The 90th Academy Awards – The Soirée of Deception

Tomorrow, the world will feel no shame. Not because it doesn’t want to, but because it is not aware of what’s happening behind the red curtains of the prized soirée. Tomorrow, on the 4th of March 2018, the Oscars will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California with millions of people watching from all over the world. Some will be rooting for their most cherished film of the year to win the prestigious prize. Others will hold their breaths, hoping that their favourite actor or actress are finally rewarded for their hard work over the years. Suspenseful, indeed, but as you watch the main categories, pay close attention to one small detail as it changes your perception of what is regarded as industry perfection in the category of documentaries. The Oscars tomorrow are more important than you think; not because of entertainment purposes, but because of something much darker: Propaganda with a large P.

Many do not realize the overarching foundation on which the ‘’Best Documentary Feature’’ award this year is built on. It should come as a surprise to no one that the Academy Awards have been a lucrative platform for propagandists in their attempts to sway public opinion on matters of modern conflict. On behalf of the military industrial complex, the entertainment industry has long promoted emotive films based on funding from state actors that have bolstered conflict and war for the sake of corporate profits or geopolitical gains. This year is no different.

The Best Documentary (feature) selection is comprised of five films:

• Abacus
• Faces Places
• Icarus
• Last Men in Aleppo
• Strong Island

Three of these movies might be real servants in the realm of entertaining documentation. Two of them, however, are only disguised as such. Do you see it? If you've identified Last Men in Aleppo and Icarus as being epitomes of propagandistic instigators influencing opinion on matters that are of extreme importance to the Deep State, then you can stop reading here. Perhaps, you haven't seen or heard of these documentaries but chances are that you, as well as millions of other people, will feel intrigued to watch them knowing that they have been given the stamp of the most significant documentary of the previous year.

In 2009, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman made a rather interesting point about the documentary branch members' penchant for choosing "movies that the selection committee deemed good because they’re good for you... a kind of self-defeating aesthetic of granola documentary correctness''. Even after several winners ripped out from the handbook of propaganda have claimed victories in the Oscars, there is still very little awareness about the fact that it has nothing to do with individual decisions. Victories are claimed long before.

In the propagandized form, these documentaries serve two different interests. But those interests are both beneficial for the Deep State and its campaign of influence. Either of them will almost certainly win, but that is not as important as the background buzz surrounding them. Let's start with Last Men In Aleppo. It's a documentary that even the US State Department urges the public to watch. If the United States government openly promotes this documentary and breaks the rules of promoting propagandistic material, then we should recognize that it's a propaganda piece in itself.

To describe the Last Men in Aleppo, it would be best to ask those journalists and analysts that have studied the nature of the White Helmets, the portrayed humanitarian network in charge of Syria's civil defense, and heard the stories of their ''noble'' deeds. Noble, in front of the camera. Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist and photographer that has spent years attempting to remove this cloak of deemed nobility and show them for what they really are. Far from the image as presented in the film. Patrick Henningsen, a geopolitical analyst that has studied this film extensively, gives us an indication of the nature of evidence that this really is the case.

Not to mention that the film provides no attempt to target these allegations and instead pushes an agenda that will cast these White Helments in a heroic light. One that similarly cloaks their links to Al Nusra and the atrocities that they have committed.

But yes, tomorrow night this movie will be promoted to the masses of people that have yet to see this large-scale embodiment of propaganda. Even if it doesn't win, the damage has already been done. Support groups for the White Helmets are appearing around the world and the messages of sympathy continue to spread on social media.

The second potential winner is Icarus, a documentary about the alleged systematic doping scandal in Russia - a theme that inflates the character assassination of Russia - By discrediting Russia in something as politicized as sports, it contributes to the overall image of the country and the negative associations that pertain to it (see my first blog post how this happens more often than you think)

The documentary shows a dramatized, Hollywood-esque version of events that do not question the nature of the allegations themselves and the foundation that the doping scandal was based on the testimony of Grigory Rodchenkov and his associates (Stepanova, Popov) that he facilitated the process to. Nothing about his illegal activities in the past and how he could have been offered a deal out of Russia where he would've faced charges had he not escaped to the US. It's rather strange that the allegations come at a fitting time when the US have sought to create an obvious scapegoat in its investigations falling in line with the interests of Hillary Clinton and her deflective campaign of her own illicit activities. Very, very coincidental. It seems fitting that Russia, having gained victories on the geopolitical arena in Syria and being the dominating topic of US media in relation to Russiagate has been implicated here. Tomorrow, one of them will win and the world will see their contents as the ultimate truth.

By not questioning that these two documentaries only serve in the interests of the US in worldwide conflicts, we are contributing to conflict revisionism and the effect of those interests. The result of this is passivity and we will not care whether the status quo remains. The fact that they have reached mainstream awareness by even being featured at the Oscars this year just shows that the prized soirée continues to be a platform for propaganda and deception.

Drago Victorien