The basic idea of my project is to demonstrate that Colombia's global reputation, drugs and terrorism, has been decaying during the past decade (1990-2000).

GCSE History

Semiotics Project

Thesis: Damage to the global reputation of non-USA cultures by Hollywood.

Subject: English

Presented to: Robert O’Rourke

By: Alejandro Holguin

Trimester 2

2002-01-29

The basic idea of my project is to demonstrate that Colombia’s global reputation, drugs and terrorism, has been decaying during the past decade (1990-2000). My research will be based on getting enough information including specific facts and quotes, which will show how and why is the U.S government and its film industry is responsible for all the damage done to our country’s worldwide image. Within the following report, I intend to prove through films, newspaper reports, magazines, and Internet articles, that the U.S´s interest in Colombia is extremely harmful for our image. And that in a non-direct way they are trying to make the world believe that what Colombia needs is military intervention.

What I want is to demonstrate the permanent harm that the U.S government is causing to our country. Through out my report Ill show direct facts that prove that Colombia is not the world’s most violent country. Even though we produce high amounts of different drugs. There are many drug cartels around Latin America that produce much higher amounts of drugs than the Colombian ones. Colombia has to deal with the worst part of the problem because our drugs are proved to contain the best quality. This is not something to be proud of, but is it really true?

Since the start to the end of my project you will be able to see when did this problem begin, with who did it begin and why. You can also see different statements given by experts in the problem in which they give their opinion complemented by certain facts.

The significance of this investigation is to express what I think of this problem and to make the readers understand that even though they might not see the content of the films as harmful for Colombia, it is and it should be stopped quickly.

Could a film industry or even the media stigmatise the citizens of a country as violent, criminals, cheaters, etc.? This question always comes to my head each time that in a movie or in a TV program the name of Colombia appears as synonymous with mafia, drugs, criminals, and brutal violence. I’ve always thought that cities and countries have the right to protect their image, and even more in such a competitive world. This can result in very serious economic problems and can break or damage the countries international reputation. It is obvious that Colombia’s global reputation has been decaying over the past decade. This has to stop. I think that we’re taking too much time to ask for a bit of respect. (Carlos Ulloa says: The Resolution 141 of the U.S congress “May 23 2001” demands that the U.S Film industry must stop using any negative stereotype in Latin & European films, and that they must make an effort to present these instead as positive and balanced. He also adds that even though this resolution was made it has not worked properly and has been over-ruled over and over again).

I think that its time for Colombia to create its own resolution to benefit the Colombian population. “As Jimmy Arias says in one of its articles; a proper research should be made. The Italians made a research to find out what image of them was the USA projecting. They found out that in between 1928 and 2000, 70% of all the movies, projected a negative image of the Italians. They also notices that 40% of all the characters involved in crime scenes were Italians.

Some other 300 films of this type have gone into the market. An excellent example would be the TV program “The Sopranos”.

If this is the type of treatment that the Italians receive from the U.S, what can Colombians expect? A proof of how much the U.S government cares for all this, is the importance that they have been giving to this famous but completely useless resolution (mentioned before).

Are Colombians destined to appear as evil in all of Hollywood’s movies?

“The movie “PROOF OF LIFE” takes place in “Tecala”, a country in South America which contains the highest number of kidnapping world wide. It also happens to be that it has to deal with a day-to-day war against 2 guerrilla groups and “Paramilitaries”. Nevertheless it contains a huge amount of natural resources. Peter Bowman, an American engineer and his wife are sent to this violent country to administrate the project in which he works in. Unfortunately he is kidnapped by the ELT (Ejercito de Liberación Tecala). ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Are Colombians destined to appear as evil in all of Hollywood’s movies?

I know I’ve heard this story before. Unfortunately “Tecala” is our beloved Colombia, and the kidnapping of this engineer ´was´ true some years ago. The film producers didn’t want to film the movie here in Colombia because they thought that it was too dangerous for them. They instead filmed it in Ecuador. They even decided to use two Colombian actors (Diego Trujillo and Vicky Hernandez) so that the viewers could realise that the movie was set in Colombia.

The problem does not end here. In Mexico where part of the movie “COLLATERALL DAMAGE” is produced, Schwarzennegger has to deal with a very important drug dealer. And guess what: The drug dealer is Colombian.

In “BEDAZZLED” another movie the main character asks the Devil to make him rich and powerful so that the girl he loves fall’s in love with him. After a couple of inconveniences he finds out that he had just been turned into a Colombian drug dealer.

Could it be that Hollywood is taking the idea of a military intervention very seriously? Or is it just that adding another movie to the list of movies in which Colombia appears as the evil, has become part of their daily basis.

Rito Alberto Torres is an expert on the film industry. He says that “since Holly wood produces action movies their being based on what the general public demands; Colombia’s actual situation. Nevertheless the production of these movies depends on the With House’s interests.

This is not the first time that this has happened. There are other countries that had to deal with this in the past.

Italians have been one of the U.S´s biggest and longest nightmares. We could say that since 1900 the Italians began controlling the drug dealing business. Due to this they became very rich and powerful. What the USA couldn’t accept was that they started to immigrate into big cities and popular cities like New York and Chicago. When the Italians over populated these cities, the main streets became the center of the drug business. It got to such a point were the authorities couldn’t take control over the situation. Then even worse problems began, but this time within the same Italians. This meant danger for the U.S population. Others who also made part of the business were massacring the top dealers. This was how the reputation problems began for the Italians.

We can take note of the story of one of the world’s greatest drug dealer “Al Capone”. He had almost complete control over the business in Chicago. He was arrested in Chicago in between the 1930´s. The story torn even more interesting when the press made public the decision of sending Capone to the “Alcatraz” island in San Francisco. This island hosted the world’s most dangerous criminals of the time.

The only thing that the USA could want after this could be revenge. But it had to be a non-direct type of revenge. So that he Italians would not notice it straight ahead (this would avoid many problems). The best way to do so was Hollywood. This is how this story began and now its one of the US´s most powerful weapon.

Later on came the Arabs. Around the 1980´s the Arabic race was also known as evil and savage. As far as the world is concerned the Arabs are bad because they are the USA´s biggest friend’s enemy; Israel. The war against Iraq, the bombing of Lybia and Somalia and the financing of the war against Iran seem to prove that the USA has been against the Arab world. The US´s film industries TASK has been to prepare people around the world to support US military action by attacking the Arab’s image. What the USA regrets even more is that they were the ones who trained the Arabs. They were the ones who taught the Arabs everything they know. The purpose of this was to help the Arabs get rid of the Russians, who had invaded their territory. At the time the Arabs became very powerful and got rid of the Russians. But what the U.S´s government never imagined was that the Arabs would use all that power against them later on.

This problem has been a lot more recent than the one of the Italians. But has also been a lot worse. The U.S government never acted directly upon this problem. Just up until now that they felt directly threatened with the “World Trade Center” attack.

I think that the war against the Arabs had been planned a long time ago. It just hadn’t been made public. I would also add to my thoughts; that the USA was waiting for an opportunity like this one, to make the war official. What I can be sure of is that they never imagined that to get the opportunity to do so, would implicate such a disaster. This war against the Arabs has now become social, political and cultural. What makes the situation even worse is the fact that the world will never know what percentage of responsibility does the USA have in all this conflict. It is practically impossible to hear that the USA are the bad guys or at least that they’re doing something wrong. The reason is very simple. The U.S news channel bought the only channel able to transmit news about the true situation of the Arabs just before the official war began.

A reason for doing this could have been to prevent the release of news that could affect the USA´s image. This was a very intelligent thing to do if we consider the fact that beneath all these lies exists an unknown truth, which could diminish the U.S´s reputation. If the USA doesn’t have a reason to be hiding something what are they doing all this?

I have to make it very clear that this is what I think. The reason for buying this channel could be because as a whole nation, the USA has to be on top of everything. So they could have seen this as the opportunity as the perfect way to demonstrate their level of power.

Why is this so?

There are many reasons that explain this. In every single US film a villain needs to be part of the films role. We can also count with the typical U.S narcissism. They always have to represent themselves as the fighters against evilness. In 99% of the cases, the bad guys make part of other races, Social class, or country. It’s the fact that they have the permanent need of being seen as the perfect heroes.

Unfortunately we do have to accept that part of this fame, the worst part of all this is that our true reality is 3 times worse than what is shown in the movies.

We’ve been gaining this image as the years go by, thanks to movies like Scarface and Imminent Danger, and actors like James Bond, Chuck Norris, and Steven Seagal.

Some expert’s say that as the Italians represent the mafia, the Germans the Nazi shadow, we now represent Latin terrorism. What is even more certain is that the countries that used to help us and stand for us when we had to deal with difficult situations are less and less as time goes by.

As Federico Oñate an expert in the film industry says: “when the society talks about problems like narcotics why don’t names like American or Mexicans come up when their “Cartel” are now a lot more powerful than any of the Colombian cartels? That’s why it’s completely clear that we’re being used to magnify their unreal heroism.

Salvo Basile (acted in Collateral Damage) says: “My contract was cancelled after a year of work with the producers because: that they couldn’t stand me anymore because I wouldn’t stop complaining about it not being necessary to be so hard on Colombia. In the movie Colombia is being criticized permanently and some scene are completely humiliating. They even decide to have a military intervention in Colombia. I wasn’t happy with this so I argued until they took me out of the role.”

Salvo concludes by saying that “Andrew, the film director, loves Colombia but he says that the producers interest is to sell their production not hide Colombia’s internal problems. What really bothers him is not that they show our reality because it’s something impossible to hide. But that they won’t show all the nice parts and all the beauties that we have.

Facts of Violence in Latin America

In the past decade (1990-2000) the level of assassinations grew from 8 to 13 people killed for every 100,000. The two countries that are setting an example are Chile and Costa Rica. The other countries, which instead deal with a higher level of violence, have also very high amounts of poorness and corruption.

Even though Colombia is one of the most violent, Guatemala and El Salvador are almost as twice as dangerous as Colombia. Their rates go up to 150 people killed for every 100,000.

It really is a shame to see that our reputation within violence is worse than theirs. Knowing that their rates are a lot more significant than Colombia’s rates.

It is very simple. Colombia represents a permanent threat to the USA. Our level of violence is not what affects them. It’s the amount of drugs that we produce and the level at which we produce them. So it is even easier to complement talking about the level of violence in Colombia. Because this will obviously damage our reputation even more. They don’t need to do the same thing with Guatemala and El Salvador, because these two countries don’t represent a minimum threat to the USA. Neither do their guerrillas. Instead the ELN, FARC, and the AUC (the three guerrilla groups which operate in Colombia) do represent that permanent threat to them. It even in some cases turns into a challenge.

The USA knows that the level of violence in a certain country cannot and will not affect them; it will only affect that same country. But the USA uses it as a complement to damage a countries reputation.

Drug facts within the U.S

Less than 10% of the global population consumes illicit drugs. Rates usually lie in between 3.3 and 5% of the world’s population. This is the same as 150 million people.

From these 150 million 23.2 million are U.S citizens and this is the same as 8.6% of its population. Recently this percentage has increased from 8.6% to 11%.

Due to these facts they are with no discussion the worlds biggest illicit drug consumers.

We could begin concluding by saying that its very sad how such a big nation decides to take over a country through media, advertisements, and films. Damaging our worldwide image to such a degree that other countries are losing trust and belief in us. What is even more unbelievable is that they do it because they can’t accept their reality. They can’t accept being the worlds biggest illicit drug consumer and the easiest thing to do is blame it on us for being the producers.

Now we can see that our level of violence is not what really bothers the U.S because if it were so, Guatemala and El Salvador would be in every Hollywood movie. I think that what really bothers them is that we are the biggest producers of what they’re the biggest consumers of; elicit drugs. As they see it, we make a fatal combination by being the third most violent country and the biggest drug producers. I f they wouldn’t be the biggest consumers Colombia would probably be known because of its natural treasures and positive things.

It’s a shame and they know it that instead of closing Phillip Morris and Whiskey factories to protect the U.S citizens they advertise these as very efficient bringing thousands of jobs and billions of Dollars to their economy.

They’re also very aware that if for instance Cocaine or Cannabis were legalised Colombia would be one of the richest countries in the world.

We could after all see it as a way of protecting their economy by attacking other small countries with pressure upon them. The only intelligent thing about this is that they do it to countries that can affect them directly in a future.

I am a very big fan of this type of investigations. When I get the opportunity to choose a topic at my discretion I usually tend to choose something, which really is of my own interest. This will certainly increase the quality of my project. I look towards these projects as the perfect opportunity to investigate about something I rather not investigate in my free time (for many reasons). I was interested in this specific topic because I have had the chance of being involved in situations were I’m in doubt of what is true and what is not. My doubt was; why does the U.S government want to damage our reputation so badly. Also if this had something to do with them being the worlds greatest drug consumers.

Since the start of my project I reflected images like; terrorism, drugs, violence, corruption, politics, film industries, etc. All these added up make one simple picture: Negativism inside within a country, unfortunately; Colombia.

During the report I was permanently using adjectives, quotes, examples, and a numerous amount of nouns. I used several different but not many verbs. Within the adverbs and conjunctions I do accept that there has been a failure with the usage of these.

My tone is more of a narrator type of tone, which in some parts does change and becomes a bit aggressive. I do know that my change in tone might not be very comfortable for the reader. The mood instead was amore positive. I was being very descriptive and trying to be very persuasive.

I might have not achieved completely what I was trying to achieve when I wrote my rationale. Because I do feel that in some parts I don’t answer nor prove what I was supposed to. It seem that there are many parts were I go on and on giving examples and talking about things related to my investigation. I would finally classify my project as 70% effective.