From the Left

/

Politics

When Fake News Isn't Enough

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Comedian Jon Stewart's debut as a movie director entertains, enlightens and even inspires. But be warned, "Daily Show" fans: In case you haven't heard, it's not a comedy.

Not unless you get your laughs in the sarcastic way that I often do, from the endless ways with which the people who run governments give government a bad name.

Stewart's movie "Rosewater" covers the four months of torture and solitary confinement that London-based journalist Maziar Bahari endured in 2009 while covering Iran's presidential election for Newsweek.

Stewart and his Comedy Central show became a part of the story -- and appear in the movie. That strange connection began with an interview that Bahari gave to Jason Jones, a reporter for Stewart's self-described "fake news" show, an interview that Iranian prosecutors cited in Bahari's arrest. Just for laughs, Jones described himself as "a spy" in the fake-news report. The regime was not amused.

Comedy to make one's eyeballs roll comes from Bahari's fruitless attempts to explain the cultural purpose and context of "The Daily Show." Government strongmen obviously are looking for something to nail Bahari on, and spying charges are particularly potent in a land whose elected government was overthrown in the 1950s and the brutal Shah of Iran installed with the help of our CIA.

Even so, as Bahari, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, says to his interrogator played by Kim Bodnia, why would a CIA agent in a TV movie announce himself as a CIA agent?

 

Bitter humor also arises from such moments as the questioning of Bahari in his room at his mother's house by the interrogator, who Bahari nicknames "Rosewater" for his persistently and ironically sweet fragrances. Rosewater is intent on scrounging up something criminal. Bahari's DVD collection is suspect:

"The Sopranos?" "Porno!" the official barks.

Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 art house film "Teorema?" "Porno!"

A guy-oriented magazine with Megan Fox on the cover? "Porno?" asks the inquisitor. Bahari pauses. Hmm, he concedes, it could be.

...continued

swipe to next page

(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

Comics

Phil Hands John Darkow Mike Peters Mike Beckom John Branch Lisa Benson