narrative wars

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2016)

Our lives are sustained by narratives, in which we believe, versions of the facts in which we trust. Most of that we acquire through upbringing, social environment, education. Where you are born (country) determines a great deal of what you are likely to believe in throughout your life.
What Snowden did was not so much shocking in terms of the revelations themselves: the idea that the American government spies on us, all over the world, no matter where. I believe every regime always uses everything in their power to monitor their faithful subjects. We are all American subjects right now in a way or another. So if, say, the Roman Empire or the Nazis had that kind of technology and ruled over a world where pretty much everybody carries a Geo-located device with camera and mic in their pocket, they certainly would have made use of that. What Snowden did is important not because of what he reveals, but because he did reveal it and proved it. He defeated an accepted and implemented narrative - that that the USA government is always "the good guy", and uses its infinite powers only for good and just causes; has a constitution which is as sacred as the Bible and which prevails above everything else, and so on. That Snowden was able to flip that story inside out with all the personal risks within is remarkable. He revealed the American superficial narrative to be mainly false, as the American government exercises all kinds of brutalities that equal and exceed those of the oppressive regimes in countries they claim to liberate.
Along comes Oliver Stone, and does his take of the known facts. We can see the self-reference at the beginning: Snowden starts as a young typical conservative, willing to "serve the country", going to war for it. This mirrors Stone, the Vietnam veteran, who willingly enlisted to "protect" whatever lies somebody was feeding America with at the time. As the story progresses, Snowden questions the ends, and the means to them. So did Stone. In the end Snowden comes out as a kind of an also typical American hero, who risks everything, his life included, to "do the right thing".
He maps the Snowden story onto the 1984 metaphor, thus the "O'Brien" character, which is obvious but adequate. Along the way he drops a few hints (intended or not) that he himself is driven by internal affairs concerns, and not so much by a general sense of justice: there is a scene in the NSA headquarters in Hawaii where Snowden shows his colleagues a world map and all the emails intercepted in every country. Apparently there was no special concern that, for example, individuals from Germany or Brazil are being illegally spied, only that Americans are At least he aptly edits real clips of real people (Obama included) telling their own narrative, proved a lie when layered over the Snowden story we're being told.
The difference between this narrative and others that Stone has already explored (Vietnam, Nixon, JFK) is that this one is still going on, we don't know what will be of Snowden, and what real impact his leaking will really have. I hope it will be huge, but I doubt it. We know how the American establishment reacted to them, how they, again, flipped the narrative: it's really not that huge that it was revealed that the NSA spies on individual unsuspected citizens, Americans or not: Snowden is a villain because he threatened "American security" and that's much more important than any minor constitution related incidents. Apparently this version stuck, as we are a month away of having either Clinton or Trump sitting on the receiver side of the NSA bug So the "security threat" story is probably accepted by most Americans as true.
I think there is nothing ordinary about Snowden and what he did and because of that it struck me as a moderate insult that Stone would have him as a pretty standard American hero, the kind of stock character that has been feeding American mythology for decades and keeping the people (not only Americans) from looking under the rug, which is precisely what Snowden had us doing with his leaking. I mostly don't share many of Stone's political believes, but I've always respected his integrity, and sincere take on the important subjects he tackles. Check this film, it's honest. But base your narrative in more than one source. The breaking of the fiction, at the end, as the real Snowden speaks directly to us, is a good device to validate the narrative that we had so far been fed. Honesty.