The Panama Deception

I've been thinking about this documentary after i watched it and i have to confess that it had a great impact on me and made me think about American politics differently. I am a political science minor and thinking about getting a PHD degree in international relations in the future. I choose to study it here, in America, is because i thought US was a symbol of the free world, a place that fully support democracy. However, not only the video we saw today but also America's attitude towards what is going on in Egypt now, showed that democracy, as a way of improving people's lives, is only for western countries. For many other places in the world, it is just a excuse for America to control them.

The documentary begins with showing the beauty of the Panama City and civilians' happy daily lives with light music. Then it suddenly changes to a scene of bombing at night with sound of people screaming and gun shooting. It implies that comfortable lives for people in Panama were broken by the invasion. Then scenes are changed back and forward between the interviews of people who witnessed the attack and the interviews of the US officials who were in charge of the invasion. After hearing people in Panama talking about the situation of innocent people died, family members being killed by the military, audiences find the officials’ announcements, for example, no Panama citizens died because of the invasion, to be extremely ridiculous. The comparison clearly differentiates deceptions from the truth.

Then the documentary talks about the history of the relationship between US and Panama and tries to find out the real reason for the invasion. During this process, the scenes are changed back and forward between the reality in Panama and the media report of Panama in US, such as the TV announcer’s report and the headline of mainstream newspapers. By doing that, the documentary recalls all the excuses Bush used to explain the invasion and proves that all these excuses are lies. The most ironic moment was that when the previous scene showing that people in Panama were suffering, the following scene changed to Bush’s speech and he announced that Panama now was free. The documentary finally reveals the real reason for attacking Panama is not to protect Americans in Panama, but to ensure US’s control over Panama.

Next, the documentary explained why citizens in US could all being fooled during that time. It showed that the media was actually under government’s control. Journalists did not have the freedom they were supposed to have. Moreover, people in US seems to be less critical and suspicious about their mass media or government because they know they have democracy, so they just trust whatever they were told,

The Panama Deception is really a great movie and I feel so lucky that I had a chance to watch it. The documentary itself never said what deception is and what reality is, however. A lot of comparisons the director uses make it easy for audiences to distinguish lies and truth. As Ryan mentioned in her film review, the camera works and the editing techniques in this documentary are not the most outstanding part, however, the overall significance of The Panama Deception is to be an impressive source of information on an event the US government would sooner have us forget.


http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/CineastePanamaDeception.html