When Haneke lectures film students in Vienna, he sometimes shows them Harrison Ford in Air Force One, juxtaposing that film with Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. "The point is to show that Air Force One has a political message every bit as much as the other two. But with Hollywood films, the manipulation of the viewer is so total that they don't know they're being manipulated." He argues that the storytelling devices common in Hollywood are no longer available to post-Holocaust Europeans such as himself. As he recently told the New York Times: "In the German-speaking world, and in most of the rest of Europe, that type of straightforward storytelling, which the Nazis had made such good use of, came to be viewed with distrust. The danger hidden in storytelling became clear - how easy it was to manipulate the crowd." America, he argues, was never compelled to confront that hidden danger in narrative cinema.
Interesting interview in Wired, accompanied by some harrowing new photos from Abu Ghraib. The interview is with psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who, as Wired explains:
...conducted a now-famous experiment at Stanford University in 1971, involving students who posed as prisoners and guards. Five days into the experiment, Zimbardo halted the study when the student guards began abusing the prisoners, forcing them to strip naked and simulate sex acts.
His book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, explores how a "perfect storm" of conditions can make ordinary people commit horrendous acts.
For more on the Stanford University prison experiment, Wikipedia (as always) is extremely helpful.
Gamers around the world are mourning the passing of E. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, who died last week aged 69.
Jose Barbosa at radio 95bfm marked the occasion by chatting with me about D&D and roleplaying games in general. You can listen to the podcast here.
Wired has some great coverage of Gary Gygax's life, including this profile.
And the Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert (who is apparently a gamer himself) gave this sweet and funny tribute.
