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Lawson on TV
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1319219,00.html
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Island of lost souls
Mark Lawson
Monday October 4, 2004
The Guardian
One of the favourite allegations of John Pilger's enemies is predictability. But, while his targets have been consistent over 40 years (American colonialism, British apathy, western hypocrisy), his latest documentary shows his reluctance to hunt with the pack. With the invasion of Iraq making anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism mainstream opinion, he's responded with a much more oblique and searing critique of US and UK foreign policy.
Stealing a Nation - which feels like a companion piece to Pilger's Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, from 10 years ago - explains how the Wilson administration in the 1960s depopulated Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands to create space for an American military base in the Indian Ocean: planes flew from there to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.
What's clever and unsettling about the film is that it makes the viewer's opinion of recent American foreign policy irrelevant. Pilger introduces a new moral complication: the Americans were flying from a stolen sovereign territory in the declared cause of liberating others.
And the topicality of this 40-year-old story goes further: Pilger shows that the Blair administration recently used an Order in Council (a procedure bypassing parliament) to overturn a British High Court judgement that the Chagossians should reclaim their land. The only possible conclusion is that the squatters from the Pentagon refuse to let the island go.
Pilger has a knack with the angry phrase - "Dictators do this but without the quaint ritual" - but the film's most savage kicks come from documentary evidence. Describing the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, a 60s Foreign Office official writes: "Along with the birds go some Tarzans and Man Fridays whose origins remain obscure." After the Chagossians have been shipped to Mauritius, our man at the FO notes: "I would advise a policy of quiet disregard - let's forget about this one until the United Nations challenges us on it!"
The UN remained quiet, but Pilger now makes a noise. Although this is one of his most revelatory and timely documentaries, it does contain the traits that have made his work controversial. Like a heavyweight boxer who hasn't read the rule-book, he tends to carry on hitting even when he has his opposition on the floor. For example, Pilger reveals early on the shocking detail that, as a way of demoralising and warning the islanders, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, governor of the nearby Seychelle Islands, ordered all the dogs on the island to be killed: more than 1,000 were gassed by soldiers. Pilger then uses two interviews to underline the cruelty of this Herod of pets. "The children loved those dogs," an islander recalls, while a lawyer for the Chagossians says: "The relationship with your pets should be the same if you are Chagos Islander or British." By following one wholly unexpected statement with two of the obvious, Pilger risks weakening a case already won.
The other favourite anti-Pilger allegation is that he's vain and pious. It's true that he conveys a certain pride in the improbable shape of his waistline and hairline at 64 but, until there's evidence that he's achieved it through a secret regime of cosmetic surgery and monkey glands, good luck to him. And as for piety, he still has a considerable distance to go before he matches the politicians and diplomats who are his targets.
A more substantive argument against Pilger's style is that his films merge two different journalistic genres: investigation and polemic. Stealing a Nation seems to have ended with a shot of the exiled Chagossians standing in Mauritius at a memorial to their dead. Case closed and game to Pilger, I thought, putting away my notebook and pen. But then the reporter popped up to deliver a monologue telling us that the moral of the film we'd just seen was: "Why do we accept specious reasons for the unacceptable?"
For me, these subtitles for the politically slow detract from the power of Pilger's reporting. But the facts and the rants inhabit different sections and are never blurred. If you take the Lord Hutton view that investigative journalism must be as tight as a lawyer's letter, there is some odd sloppiness here - twice, the reading of official documents does not exactly fit the words seen on screen - but no other figure in television could or would have made this film. Pilger is about to reach official retirement age but, for the sake of television and politics, he mustn't be allowed to stop.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1319219,00.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Island of lost souls
Mark Lawson
Monday October 4, 2004
The Guardian
One of the favourite allegations of John Pilger's enemies is predictability. But, while his targets have been consistent over 40 years (American colonialism, British apathy, western hypocrisy), his latest documentary shows his reluctance to hunt with the pack. With the invasion of Iraq making anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism mainstream opinion, he's responded with a much more oblique and searing critique of US and UK foreign policy.
Stealing a Nation - which feels like a companion piece to Pilger's Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, from 10 years ago - explains how the Wilson administration in the 1960s depopulated Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands to create space for an American military base in the Indian Ocean: planes flew from there to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.
What's clever and unsettling about the film is that it makes the viewer's opinion of recent American foreign policy irrelevant. Pilger introduces a new moral complication: the Americans were flying from a stolen sovereign territory in the declared cause of liberating others.
And the topicality of this 40-year-old story goes further: Pilger shows that the Blair administration recently used an Order in Council (a procedure bypassing parliament) to overturn a British High Court judgement that the Chagossians should reclaim their land. The only possible conclusion is that the squatters from the Pentagon refuse to let the island go.
Pilger has a knack with the angry phrase - "Dictators do this but without the quaint ritual" - but the film's most savage kicks come from documentary evidence. Describing the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, a 60s Foreign Office official writes: "Along with the birds go some Tarzans and Man Fridays whose origins remain obscure." After the Chagossians have been shipped to Mauritius, our man at the FO notes: "I would advise a policy of quiet disregard - let's forget about this one until the United Nations challenges us on it!"
The UN remained quiet, but Pilger now makes a noise. Although this is one of his most revelatory and timely documentaries, it does contain the traits that have made his work controversial. Like a heavyweight boxer who hasn't read the rule-book, he tends to carry on hitting even when he has his opposition on the floor. For example, Pilger reveals early on the shocking detail that, as a way of demoralising and warning the islanders, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, governor of the nearby Seychelle Islands, ordered all the dogs on the island to be killed: more than 1,000 were gassed by soldiers. Pilger then uses two interviews to underline the cruelty of this Herod of pets. "The children loved those dogs," an islander recalls, while a lawyer for the Chagossians says: "The relationship with your pets should be the same if you are Chagos Islander or British." By following one wholly unexpected statement with two of the obvious, Pilger risks weakening a case already won.
The other favourite anti-Pilger allegation is that he's vain and pious. It's true that he conveys a certain pride in the improbable shape of his waistline and hairline at 64 but, until there's evidence that he's achieved it through a secret regime of cosmetic surgery and monkey glands, good luck to him. And as for piety, he still has a considerable distance to go before he matches the politicians and diplomats who are his targets.
A more substantive argument against Pilger's style is that his films merge two different journalistic genres: investigation and polemic. Stealing a Nation seems to have ended with a shot of the exiled Chagossians standing in Mauritius at a memorial to their dead. Case closed and game to Pilger, I thought, putting away my notebook and pen. But then the reporter popped up to deliver a monologue telling us that the moral of the film we'd just seen was: "Why do we accept specious reasons for the unacceptable?"
For me, these subtitles for the politically slow detract from the power of Pilger's reporting. But the facts and the rants inhabit different sections and are never blurred. If you take the Lord Hutton view that investigative journalism must be as tight as a lawyer's letter, there is some odd sloppiness here - twice, the reading of official documents does not exactly fit the words seen on screen - but no other figure in television could or would have made this film. Pilger is about to reach official retirement age but, for the sake of television and politics, he mustn't be allowed to stop.
