HIST390 - Historical Problems Through Film: Conspiracy and Paranoia in the 1970s

Professor Dr. Kyle Riismandel

Spring 2015

Final Exam – Questions 1&3.

Due: May 14th

Jose Gonzalez Coronel

Question 1

For question number one I will be constructing an argument around and

about the two last films watched this semester Black Sunday & Hearts and Minds

exemplifying the paranoid style at work as stated by Richard Hofstadter. These two films

are perfect characterization of another quote that comes to mind when touching upon this

topic: “The end justifies the means”. Richard Hofstadter writes: “the distinguishing thing

about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in

history, but that they regard a ‘vast’ or ‘gigantic’ conspiracy as the motive force in historical

events. (They believe) History is a conspiracy set in motion by demonic forces of almost

transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political

give-and-take, but an all-out crusade.” This is a great concept to understand while watching the

Black Sunday film of 1977 and thinking back to what conspiracy is and what the characters of the

movie think it to be. In my point of view the characters from Black Sunday, especially one of the

antagonists of the film Michael Lander, fits perfectly into what the definition of Richard

Hofstadter of paranoid style is. Michael Lander feels the need to be remembered by people or just

anyone by any means necessary, after being a prisoner of the Vietnam war and having a bitter

court martial and failed marriage on his return he feels everything has been a big conspiracy

against him and the methods he will proceed to use are a truly Hollywood all-out crusade. Lander

says in one part of the film the following: “I was gonna give my wife and the kids something to

remember me by, I was gonna give the guy that took the picture something to remember me by, I

was just gonna give me this whole son of a bitching country something to remember me by, if

they can do it to me, why shouldn't I be able to do it to them” He feels that he should be able to

take revenge against a country and the people in it who didn't care for him and under appreciate

what he went through, so he decided to attempt suicide and take as many lives as he can from a

blimp full of explosives, led by the manipulations of a terrorist woman named Dahlia. There

seemed to be no limits and/or morals as to what these two characters would do to get what they

deemed was the right to do, is with people like this that paranoid style described above works

best. Dahlia had her agenda full of conspiracies of her own, which she would also do everything

in her power to see through, reaching the same or even worse paranoid style as the one seen in

Lender, same one Hofstadter speaks of in his quote.

The documentary-like film, Hearts and Minds 1974, also demonstrates Richard

Hofstadter’s theory and illustrates specific examples to validate what he considers it to be the

definition of those who exemplify the paranoid style believe history works in this way, and that in

their eyes history is one large conspiracy. The involvement of the Americans in the Vietnam War

is investigated in this film. And a conspiracy of the Americans’ reasoning to entering the Vietnam

War is projected by the filmmakers to be unlawful and unjustified. The documentary-film focuses

on the people who were against the war and the involvement of the Americans. The filmmaker,

Peter Davis, interviews people involved in the Vietnam War, including the Vietnamese citizens as

well as the Americans stationed there. Peter Davis had to take extreme actions to get live footage

of the war and interviews of people convoluted in the war to demonstrate and try to put a stop this

in what he believes is a conspiracy called history.

Father Chan Tin Saigon is one of the Vietnamese individuals interviewed by Peter Davis.

In this interview, Father Chan Tin Saigon states, “we fought against the French for 100 years, and

finally when the war was lost by the French in 1954, the Vietnamese were liberated from foreign

impression, but it was at that precise moment when Americans came to Vietnam.” The Americans

were not given a real reason to attack the Vietnamese, but to help the French. As quoted right at

the start of the film, “by 1954 the United States was paying for 78% of the French war in

Indochina.” Father Chan Tin Saigon continues to say, “An invasion of the American army, 500

thousand of them in Vietnam, people of North and South Vietnam fight only for freedom,

independence, and unity.” Peter Davis indicates that the Vietnamese people are innocent and

being killed and poisoned by the Americans, who had no real reason to start a war with them. The

conspiracy of the Americans entering the Vietnam War is unjustified as exhibited by these

interviews.

Peter Davis continues to proof his point by showing how the American veterans did not

care about the reasons as to why they are entering a war. The veterans only cared about their job

as a veteran, which is to kill the enemies. One veteran that is interviewed in the film says, “And it

felt good and I wanted more…and it wasn’t that I wanted more because of politics or whatever, I

couldn’t have cared if they were whatever, I just wanted them because they were the opposition.”

The Vietnamese people are suffering from the Americans just to fight for their independence and

unification from the Americans. With the numerous clips that Peter Davis brought to the screen in

the Hearts and Minds film, he tried to capture and unveiled what he believed to be a big

conspiracy from the American side. He took his job to another level and it didn’t matter what he

would go through either in Vietnam interviewing the citizens there or the veterans back in

American soil, he was determined to prove the conspiracy around the history of the American-

Vietnamese war bringing him closer to what Hofstadter considers as a paranoid style.

These two films discussed briefly in this paper have what I believe to be the

paranoid style but in different manners, given that Black Sunday is a Hollywood made

scenario of a what if? Situation where the characters explicitly display the paranoid style

inside the film as for in the Hearts and Minds film is the own feelings of the filmmaker who

lets us interpret his paranoid style as a documentary-film brought to the screen.

Question 3

In this paper I will contrast and compare two films that stood out to me in the course of the

semester, not only because of the quality of the movie and the fast pace scenes in which

these two movies were carried out but mainly because of their pure historical content. One

of them that was filmed around on-going already facts being shown to the public through

the media at the time, and the other film that was actually released only twelve days before

an actual similar real event would transpire in the United States. These two movies fell into

the category of thrillers at the box office but in this paper they will be treated as historical

events.

The films described briefly above are of course All the President’s men (1976) and The

China Syndrome (1979). These two films share an unmissable theme, media reporters of the

time (1970’s) trying to unveil something bigger than them. These reporters of the truth,

while doing a routine story at the beginning of their respective films stumble upon

something larger than what they original thought it was and they decide to embark in their

stories which turn out to be large conspiracies against the people of the nation, which in

turn affect us as the viewers, knowing it is us, the public of this nation. It is in this way that

the filmmakers make us relate to their story and make us root for the reporters. When our

“heroes” try to go toe to toe against the giant institutions in that cinematic world, it gives the

audience the sense of realization of the humongous task the protagonists of these films have

ahead of them.

Even though throughout in All the President’s men film, the audience is aware of what

the ending looks like, writers of this film did not focus on the who did it part of the story

rather as to how they did it, which is what keeps the audience hooked. As for The China

Syndrome film their ending is a more cinematic based one, though with a feasible outcome

and in within the range of possibilities when an individual or a group of individuals decide

to take on a powerful Institution.

All the President’s Men undermined the credibility of the government as a whole and

the corruption behind it, from the (CREEP) committee all the way to the President of the

United States at the time. The large conspiracy behind the infamous Watergate acts as the

centerpiece of this film. As the journalists revealed more and more of what soon would be

Nixon’s demise, the audience gets fed all the dark clues and irregularities behind the chain

of reaction that eventually brought down Mr. President’s administration.

The mix of paranoia and conspiracy plays a big role to cast doubt on the integrity of

any institution and this was the case in the 1970’s American institution led by Richard

Nixon. Filmmakers created an atmosphere of paranoia in All the President’s men and used

different film techniques to do so, some of which are explained in the next paragraph. The

tone of this film is an obscure one, building up on suspend and surrounding it by fear, the

latter being a main component of paranoia. Also in the film thanks to versatile camera

techniques, show how large this unveiling of news was for the two journalists. In scenes like

the overhead shots displayed when they would leave the garage and the streets of

Washington DC would seem to grow immensely and our heroes would get lost in all the

crowd or when they appear in the library scene researching through old records and all we

are left seeing is numerous circular desks in the library from above, where they would also

vanished in such a crowded sea full of people and information, making the audience

understand how great of a task they were facing. The paranoia shown by each character

involved in the conspiracy of the film surrounding everyone that the reporters came in

contact with is well detailed by the filmmakers, showing the faces of fear as if the

information revealed were to see the light of the sun, their lives would be in danger. The

audience is left with these interpretations but nothing is really shown in the film as to who

would take actions against them or what’s the actual risk that they were facing was.

Furthermore in the scenes were Deep Throat would reveal information to them were

always in the shadows of a parking lot giving the sense of fear these paranoid characters

were submerged in. As for the film The China Syndrome a catastrophe can be avoided by

stating the true facts of a first incident that could’ve put lots of lives in danger but the abuse

of power of the owners of this American institution decide against it and use cover ups in

order to keep their money maker plant running. This 1979’s film shows us how the

reporter of the story teams up with the supervisor from the power plant who shows a great

level of morality and cares for the lives of people from his town when he and reporter

Kimberly discovers a conspiracy in the making and stands up to the evil corporate owners.

The way paranoia is presented to us in this film is one where the audience is supposed to

feel the same fear our “heroes”, in this case the reporter and the plant supervisor, feel from a

power plant in bad conditions at the border of a meltdown and owners of an institution that

would go to any extent possible to keep their money coming in into their pockets at any

cost. Lying to the media and therefore the American people, giving out deceitful accusations

against one of their own workers, calling the supervisor insane and a drunk and even killing

to get what they want is what the filmmakers decided to portrayed in the film sharing the

paranoia experienced in the screen out to spectators real life.

All of those feelings caused by the filmmakers in the films left inside the public’s

minds are responsible for the undermined integrity of the American institutions pictured in

1970’s films.

Conspiracy and institutions in the 1970’s portrayed in films have a clear pattern that

filmmakers want to expose to its audience: every big institution has its dark secrets, they

are all evil and they do not play by the rules, is just a matter of the right type of adventurous

people to dig in and find these secrets. Not all American institutions are portrayed as bad in

the 1970’s films however, The Newspaper is presented as a source of credible news like for

example when even though the editor of “The Washington Post” (All the President’s Men)

wants to get the big conspiracy news out and wants to support his two journalists with the

story, he can’t allow himself to do that to the American people. The editor of the newspaper

needs more proof, he needs people on the record to corroborate that the story being

unraveled has a truth factor in it.