Drone

As a teacher I seldom see movies with true teaching potential for my students. This was an exception.

We are, in our part of the world, used to think of ourself as the good guys. The US, however misguided at times, is a force for good in the world. President Obama is a Nobel Peace Price-laureate, for heaven's sake. -And our news networks keep catering to this view of the world.

But someone somewhere disagrees with this perspective, and you know what: They just might be on to something. And whether they are right or wrong, they are growing in number. And something really is rotten in the state of (the Union).

In this documentary we meet ordinary people who've been the victims of drone warfare, who want to tell their story. We meet humanitarians who try to help out in this regard. And last but certainly not least: We meet some of the people who themselves have been a part of the drone warfare.

If nothing else, this documentary made my students think critically about what role we play in the world, and how we are perceived in the various regions of the world. And maybe even more important: They started questioning the ways in which we as a country make use of our military resources, and how we treat the men and women who serve.

I myself also learned a lot from this documentary, and recommend it wholeheartedly.

There are few topics, in my view, more important than the discussion of how drone and other technological weapons forged in our modern network-centric age are utilized. This film attempts to broach the topic but it has one fatal flaw.

While the director, Tonje Hessen Schei, tells audiences in screenings that she has told the story from "both sides of the drones," she has markedly missed the mark like a hellfire missile following a laser malfunction. Tonje does not present reality, rather she presents actors ready to recite lines on command.

The "drone operators" in her film, and especially her star and literal poster child, Brandon Bryant, devastate the credibility of her film once any research is done.

As the film "Brandon Bryant the Documentary: Drones & Deceptions" demonstrates, DRONE from Hessen Schei lacks credibility by engaging an actor who will say anything for the camera; a great benefit to a fictional work, but quite fatal to the credibility of a documentary.

Again, if we could have an open discussion on the political implications of "pop culture" maybe we wouldn't have to wait for the ties between the military infrastructures and the videogame designers to be exposed, but would be able to criticize it based on the game themselves. Right after "Dirty War : the world is a battlefield", this documentary focuses on exposing the drone warfare from the accounts of drone pilots, the campaigning to make it a more visible cause outside of the strike zones (read, in the west/united states), and the recruiting of geeks.

This is an interesting documentary but hardly groundbreaking. We've been debating American policy on using drones for a decade or more. This documentary does very little to answer any questions. We hear from soldiers, citizens, business leaders and policymakers who are either opposed to drone use or favor it. It simply puts pictures to a debate we've been having for a decade.

The most interesting and perhaps the most important question is left totally unanswered: If not drones then what? More troops? Do nothing? If you're looking for answers, this is not the documentary where you'll find any.

My students just finished reading Orwell's 1984, and I always require them to write a documented research essay afterwards which compares Orwell to our modern world. This documentary demonstrates clearly how nations have a continuous, unending pursuit towards weapons development and more destructive technological armaments.

The movie also touches on the connections to Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments of 1961, which, of course, is very fitting.

One moment of the documentary that has me especially incredulous, however, is when a drone manufacturer, Andy Von Flotow, attempts to play off his innocent intent to create drones for the sole purpose of helping tuna fisherman catch more tuna. He claims he could not sell a single one, but fortunately for him the military purchased thousands of his drones after 9/11. No business man is going to invest hours and tens of thousands of dollars into a product unless he is certain he has a buyer. This guy must think the world is full of idiots.

I strongly recommend this educational military documentary.

Feel Free to view my Orwell Bookmarks over the past eight years:

https://www.diigo.com/outliner/2c5361/Orwell-Bookmarks?key=6axrxgse4r