The What: Public opinion is a powerful tool to transform nations, governments and the course of history (Casey). The power behind such a force lies in how the public perceives current national and international events, the media’s response and the politician’s response to those events. The camera lens or the Kino-eye comes in many forms in the world today (Whalley). The media, the public and, the United States (U.S) government all operate as their own Kino-eye (Zimmerman). When the media is the Kino-eye they “film” an event as they themselves perceive it. The public is the media’s audience and witness the media’s perception of said event as a life-as-it-is or reality, for the unaware people being filmed as a part of the event. The complexities of life are distorted in the short, focused media productions. When the United States government is the Kino-eye, the common motivation is concern among U.S. politicians that another country has left the U.S. sphere of geopolitical influence. To gain public support for their actions abroad, the U.S. government acts as a media outlet and may portray an opposing country in a negative light. This opposing country is often painted as shady, unstable and dangerous, whilst the U.S. is portrayed as safe and free from the dangers that reside in that opposing country. Negative interactions from the public with outside groups, prompts a political discourse that results in politicians taking action against said groups. The reasons for distortion  present in media and how these can change public perception will be examined and dissected utilizing the Soviet silent film director Dziga Vertov’s theories and applying the film, Narco Cultura, and the book, Border Games, the cyclical relationship of the media, the public and the United States government.
How: Certainly, the use of propaganda is nothing new as a government tactic to sway public opinion (Bruck). This is not to say that all propaganda is intentional. Films portray life-as-it-is as the director perceives it. The audience is thus witnessing what the director wants them to see or how he understands it. The camera, in this case, is “the machine that shows the world as I, perceive it” (Berger). The director is the lens or the eye that shows the audience what he wants them to see. Whether he is doing it intentionally or unintentionally, he is framing a life-as-it-is as he sees it to the audience. The United States government is no stranger to the use of propaganda (Daniel Deiss), including hostile rhetoric against a politically opposing country such as Mexico. The United States government uses the media to shift public opinion in its favor like with Operation Mockingbird (CIA.gov) and Operation COINTELPRO (FBI.gov), setting up organizations such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to aim propaganda directly to the public.  Governments or the media may use existing communication platforms such as Facebook or Twitter (Bloomberg) can create or combat fake news. In this scenario, the United States government can essentially be reduced to a media-like entity that operates, in a libertarian sense, as both a figure of authority and as a corporation. The government, as an authority entity, has a sphere of political influence, which it seeks to maintain power in the realm of its sphere. It must keep the countries nearby under its influence to secure not only itself, but the other countries around. If a country decides to diverge from the U.S. sphere of influence, the U.S. acts in retaliation and becomes a Kino-eye to demonstrate to the audience, in this case the U.S. public, that the country is conducting actions that could jeopardize either U.S. security or U.S. civilian lives.
In the case of the opposing country, they are the Unawares, whose civilians are unaware of the opposing rhetoric of the two countries. The citizen acts as both operates as an audience member to the media or the government or as an Unaware who unknowingly participate in the positive or negative portrayal of the country. The media and the government can utilize the citizen to portray Life-as-it-is in order to frame the world as they see it, whether the participant believes in that perception or not. In the film Narco Cultura, two opposing world views are seen; that of ordinary people living an everyday existence and that of people living in fear of violence and crime. In the movie sequences that show the citizens living in Juarez, the camera never directly looks into the faces of the civilians. Instead, the civilians carry on with their daily lives, seemingly unaware that they are being filmed. The director utilizes the film techniques of the Soviet silent film director; Dziga Vertov, who filmed unaware citizens living in the Soviet Union at that time. Vertov wanted to portray a life-as-it-is to his audience, to capture what life was like in the Soviet Union at that time and, to move beyond the subjective eyes of the normal person and capture life there more accurately with his camera (machine). Editing and piecing together a coherent story, Vertov coined kino-pravda (film truth) which is widely used film-editing technique. For the sequences of Narco Cultura set in Juarez, the director films the unawares living in the shadows of the ruthless drug cartels. The film captures the civilians partaking in their average life until tragedy strikes and the community comes and mourns the death. In this case, the unawares, the civilians, are gossiping among themselves, mourning the victim that died and, demanding action from police. To an audience, this sort of gathering of civilians, who are unaware they are being filmed, is seemingly typical of that society and portrays a life-as-it-is there in Juarez. The scene in the movie of Narco Cultura where the citizens of Juarez are standing around a crime scene discussing the victim of the crime, the director films a group of children who discuss how the victim of the cartel violence was murdered. Throughout that sequence they children never look directly at the camera, instead, they converse among themselves in same scene; a group of citizens are mourning the death of a deceased relative.  Seemingly oblivious the camera is there filming them. In another sequence of Narco Cultura, a mother is mourning the death of her son who was a victim of cartel violence. She screams and slams a rolled up newspaper on a table, wandering about the why the state has declared a war on the cartels. Throughout the sequence, the mother never looks at the camera; instead it appears that she is unaware that she is being filmed. These citizens present a life-as-it-is since they are unaware they being filmed. To the audience, this presents how life actually is in Mexico. The other sequence in the film offers a stark and ironic difference, through the use of editing and splicing two realities together, the director shows two very different cultures coming in contact with each other and an American man’s apprehensive reaction to it. Through this sequence of the film, the camera focuses on the life of Edgar Quintero, who is a lead singer for a Narco Corridos band. The lyrics and the music videos glamorize the life and violence of the cartels in Mexico. His music often presents a parvenu living in a nouveau riche lifestyle. He drives new cars, lives in a mansion, owns gold plated guns and often shows masked men carrying AKM-47’s, AR-15s, and a myriad of weapons throughout his music videos. In his music videos, he eludes the authorities, often outsmarting them or combatting them in war torn places. Edgar presents a complex dynamic and fusion, which creates a persona of invincibility to the audience he is playing for and, conversely, a fearful persona as Edgar coveys a sense of apprehension when going to a performance. Through the kino-glaz (film eye) (Quintero) of gore website, Edgar is the audience, witnessing the unawares, who are the gored and bloody victims of the cartels. In one particular scene, Edgar is shows the cameraman a gore website and tells the camera man that this is how life is in Mexico. The gore website is focused on a singular topic of the violence in Mexico, the mutilated bodies of the unawares, presenting a life-as-it-is to Edgar. When Edgar is asked about his trip to Mexico, he states that he does not want to go to Mexico because it is a dangerous place. While there in Mexico, he and his entourage, party in the back of a pickup. His friends are carefree while Edgar is constantly shifting his eyes, as if awaiting a bloody demise through the violent hands of the cartels. Conversely, Edgar also plays the role of the kino-glaz, glamorizing the violence and wealth of being in a cartel through his lyrics and videos. His fans are the audience, witnessing Edgar’s portrayal of the life-as-it-is for cartel members.
The Why: To reiterate, there are channels of information that serve as media outlets. These channels come in many forms and can have a profound influence on a population or little to no effect on a population. The channels can serve as intentional or unintentional propaganda outlet for the consumer. For instance, fictional movies about violence in Mexico can reinforce the belief that Mexico is an inherently dangerous place. Fictional entertainment serves both as an audience to the current events in Mexico and kino-glaz to an audience. This is not to say that fictional media of Mexico is a propaganda tool attempting to mislead an audience, but instead, an unintentional outcome. The creators of such content are seeing the film truth or kino-pravda of the two countries; in this case, the United States and Mexico oppose each other politically. The resulting differences in political opinions result in friction which spurs negative and even hostile rhetoric, the media outlets of both countries begin to blame the politically opposing country for their misgivings. In this sense, the United States government plays a peculiar role as a pseudo-media outlet which, when faced with a government that wants to leave its sphere of influence, the United States begins information campaigns to portray the country as a dangerous, politically dangerous and evil (J.Hawk and Hoover). With the rise of social media and the resulting information silos, the general public is exposed to news on a near constant basis. This in turn frames an image of the politically opposing country as dangerous, evil and wanting to destroy or undermine the United States way of life. In the 1950’s-1980’s, the United States was faced with a domestic and foreign dilemma.
The rise in popularity of Communism in the youth of Europe, the rise of domestic terrorism organizations in the United States and the fear of the growing influence of Communism around the world resulted in two operations which sought to influence and reign in public support to undermine Communism in Europe and to dismantle the domestic terrorist organizations. The two major operations were the FBI Operation COINTELPRO and the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird. The FBI’s Operation COINTELPRO was started under the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover out of assumed fears of violent insurrections in the United States by radical organizations attempting to undermine U.S. security. Through targeted assassinations, media harassment and deplatforming, the radical organizations were no longer seen as legitimate by the public. These undermining tactics are still used today on the international stage to undermine the legitimacy of a politically opposing country. Operation Mockingbird was started sometime in the 1950’s to influence both European and United States public opinion by supplying news reporters with false information, paying off news reporters, setting up and funding media outlets to undermine a politically opposing country. An infamous example of the CIA setting up and funding media outlets is Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to undermine and attempt to provoke civilians in Communist bloc countries to start insurrections.
The U.S. governmental agencies took advantage of the rising popularity of nongovernmental organization in the late 1990’s and the growing influence of social media and began an astroturfing campaign known as Operation Earnest Voice which utilized sock puppet accounts on social media to create a pro-U.S. image in foreign countries. The role of social media to spread propaganda can be reduced to selected channels of information that best suits someone’s political opinions. The U.S. government in this particular case, again, plays as the kino-glaz splicing together a reality that best suits its political objectives on the international stage and presenting it as a kino-pravda to both the media and the public. The populations of the public that use social media also play the role as the kino-glaz and the audience liking and sharing information from the spliced together information of the life-as-it-is that is presented to them through the information silos. In the movie Narco Cultura, Edgar shows the film crew a website with grotesque, mutilated bodies of the victims of cartel violence and states that he draws inspiration from the website and later states that life in Mexico is exactly like that website. This public opinion is further reinforced in Peter Andreas’ book Border Games in which states that in the 1970’s-1990’s, the American public was hesitant of the rise in human smuggling, the free flow of Mexican workers replacing the native population in the work place and the violence occurring at the border and voiced their concern and pressured U.S. politicians to take actions to secure the border and stem the flow of human trafficking, narcotics and pressure corporations to not hire illegal immigrants. U.S.-Mexican relations further deteriorated as rhetoric between both countries were unable to resolve the violence occurring at the border and the resulting failure of Mexico to root out corruption in its government was compounded by Mexico’s agreement to enter into NAFTA and, later its attempt to shift away from the U.S. sphere of influence due to the capital flight from the Mexican Peso Crisis in 1994, the two Zapatista Uprisings and the resulting Chiapas conflict and the assassination of the presidential candidate Louis Donaldo Colosio. The U.S. government and the U.S public play a sort of tug of war of information and both unknowingly fight for control of the camera lens. Whilst the U.S. government has more information tools at its disposal, the public is the ultimate decider of these actions of the U.S. government’s actions which is became evident after the failure of the Arab Spring and the color revolutions in the Middle East. The U.S. government has to film a consistent story in order for the public to accept its actions. Much like Dziga Vertov changing his film techniques from various realities spliced together to form an image of life as he see it to filming workers uniting together to modernize the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime. The United States government too has changed its techniques to spread the idea of life-as-it-is of politically opposing countries to the public.
In an opposite fashion to Vertov film career, the U.S. government, who once created heavily nationalistic image of itself to the public due to its competition with the Soviet Union in the early era of the Cold War. Began to change its image of how it spreads its power after the Vietnam War by creating and portraying an image of citizens in those politically opposing countries living in misery and promptly rescuing them from their evil government to the U.S. public. It is then up to the public to accept or reject the life-as-it-is that is being shown to them. Media plays a role as the kino-glaz in either glorifying the violence and lawlessness of the cartels or portrays a place extremely violent. The presence of social media creates phenomena known information silos. This allows an average person to take the role of the director and portray a life-as-it-is through a kino-pravda to the average person’s friends and family. In a crude sense, both the U.S. government and social media are creating a film that it must market and convince the public that what they are seeing the reality of the politically opposing country they are seeing is how the U.S. government wants them to see it.