way. It is undeniable fact that this event had a high negative affect on American's mind about what they always brag about themselves. "The United States Is responsible for Most of the Good in the World and American are fond of giving themselves credit for positive International developmentsassuming that God is on their side"(StephenM.Walt 2011). According to this perspective and approach, we see after three years, In a May 1981 New York Times retrospective on the Iranian hostage crisis, A. M.Rosenthal ruminated about the effect captivity had had on the nation's psyche, he asked: "Why the anger, the sense of mourning for those 52, who after all were government servants and expected to take risks when they served abroad? Who made the United States look like a clown?" Then he argued that Americans mourned because "not just the 52 but all Americans and worse still, our very government, had been taken captive and held in that embassy"(SCOTT 2000). In fact he tries to introduce the Iranian hostage crisis as an updated captivity narrative which emphasized the necessity of confrontation with the "other," fears of innocents being violated, and the call upon heroic leadership to rescue both the hostages and the nation from threats to American identity. So this interpretation shows that "The hostage crisis can be placed in the larger context of efforts to secure an American identity over and against fundamental threats, a practice grounded in "zero-sum analysis of international action" and a "willingness to draw lines of superiority and inferiority between us and them"(SCOTT 2000) So we face a sort of existence of the notion of dualism in Americans culture which tends to define American social identity based on a specific quality and deeply discriminate between "us", as an American, and "them", between the "self" and the "other", and this is done usually because of a political motive. And Argo is a movie completely conforms to this view point of "others"(Mousavi 2013). In a quite exaggerate way, Ben Affleck in the film Argo portrayed Iranian as savage and brutal people screaming lunatics rampaging around the streets and introduce every Iranian character a yelling indigenous nuisance and a suspicious bureaucratic stooge, or an absolute moron, The Iranians showed in Argo are in essence a screaming, loud mass of hysterical people. They torch flags, bang on cars, hit and stab innocent people and exploit children. They are frightening, suspicious, and essentially violent and aggressive. On the other hand, Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck), has appeared as a savior, and the six hostages are portrayed as heroes, who are all kind, compassionate and loving towards each other. This is the struggle to state the differences between "us" and "them" in American ideology. Throughout the movie, in all the scenes, Ben Affleck tries to highlight this sense of otherness, which are illogical, and threaten us (Americans) and fearing them is inevitable. The shadow of danger, threat and violence is the permanent theme of the movie, all the people are scary, the conditions are appalling, and the hostages are like defenseless lambs among wolves. Innocents are killed and are executed by hanging from cranes in public. Even old women are dreadful! Now the Mythic hero, Tony Mendes, in an extraordinary way survived the hostages that are being considered as the other movies heroes, from such a complicated situation in interaction with some savage moron security guards, For example in a ridiculous Chase and escape operation in film, you see the Revolutionary Guard chasing the plane in order to stop it! Instead of simply force the plane to land by the Iranian air-force. Cultural critic Nicolini states that Argo completely neglected to provide the Iranian side of the story, and said: "The film is a sanitized version of the events." She argued that "there is nothing authentic about the film's manipulation of historical events," and described the movie as "pure political propaganda."
According to all points we mentioned, we can conclude that Argo tries with new narrative of the Iran Hostage Crises to bring the sense of success to Americans and make them 'feel proud' of the U.S and specially the CIA, because of it's worthy of praise in the underground operation. So we see Ben Affleck in the film Argo is twisting the truth in order to introduce Protagonists come out looking like heroes. Movie makers have a responsibility when making movies based on the truth to let people know what really occurred. When they don't they are actually guilty of trying to change history and worse people believe what they see on the screen. The film Argo instead of focusing on revolutionary Iran and having a neutral approach to submit the reality of that era events, tries to focus on the 'white Americans in danger' storyline. It's a story about Americans exceptional-ism, by introducing The United State as responsible for the most of the goods in the world. Lester Siegel's sentence can be playing a very enlightened role for this claim, when he says (after the survival of the hostages): we made history tonight!