American Blackout (Documentary)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Documentary: C-
When we
get a documentary to look at here for the site, we take it in good faith and
look forward to seeing a challenging, intelligent work. However, when we feel we are being
hoodwinked, we call it as we see it. Ian
Inaba’s American Blackout (2006) is
another look at stolen elections since 2000 and focuses more on the
racism. Not that Unprecedented (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and others failed
to do so, but the purpose presented here is to show the most explicit racism,
including that directed at a certain African American Congresswoman. We have 100% no doubt about said racism in
the elections and that it remains a big problem in the U.S. as much as anywhere. However, it is insidious to use the issue to
forward a highly manipulative agenda and in a way Michael Moore could not
achieve at his worst, this film is nothing short of some kind of bizarre Black
Supremist answer to Triumph Of The Will!
This Trojan
horse is supposed to be a sincere, honest look at some very serious problems,
but instead, is a 86-minutes-long campaign launch for voted in and out and in
and out Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
She has been radical and outspoken against the Bush Administration and
some of her arguments are solid and inarguable about their abuse of power, but
two wrongs do not make a right. The
piece says it is about one thing, but really has a second supposedly invisible
sub-story about what a victim and fighter Miss McKinney is, playing like a
movie star’s vanity project, except you would never see that star using their
film to run for office.
The
victim/fighter dichotomy is loaded with so many illicit appeals to pity that I
lost count. Yes, McKinney was censored by
the media, sometimes in odd ways, but the work claims full disclosure about the
Bush Administration disastrous policies and also implies the same about
McKinney’s “fight” for justice and tolerance.
Unfortunately, it is well-edited grandstanding and is highly
manipulative in how picky and choosy it is about showing what she has done.
Yes, she
has been even misquoted on purpose by big media outlets, but why have you not
heard about her except for some minor incidents? Because she has simply been consolidating a
semi-dictorial stance disguised as fighting for justice and its boldness and
ultimate goal would shock The Black Panthers.
The portrait painted of her is that she is the tough lady who has to be
tough, but has some deeply hidden heart of gold. The documentary tries to “teach” you this and
does this through sinister brainwashing tactics via editing and constantly
asking constant obvious questions about what injustice is that all essentially
ask if racism is bad.
Shockingly,
this retro-Stalinist lemmings-fest won the Sundance Special Jury Prize,
Cleveland Int. Film Festival and similar Columbus Audience Award, Urbanworld
Vibe and Conquest Film Festival Best Doc winner and Boston Independent Doc
awards. Could all those people be
wrong? Absolutely! I know the hatred of the entire Bush junta is
high and for good reason. We know about
how his father’s presidency and the beginning of the Reagan era have been bad
for the country, but two wrongs do not make a right and it is obvious that
people are so blinded by “Bush bad, blind Political Correctness good” that
Stalin is applauding from his grave.
This kind of mentality has obviously made many viewers blind to the
work’s hidden agenda, but this new Stalinism has become the new opiate of the
P.C. Left.
So what
is the problem with McKinney? She has
nothing to lose alright, but has become organized in a way that is not that of
an innocent victim. Is she well intended
and just going about things badly? I
doubt it. Taking on Donald Rumsfeld is
going to get cheers, but by the end, the documentary is so neatly wrapped up
that you know you have been lied to.
When it says become active and go to a website, it actually echoes in
some way the ending of Melvin Peebles’ Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) with its pro-militant stance. It was more powerful when it was original and
especially sinister in context to this particular recycling.
If you
criticize her, a point also made obvious by the documentary, you are
automatically a racist in one of those hatemongering “if you are not part of
the solution, you are part of the problem” moments, which is the kind of
cornering proposition the work offers.
She says officials all the way up to Mr. Bush are not above criticism,
but she sure is. Really? The hypocrisy really gets good and becomes
more obvious in what was left out. The
most interesting is what she did after 9/11 which really speaks volumes about
her bad judgment and manipulation.
It is
included to appeal to certain types of diehard followers, but the risk is
someone who can see it for what it is will call her on it. This involved then New York Major Giuliani and
the incident where an oil sheik sent $10 Million to help with post-9/11
recovery efforts. The string attached
was the message that the U.S. should not support Israel and 9/11 was the fault
of the U.S. involvement with The Middle East versus Islamo-Fascists bent on
destroying the world. Yes, the Right
loves going overboard with Islamo-Fascists, but they can because it exists.
Knowing
what was at stake, Giuliani wisely returned the check and with the message that
the U.S., Israel and the free world were non-negotiable and that was supposedly
the end of it. However, McKinney wrote
to this sheik, apologized to him for the actions of both Giuliani and the U.S.
in The Middle East (by her own uncompromising admission) and asked if she could
have the money for “African Americans” (read herself) to “help” them. She then states on camera that she is not an
anti-Semite and “just” was supporting the Palestinians. Throughout al the footage here, that one is
out of left field, because she never even discusses Palestine or anything
remotely resembling foreign policy except in war expenditures. Next thing you know, she’ll talk about how
she loves Munich and Schindler’s List so much that she
rushed to get the DVDs as soon as they were announced.
The wacky
race baiting extends to a scene where a white guard is “caught” on camera being
racist, checking out a why a camera crew is in a sensitive area until he
realizes it is her. Then she rants about
how this is always happening to her and how she is sick of it. He apologizes and really (post-9/11
especially) doing her job. In a move not
on the disc, not so much because it was not in time but because it was timed to
happen at the release of this DVD, she has been all over the news for slapping
one of these white guards. Who does she
think she is, Zsa Zsa Gabor?
No, it is
about firing up the potentially militant side of her base. To “prove” that everything you are seeing in
the manipulative main feature is true and if “The Jews” get blamed (including
non-Jewish Giuliani, recently called a Jew because of some wacky 9/11 theorist
who said none were killed in the 9/11 attack, calling him part of the conspiracy
was his name being Jew-liani!) for being behind the conflict… Well, you can figure out the rest.
Inadvertently,
you can see what a masterwork of manipulation American Blackout really is.
Sure, Michael Moore can bluntly be a Civil Rights & Democracy hustling
poverty pimp at his worse and stands to make more money the longer the Bushes
and their like stay in power, but he has never gone this far and advocated the
kind of hate and militancy this work is.
When all is said and done, the true purpose of American Blackout is unless you are part of Miss McKinney’s obvious
junta, to keep everyone regardless of race, sex, age, religion and nation
origin in the dark permanently. However,
this reviews purpose is to “shine the light, shine the light, shine the liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!”
and show it for this for the 21st Century Battleship Potemkin that it is.
Angry bigots of the world unite?
I don’t think so.
They
would not want you to read books like George Orwell’s Animal Farm or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit
451, or see Truffaut’s film of Bradbury’s book to boot, but would love to
burn them, and that is where the new round of “burn baby burn” is likely to
begin and we ain’t talkin’ Disco Inferno
by The Trammps. Read about and see Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential
Election instead at the following link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/162/Unprecedented:+The+2000+Presidential+Election+(Documentary)
The
letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image is mixed, but has a certain consistency, while the
Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is passable with music by D.J. Shadow. His talents make this all the more effective,
but I bet he has no idea what he was really accompanying here. Extras include those extra deleted scenes, a
19-minutes-long “Activist Tool” and several supposed Capitol Hill officers
speaking out about how since they are African Americans, they are still racism
targets in a populist piece calling Washington, D.C. the last plantation. Unfortunately, this work seeks to build a new
kind of plantation and ultimately should be viewed as a warning of a possible
new domestic terrorism to come.
- Nicholas Sheffo
