Our Image Abroad
In the Turkish-made "Valley of the Wolves," Muslims are the good-guy defenders of virtue in Northern Iraq and Americans are the bad-guy aggressors
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Claudia Koonz is a history professor at Duke. The author of "The Nazi Conscience," she is conducting research this spring as the Haniel Fellow at the American Academy Berlin.
Durham, N.C. -- A secret agent with hair-trigger
reflexes kills the guards who stop him at a checkpoint.
Battle-hardened soldiers shoot civilians at point-blank range. A
ravishing heroine twists her dagger into the villain’s heart. Vivid
market scene explosions splash across the screen. The rapid-fire
editing and Dolby noises make this seem like just another Hollywood
action film.
But it is not. In the Turkish-made "Valley of the Wolves," Muslims are the good-guy defenders of virtue in Northern Iraq and Americans are the bad-guy aggressors against whom the Muslims struggle.
Already more than six million viewers in Turkey and Germany have seen this film, and it is about to be released in Middle Eastern and European language versions. And, as the Muhammad cartoon controversy continues to rage in the Arab world and elsewhere, the film has the potential to continue fueling anti-Western sentiments.
One reason this film deserves our attention is because it contains just enough reality to blur the boundaries between fact and fantasy. The film turns on an actual incident: on July 4, 2003, U.S. troops in Northern Iraq rounded up 11 Turkish soldiers they suspected of plotting against Kurdish leaders. Obeying orders, the Turkish soldiers surrendered without resistance. In the film, we see U.S. soldiers blasting their way into peaceful villages and carrying out mass roundups of hooded prisoners. At a prison labeled Abu Graib, a Lynndie England look-alike and her buddies torment a pyramid of naked victims. Images of American flags, da Vinci’s "The Last Supper" and an immense carved crucifix fuse American aggression and Christianity.
During this two-hour-plus film, we also see valiant Muslims fighting to restore their damaged honor against brutal American soldiers who shoot captives they have locked in the back of a truck, who murder guests at a wedding and who kill a little boy who thinks an M-16 is a toy. The surgeon who operates on wounded civilians harvests their organs and sends them to the U.S., Israel and Europe. The only American who protests against any of these crimes is shot.
A pair of prayers establishes the cultural clash in this film. In the first, an American officer, Sam William Marshall, haltingly asks Jesus Christ for the strength to perform his duty in this modern-day Babylon. In the second, a beatific Imam leads a circle of men in a prayer for peace followed by a stunningly beautiful Sufi ritual dance. Whereas Sam directs children in an off-key rendition of Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy," Muslims express their communal devotion in perfect harmony.
Some reviewers have called for a boycott of this "anti-American trash." The prime minister of Bavaria and the German Central Council of Jews have asked that the film be withdrawn from movie theatres. U.S. forces in Europe are asked not to see it. But high-ranking officials in Turkey see no harm. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and Chief of Staff Hilmi Ozok defend it, and the star of the film, Necati Thornathomaz, denies that it is anti-American.
Rather than dismissing these Technicolor caricatures as ludicrous, we must take them as yet another battlefront in the war of images between East and West. In Germany, "Valley of Wolves" has climbed to sixth place at the box office and the other language versions will soon be released. If the audiences seeing these versions shout "Allah Akbar" like they did in the Berlin theatre where I saw the film, it is clear that its message rouses Muslims who feel humiliated by the West.
Sophisticated cinematography makes this a powerful film. But its real force lies in the fit between particular plot elements and images we have seen on television news. Visually it resembles the cover of this week’s Spiegel, the German news magazine, which features a crucified torture victim and the headlines, "America’s Shame: Torture in the Name of Freedom."
There’s no questioning the strong element of anti-American propaganda to this film, but the worst thing we could do as Americans is to ignore it or, even worse, dispense with our free-speech traditions and try to shut it down. Although hard to watch, it is showing us the depth of outrage against the West in much of the Muslim world. In the eyes of millions of people, the movies are not the only place where we’ve become the bad guys.