With his regal posture, searing blue eyes,

perfect jawline and a baritone voice

bred for noble declarations,

Heston was the ideal vessel for Hollywood's

version of the "noble Jew"

As one Hollywood wit put it:

"Heston was the white man's Semite"

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the fictional, chariot-racing Jewish noble Ben-Hur and also portrayed Moses in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic The Ten Commandments, has died. He was 84.

With his regal posture, searing blue eyes, perfect jawline and a baritone voice bred for noble declarations, Heston was the ideal vessel for Hollywood's version of the "noble Jew", despite the fact that his looks were Aryan.

As one Hollywood wit put it after seeing Ben Hur: "Heston was the white man's Semite."

False Prophets & ‘Message’ Movies: Ben Hur & Hollywood Propaganda

Films constitute a ’scientific means of influencing the masses’, of moulding attitudes; a government must not neglect them. — Goebbels

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. — General William C Westmoreland, Time, April 5 1982

Ben Hur was written in 1880 by Lew Wallace, US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and released in 1959 as a must-see blockbuster.

It is listed as one of the top 100 greatest movies by the American Film Institute and won a total of eleven Oscars matched only, I think, by Titanic.

Like "Troy", "Alexander", "Gladiator" and other 'Sword and Sandal', ‘Our Kind of Good will Triumph' Movies, Ben Hur was the product of US propaganda that contained a very political message pertaining to the geo-strategic status quo in the Middle East during Eisenhower’s reign as the 34th President of the US.

As usual the thread connecting the movie to real life was rooted in foreign policy, the aim of which was to mould interpretation, discussions and perceptions of world events and to control and filter the various ways such events (read: wars) played out tangibly and in the collective psyche of the public.

Ben Hur is very indicative of the age: The old Anglo-French colonialists are in the process of being removed via Independence; New America — only recently freed from “distant shore” colonialism — rapidly developing into an economic mercenary, steps in to fill the vacuum by acting as a counterweight.

Newly established Israel becomes America’s military battleship in the Middle East, buttressing and over-emphasising the role of ruling Arab allies whilst demonising the “other” — everyone from Palestinians to the Europeans to the Persians.

Charlton Heston, with his American accent, played Judah Ben Hur, the nationalist Jewish Prince (Israel) who teemed up with an Arab Sheik Illderim (Saudi Arabia etc) to fight Messalla, the Roman (British/ European) maniac.

Israel/Judah was meant to develop in the American viewer a sense of identity, not just identifying Israel as America, but to take it one step further, Israel/America as Good.

Ironically, at a time when native nations were just on the cusp or had in fact achieved independence from a foreign colonial power, the state of Israel was developed on the premise of nationalism (akin to restorationism), another product of European ideology.

One particular tentacle was the homogenisation of nations, vilifying the minority and officialising one specific narrative, culture and ethnicity as legitimate.

In Europe, the Jews were the other; in the US Christian Zionists-cum-opportunists catalysed on the wave of anti-Semitism, securing finance in this way for Israel, channelling refugees not into America but Palestine, whose citizens were displaced.

Christian Zionism, favoured by war-hawks from Cheney to Bush, is an extremist religious movement that believes Israel must be in hands of Jews before the Messiah can come to earth and smite/kill all those who don’t follow Christ.

It bears noting that Jesus himself was a Jew and the Christian religion, using a demi-god as a figure, would only develop centuries later.

Arab Nationalism — led by a small group of agitators such as the Saud family — was largely divorced from Islam and centred on ethnicity and secularism.

Western-style nationalism would quickly devolve into repressive military juntas to maintain their leash, many of whom still hold power today courtesy of their relationship with the US.

American Jews, not having experienced anti-Semitism of the European kind, were largely unenthusiastic about moving to the sticks. They called Lady Liberty “de goldene medine”, or land paved with gold.

Unfortunately, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to the US, faces the East — the Middle East to be precise; and the word Medina is Arabic for city

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Zionism, a considerable proportion of which emanates from Christian fundamentalism, would become the reinforcing doctrine that sustained Israel, with the US acting as the bankroller.

According to special agent William Yale in the early 1950s, “Jewish Energy and Jewish Genius [via Israel] would be an outpost of Western civilisation in the Middle East and must be supported at all costs.”

Ben Hur arrived right on schedule, garnering massive support for the “liberation of Palestine” from British influence, affirming the concept of a New Israel (America) in the Middle East.

Yet another tell-tale sign of the power of propaganda — where Hollywood puppets controlled by Cinematic Propagation Boards (in turn financed by multinationals, the Pentagon etc) churn out only villains and heroes, carefully constructed along fictive and censored storylines.

The main purpose of Ben Hur and other movies like it is to glorify war, death, the military and soldiers, suffusing a sense of justice and “rightness” concurrent with patriotism, commercialism (Coke, Caterpillar etc) whilst according selective meaning to “distant” world events.

Movies were then, and are now, a powerful recruiting tool — for bodies and souls.

So what effect does cinematic information or lack of information have on the public in general, aside from the war/military/my-country-right-or-wrong agenda?

According to Dr Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a physicist at the University of Nebraska, 30% of America has not progressed beyond the scientific paradigms of the Tychonic System, formulated by Tycho Brahe in the 16th century.

Brahe built upon pre-existing models of Copernicus and other mathematicians, eventually developing a model of a solar system that placed the Earth at the centre of the universe; Dr Leslie-Pelecky says that just under one third of the US is “under the impression that the sun orbits around the earth”.

She goes on to say that “stories have to convey something that large numbers of people care about.”

But can that “care” be manufactured? To what extent are we “guided” towards problems, issues, solutions and discussions at the expense of others?

Is it possible that “everyday” Americans are ignorant about basic scientific facts because their main (desired) sources of information do not cater along the lines of reality.

They resort instead to mythical worlds of fantasy and/or war movies, chick flicks, sports spreads and other vague, feel-good vacuous scripts devoid of historical authenticity and fact?

Rosemary Hennessy in Profit and Pleasure (Routledge, 2000) writes: “As one of the most pervasive forms of cultural narrative in industrialised society, commercial film serves as an extremely powerful vehicle of myth.

“To some extent the scripts that do get picked up manage to be supported because they already articulate a culture’s social imaginary the prevailing images a society needs to project about itself in order to maintain certain features of its organisation,” she says.

The collaboration between Hollywood and the US military-industrial complex was first documented at the start of WW1, primarily through the influence and initiative of the Pentagon.

known then as the Committee of Public Information, the Pentagon’s Special Movie Liaison Office would later be given various nicknames such as the Ministry of Cinematic Propagation, Hollywood Cinematic Propagation Board etc

The process of fast-forwarding the tedious and often futile journey of trying to make it “big” in Hollywood was drastically reduced by working in accordance with formulated policies and guidelines.

A kind of How To, distributed by the world’s cheapest and best form of advertising — word of mouth amongst select and willing directors, actors, producers and screenwriters.

WW2 saw the US, via the ellipsis of the arms industry, transform from a debtor nation to a creditor nation, achieving the position of economic supremacy through economic mercenaries such as the World Bank, the IMF and other “lending” arms that subjugated and indebted countries during the reconstruction process.

The export of American style “democracy”, aka hegemony, is best displayed in movies such as Black Hawk Down, Top Gun and Lord of the Rings, where the Eagles save the day, with Aragorn the “last” to enter the war as the rightful King and Saviour.

Middle Earth is all white and the enemies are differing shades of black, brown, yellow etc

The Men of the Mountains — the Afghans, are duplicitous, devious bastards who try to betray the US [Aragorn] but his magnificent Godliness and power persuades them to do the right thing for once in their miserable bearded lives.

When Viggo Mortensen, the actor who starred as Aragorn, spoke out, refuting the similarities and pointing out that America was in many cases Sauron, the Uruchai and the Orcs (the evil ugly gross villains), Charlie Rose and other American journalists, media houses and talk-show hosts vilified him, largely marginalising and discrediting his sanity.

Phil Strub, the special assistant, for Entertainment Media at the US Department, is the man to go to if you want financing in exchange for portraying the military well.

My favourite Phil Strub quote is: “Any film that portrays the military as negative is not realistic to us.”

An excerpt from an article on boeing.com states: “While it seems that entertainment and the Pentagon make for strange bedfellows — even in a hopping town like Hollywood — the public has linked the two for more than 50 years.

Before Congress created the Defence Department in 1949, the US War Department and Department of the Navy had their own film-review offices.”

And during World War II, Strub said, the Office of War Information’s function was to “work with Hollywood to try to foster patriotic messages and prevent unpatriotic messages from creeping in”.

“If a project portrays the US military as unrelentingly evil, we’re not going to work on it,” he said. “And that’s because we don’t believe that’s realistic.”

Other grand Strub quotes:

“When filmmakers come to us, and want our help to make a movie or a TV show, we see this as an important opportunity to tell the American public something about the US military, and then maybe help recruiting or retention as a by-product.

“So in our opinion, if you depict the US military as unrelentingly negative, that’s not realistic. So yes in a sense, we’re looking for positive portrayal.”

Another journalist, Lisa Miller, quotes Chuck Pena, from the Washington-based think tank the Cato Institute, as saying that he believes the military’s influence is extending too far.

Windtalkers is a World War II movie about Japanese code breakers; a scene in which an American soldier steals a gold tooth from a dead enemy was dropped from the movie at the insistence of the Pentagon.

Says Pena: “I mean, the Pentagon’s motives are pretty clear — which is, let’s go find movies that paint flattering pictures of the military, flattering even if it’s not true in some cases.”

Army Major Ray Smith from the film-liaison office says of Apocalypse Now, the movie that upset the military and created by Francis Coppola:

“The army does not lend officers to the CIA to execute or murder other army officers. And even if we did, we wouldn’t help you make it.”

An excerpt from an article by journalist Richard Philips states: “According to the navy, recruitment of young men into naval aviation increased by 500% after the release of Top Gun.

Such was the military’s enthusiasm for Top Gun that it even established recruitment booths inside some of the cinemas screening the movie.

"These kids came out of the movie with eyes as big as saucers and said: Where do I sign up?’ declared Major David Georgi.”

Strub has altered over 500 movies since taking office in 1989; he has additionally assisted in the positive scripting of more than 25 000 commercials, series and movies.

The Pentagon has spent $28 billion generously “sponsoring” positive interpretations of the US’s foreign policy through the medium of Hollywood.

It isn’t rocket science, but it’s funny what some directors and producers will do for a lift-off.