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Following are excerpts from a lecture by Iranian film critic Dr. Majid Shah-Hoseini, which aired on Iranian Channel 4 on September 3, 2006. The lecture was delivered to Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officers who participated in a seminar on "The Study of the Psychological Warfare of the Rule of Hegemony against the World of Islam and the Islamic Revolution."
Dr. Majid Shah-Hoseini: Hollywood in the 1980’s was suddenly filled with monster movies, which were great blockbusters. Some of these monsters looked like aliens from outer space, others emerged from the bowels of the earth, and yet others came from prehistoric or mythical times to threaten modern mankind. At any rate, they were monsters.
Films like Star Wars, which was released in the early 1980’s, was directed by George Lucas. The series of four films titled Alien was directed by four renowned American directors. The production of this series began in the early 1980s, and continued until the mid-1990s. This series was directed by Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and David Fincher. The series
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In some cases, the message was so tangible that the viewer himself might unconsciously reach the conclusion that the prehistoric monster might be the embodiment of Islam, and that the monster underwent metamorphosis in modern times, and now threatens the very foundations of modernity.
These monsters would typically break free of the control of the normative system, and would behave in a very destructive manner. Whenever the monster would assume a more complex form, such as in Alien, it would break out of ancient eggs, which were released all over the galaxy several millennia ago. It would attack the American astronauts in the head, penetrate their minds, and nest within their bellies, and from there it would break out. During this painful delivery, it would kill the host who was contaminated by it. It was highly contagious, and would spread from one person to another. Some of these monsters had green blood, as a symbol [of Islam]. Sometimes, even this green blood itself was dangerous.
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Since then, these monsters have assumed the form of humans. The 1990’s are full of movies in which these monsters have become humans, called "extremist Muslim terrorists." They reach American soil with very dangerous weapons, and use nuclear bombs to threaten the very foundations of American society.
Now, the rules of the game have changed. Now, American public opinion has found a human substitute to that vague, inexplicable danger, which had been injected into its mind for an entire decade.
In many films, like True Lies, Executive Decision, Delta Force, and the well-known film Siege by Edward Zwick, we see this type of human monsters – Muslim terrorists, some of whom are Shiites, who reach American soil and want to entirely destroy this community with suicide operations.
Whenever monster films were produced in the 1990’s, the message was more focused and explicit. The film Godzilla was made by the Americans in the 1990’s. In it, the message was very explicit, because Godzilla attacked New York, laid its eggs there, and brought its baby monsters into the world. In all these movies, New York is subject to threat or destruction. For almost 25 years, American public opinion was being prepared for something to happen in New York. This is evident in the old Warner Bros. film, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, which came to be known as Nostradamus. In this movie, New York was supposed to be attacked. What is interesting is that in that year – 1980 – the Twin Towers in New York had not yet been built, as far as I recall. In that movie, the Muslims' nuclear weapon, which manages to pass the American anti-missile defense network, hits two towers in New York.
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The series Band of Brothers is a very strange series. It is a documentary series produced with an emormous budget in America. Everything about this series is strange - from the name of the series to the people who created it, and the town in which it was produced. All these things are astounding. First of all, why is the series called Band of Brothers? One can be sure that throughout the history of America's wars, no American soldier ever called another soldier "brother" on the battlefield - "brother, come here," "brother, go over there." These are the terms we [Iranians] were using in the battlefield. Why was this term stolen? Why do they place so much emphasis on the "brotherhood" of their soldiers in the battlefield? After all, American soldiers in films of the 1970’s would curse one another in a very indecent manner. Those soldiers would kill one another. I remember at least three films about Vietnam in which American soldiers killed their brothers-in-arms, because of personal rivalry and disputes
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Another thing happened in the field of historical films, which should serve as a warning sign to us, and I think Iranian society has let it go by much too easily. I am referring to the film Alexander, produced by Mr. Oliver Stone. In this movie, for the first time, America's rule of hegemony presented on screen its greatest wish – the conquest and occupation of Iran.
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