-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 23, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------That's entertainment? It's propaganda
Tibet as it never was
By Gary Wilson
The number of anti-China movies and TV specials this fall is remarkable.
Beginning in October, the entertainment industry is flooding the United States with what can only be described as anti-China propaganda. Everything about Tibet - two movies "Seven Years in Tibet" and "Kundun", a concert album, a documentary film and a TV special - is anti-China.
This is clearly the main point. A Sept. 21 Philadelphia Inquirer report on the new movies about Tibet emphasized it. The Inquirer quoted a university professor saying: "It s easy for Americans to figure out who the good guys are...Tibet is seen as a truly peaceful place being overrun by the godless communists."
And there is no end in sight for this anti-China juggernaut. Each of these productions has a political director who makes sure that the anti-China message comes through. The Oct. 3 Entertainment Weekly magazine quoted a political consultant connected with the production of the movie "Seven Years in Tibet:" "Hollywood is the strongest tool in the world."
Other upcoming anti-China movies include a new one by Steven Seagal, who was recently proclaimed a reincarnated lama and a sacred vessel of Tibetan Buddhism. Seagal will play a CIA agent training Tibetan rebels attempting to overthrow the Chinese government in the 1960s.
And filmmakers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory are also preparing a movie that will have as its theme an anti-socialist uprising in Tibet led by the Dalai Lama.
In addition, Richard Gere will star in the anti-China movie "Red Corner," which opens in November.
The anti-China propaganda campaign is no accident. While the long list of stars who've discovered Tibet as a cause may be sincere in thinking that they are trying to do good, they are really deceiving themselves.
There is only one reason why hundreds of millions of dollars are suddenly available for the very political movies and TV productions attacking China, particularly the ones about Tibet.
Behind this are big business, bankers and the highest levels of the U.S. government. It comes just as the United States is demanding that China open its markets to United States capitalists and turn over its government-owned industries to capitalist privatizers.
There are many oppressed peoples around the world, but Hollywood almost never portrays them as glorious heroes.
Where are the Hollywood films about the heroic Puerto Rican Nationalists who confronted Congress in Washington in 1954? The five Nationalists were vastly outnumbered. But their bravery inspired the whole Puerto Rican nation.
Hollywood doesn't make movies about revolutionary national liberation struggles against imperialism. And its movies about Tibet only confirm this.
The most blatant example of this is the movie "Seven Years in Tibet" starring Brad Pitt, one of the top stars in Hollywood.
The New York Times review of the movie by Janet Maslin was headlined, "A challenge for Brad Pitt: Making a Nazi charming."
The movie is based on a book by Heinrich Harrer about his time in Tibet in the 1940s when he and the Tibetan ruler - the Dalai Lama - became good friends. The book never really mentions Harrer's background, which was only recently exposed. Harrer always denied he was a Nazi until there was so much evidence that he had to admit it last spring.
Harrer was a member of the Nazis' elite SS who was sent to Tibet, probably by Hitler himself. There is a picture of the two of them together that recently surfaced.
According to a lengthy investigative story in the October issue of a magazine called Men's Journal, the Nazi-Tibet connection is much deeper than anyone is talking about.
"Harrer's presence in Tibet may have been related to a terrible but little-known Nazi campaign" to join forces with "Aryan Tibetans" to rid the country of the British - and eventually wipe out non-Aryan Eastern races, especially Asian Jews, the Men's Journal reports.
The magazine also reports that Harrer had been preceded into the country years before by a Nazi reconnaissance team sent by SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Evidently the Dalai Lama was aware of Harrer's Nazi assignment and goals.
Most of the other information put into the Hollywood Tibet propaganda is just as reliable as Harrer's denials that he was a Nazi.
The Tibet ruled by the Dalai Lama was no "Shangri la," as Hollywood seems to claim. Women were considered to be inferior to men. "Tibetans were ruled by an unusual form of feudal theocracy," says Tom Grunfeld in his history book, "The Making of Modern Tibet."
Grunfeld writes, "The vast majority of the people of Tibet were serfs." They were "tied" to their masters and had no say over their own lives, even who they were to marry.
In addition, probably about 5 percent of the population was slaves to the nobility. This was true in the 1940s. Punishment for defiance of the rulers was harsh. While "Seven Years" shows the Dalai Lama protecting an insect, it does not show the slaves who had their heels slashed for attempting to flee slavery.
Contrary to what is being shown by Hollywood, the Tibetan people welcomed the Chinese Red Army when it arrived. It meant the end to slavery and serfdom and the brutality.
Today Tibet is prospering, as any visitors to the region have to admit. Food is no longer scarce. Education is available for all. Doctors and health care are guaranteed rights for the whole population. No one wants to return to the rule of the Dalai Lama in Tibet - no more than the people of the United States want to return to the rule of the royal family in England.
The Tibetan workers and peasant farmers have won their freedom and are not interested in returning to the feudal life that has been falsely glorified by Hollywood.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [email protected]. For subscription info send message to: [email protected]. Web: http://www.workers.org)
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